Implicit Knowledge in Design Thinking
Thinking with Hands and Eyes

Design Thinking is a team-based creative design and innovation process that channels a wide variety of interdisciplinary input from team members. A significant part of this input as well as the process itself draws on implicit knowledge. According to theories of implicit knowledge, this is a highly personal kind of knowledge that individuals extensively employ in thinking and action, yet without putting it into words, definitions, formulae or explicit representations of any kind. To foster a meaningful collaborative interaction it is a critical question how to foster visible and tangible manifestations of implicit knowledge, i.e. make it explicit. Design Thinking is a process that puts an emphasis on designing user experiences, and it relies heavily on methods of gaining, sharing and manipulating knowledge that are closer to experience than definitions or analytical methods: it makes use of visuality, empathy, early prototyping, etc. Based on the hypothesis that meaningful acting is a kind of thinking, the Design Thinking workspace can be seen as collaborative knowledge-space: a space of common understanding, manifestations of insights, a space of collaborative action. Thus implications of a deeper understanding of implicit and tacit knowledge on a personal level must be extended to team level.