10 Best Design Thinking Tools In 2023

As you probably already know, the 5th stage in the design thinking pipeline is 'Testing.' That's where UserTesting comes in. Very nearly completely self-explanatory from the brand name, UserTesting is a design testing and user feedback software. With it, you can source end users from their pool of testers or introduce your own and then have them record their experience with your product on video and screen capture. UserTesting has modules for live interviewing, usability testing, brand messaging testing, card sorting, tree testing, and clickstream testing.

Why I Picked UserTesting: UserTesting has a huge focus on, well, user testing. Design thinking is about empathizing with your end user and designing features and services they need most. But your best guess may not be what customers want. UserTesting can help by testing your theories and then organizing the insights you collect in a meaningful way.

UserTesting Standout Features and Integrations

Features include analytics, dashboards, data import, external integrations, notifications, customer management, scheduling, net promoter score, and calendar management.

Integrations include Qualtrics, Jira, Slack, Trello, Adobe XD, Outlook Calendar, and Google Calendar. 

Invision is design thinking software you can use as an online whiteboard to collaborate with your team. Invision’s dashboard lets you view existing projects and their statuses to help you manage resources and meet deadlines. You can embed Jira issues, Kanban boards, and Google docs in Invision, so there is no need to use separate apps.

Why I Picked Invision: Invision is the best design thinking tool if you want to create visually appealing and feature-rich prototypes. With Invision, users can interact with the features of your prototype to identify features that need improvements. Users can provide feedback within the prototype, so you have a centralized database of in-context customer suggestions.

Invision Standout Features & Integrations

Features include workflow management, UI & UX design, automations, ideas management, and product management.

Integrations include Google Workspace, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Adobe XD, Sketch, Asana, Zoom, Azure, Microsoft Word, Spotify, Slack, Google Maps, WebEx, Figma, Loom, and Trello.

Marvel is a design thinking tool for creating wireframes and prototypes of new products or features. You can use Marvel as a central database for feedback and ideas for your CX team. Marvel even has an event tracking feature to identify which users experienced issues during testing and which surface designs are good to go. Marvel’s user testing system lets you gather text, audio, and video feedback from users, design team members, and external stakeholders.

Why I Picked Marvel: Marvel is the best design thinking tool if you want to complete projects quickly because it allows rapid prototyping and testing. Its sketch tool allows you to transform design mock-ups into working prototypes without coding.

Marvel Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, notifications, Gantt charts, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations include Jira, Confluence, Sketch, Microsoft products, YouTube, Niice, Smartmockups, Keynote, Userflows, Botbot, Zeroheight, Ballpark, and Dropbox Paper.

Stormboard is a design thinking tool for identifying, prioritizing, and acting on innovative ideas. It uses agile product management to let you strategize, create product roadmaps, and collaborate on projects. Stormboard has an ideation feature for brainstorming and generating solutions for issues you encounter during product design and development phases.

Why I Picked Stormboard: Stormboard helps keep your entire team on the same page through a shared workspace. It allows you to create folders for different teams, projects, and departments. You can use Stormboard to remotely co-edit files and presentations with your team. It even allows members to chat or use comments to communicate and send files to one another.

Stormboard Standout Features & Integrations

Features include calendar management, dashboards, data import/export, notifications, scheduling, task scheduling/tracking, roadmapping, collaboration support, budgeting, data visualizations, project management, and third-party plugins/add-ons.

Integrations include Azure DevOps, Jira, Google Drive, and Slack.

Smaply is journey mapping software used to manage and improve customer experience strategies. It has a stakeholder mapping feature for visualizing how stakeholders may influence and interact with your products. Smaply acts as a central information database for all projects to identify and eliminate redundancies.

Why I Picked Smaply: Smaply's customer journey map builder allows you to envision how customers will use your product and the issues they might encounter. Smaply also has text lanes to note down ideas for improving your product or save them for future projects.

Smaply Standout Features & Integrations

Features include customer management, data import/export, dashboards, notifications, and data visualization.

Integrations include Jira as well as import/export data options from Mural, Excel, Miro, and Lucidspark.

Ideaflip is an online collaboration tool with digital sticky notes, commenting, and a graphics library for sharing ideas with a group. It has unlimited boards to use in as many projects as you need. The software allows you to add up to two guest collaborators for projects requiring outside stakeholders or contractors.

Why I Picked Ideaflip: Ideaflip is the best design thinking tool for online collaboration with a breakout group template for managing large groups. This design software lets you create smaller groups so everyone can participate during discussions. Ideaflip allows you to assign members randomly to ensure equal team distribution and foster camaraderie.

Ideaflip Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, notifications, Gantt charts, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations are not listed publicly on their website but they do claim that custom integrations are part of their Enterprise subscription package.

Userforge is a persona creator tool for creating products that align with real-world user needs. It has more than 1,000 icons to allow you to create polished and professional-looking personas. You can invite other team members to your Userforge project to get more insights and share the workload. This tool has an integrated image library with thousands of images to create interesting personas. It also has customizable text output that lets you create user or buyer personas in several languages.

Why I Picked Userforge: Userforge is the best empathizing design tool because it lets you build user personas to get into the head of users and know how they feel and what they need. You can add more content to your user persona template as you learn more about your users’ needs.

Userforge Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, notifications, Gantt charts, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations are not listed publicly on their website.

Sprintbase is a design thinking tool used by companies across different industries, like NBCUniversal, eBay, Perdue University, and Deloitte. Sprintbase was designed to help companies turn observations into prototypes and then implement them, all without in-depth design or technical know-how. They offer built-in tutorials to get the most out of the tool; customizable and collaborative whiteboards and workspaces; team performance analytics and output reports; small group breakout boards; storyboarding tools; and a creative assets bank.

Why I Picked Sprintbase: Not only does Sprintbase offer design thinking visualizations, they have plenty of handy charts and dashboards for measuring output reports and performance analytics. You can track quantitative inputs by team member or department and even generate PDF reports with one click (literally). This is very unique in the design thinking software space.

Sprintbase Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, notifications, Gantt charts, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations include digital calendars like Google and Outlook.

Mural is a digital whiteboard and collaboration software that lets your team work together in real-time or asynchronously to contribute to a shared visualization. This visualization can be filled with sticky notes, drawings, text, icons, gifs, and graphics. You can let your team freestyle on a completely blank board or leverage a pre-made template (or a template you designed yourself) for a more focused approach. The canvas is infinite and resizable with a flexible permissions system⁠—so you can go wild with a limitless ideas space or hone in on a specific goal. 

Why I Picked Mural: Mural is the best design thinking tool for enterprises because it gives team members an equal space to contribute during ideation and planning workshops. It has an anonymous voting feature to give equal opportunity to voice preferences and/or concerns. You can add an unlimited number of users to have all hands on deck when tackling complex problems.

Mural Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, resource management, task scheduling/tracking, notifications, Gantt charts, prioritization, calendar management, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations include Adobe, Asana, Airtable, Azure, Butter, Confluence, DropBox, Embedly, Figma, Giphy, GitHub, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Notion, Slack, Trello, Unsplash, Zoom, and additional connections through a Zapier account (may require a separate subscription). 

Miro is an online, collaborative design thinking tool that works a lot like a digital whiteboard. You can start from a blank page or use a template, then users can post sticky notes, create mindmaps, add graphics or icons, create color pallets, or even illustrate ideas freehand. You can translate Miro into over 100 different languages so language barriers need not apply when coming up with your best, most innovative new ideas. 

Why I Picked Miro: Miro is great for agile teams who need to work fast and innovate often. This is in part thanks to their vast integration options, which lets you quickly send Miro whiteboards and charts to other project management and communication channels. They offer attention management tools, premade templates, and smart diagramming to help you ideate and execute quickly.

Miro Standout Features & Integrations

Features include roadmapping, resource management, task scheduling/tracking, notifications, Gantt charts, prioritization, calendar management, data visualizations, and data import/export.

Integrations include Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Atlassian, Brandfest, Figma, Slack, Asana, Airtable, Zoom, Azure, Notion, Box, and more if you join the Miro Developer Platform and access their web SDK and/or REST API.