Tools

• Design takes practice. The more you use your creative muscles, the stronger they become. Whether you’re just beginning or looking for a workout, you can adapt these tools for whatever challenge you’re working on.

Featured Collections

Our curated collections pull together tools & other resources to help you exercise essential design skills

Get Started With Design

Uncover Unexpected Possibilities

Make Magic With People

Show, Don't Tell

Featured Tool

An Other Point of View

What if we used AI to expand what we notice in the world around us?

Featured Tool

Mixtape Manifesto

Create a personal and powerful narrative set against the backdrop of a unique soundtrack designed by you.

Featured Tool

Map the Problem Space

Delve into the interconnected landscape of design.

Featured Tool

K12 Futures Library

Tools and resources for educators, administrators, and learners on the intersection of futures, design, and equity.

All Tools

Chat About Chat

Better understand your relationships and conversations through perspective-shifting sessions with…

An Other Point of View

Use AI to sharpen your observation skills and see differently.

Articles of Serendipity

Expand your frame of thinking by using AI as a tool to uncover unexpected interests and ideas.

Map the Problem Space

Identify all the opportunities for design interventions across data, tech, product, experience,…

Getting Unstuck

A self-paced, two-hour sojourn that will have you humming again.

Idea Expedition

Explore how-might-we questions, brainstorm, identify ideas with potential, and flesh out your…

Liberatory Design

Mindsets and modes to support your practice of designing for equity.

d.school Starter Kit

A complete facilitated guide to running an introduction to design workshop.

Design Questions Library

We explore the answer through nine questions we think a lot about.

Library of Ambiguity

We believe navigating ambiguity is an essential ability in creative work. This resource focuses…

K12 Futures Library

These immersive experiences aim to help educators imagine and design futures of learning with their…

Human Centered Design: An Integrative Design Exploration

Consider how you already exhibit behaviors, and where you might employ them more.

Systems+Design: An Integrative Design Exploration

Articulate your objectives and consider where you may have leverage to make the change you seek.

Strategy+Design: An Integrative Design Exploration

From describing the problem and change you want to create to listing potential interventions, this…

Equity+Design: An Integrative Design Exploration

Dig into your project, and work through considerations to better prepare and plan equitable design…

Portrait of a Descendant: Futures Thinking for K12

Imagine a descendant many generations ahead and cultivate empathy for the future.

The Design Abilities Workshop

An introduction to 8 abilities, including a 2.5 hour design challenge workshop paired with some fun…

Blind Contour Bookend

Useful anytime you’re feeling deflated about the quality of your work or you’ve just caught…

Stoke Deck

Boost energy, foster collaboration or ignite creativity.

Design Project Guide

Discover new opportunities, better understand those for whom you are designing, and develop new…

The Inspiration Walk

In just 15 minutes, you will have collected inspiration for something you care about and discovered…

Critical Lens Protocol

Review prototypes to make sure they promote fairness and equity for everyone.

The Haircut Challenge: An Introduction to a Design Process

For those familiar with the tools of design, this practice project walks you through creating a…

Design Thinking Bootleg

Play with a design process to practice different modes and mindsets of creative problem solving.

Mixtape Manifesto

In here, music drives design by unlocking futurism and energizing perspective.

I Love Algorithms: A Machineless Machine Learning Creation Kit

This kit enables anyone, technical or not, to prototype with machine learning.

The Ladder of Meaning

Explore multiple levels of abstraction to help you discover what really matters and better ways to…

Know Your Positionality and Develop Critical Awareness

Reflect on who you are: your identities, your social position, and how these affect your work.

Ethnography Field Guide

Make observations and hold conversations to further your understanding of who you are designing for…

Design Engaging Meetings

Make your next meeting clear, productive, and engaging.

Design Project Scoping Guide

Discover what challenges are best suited for human-centered design, and how to scope and frame…

Desktop Data Shuffle

Use different frameworks to sort data and find new relationships and possibilities.

Do a Duchamp

Practice letting go of what you know so that you can see new possibilities.

Ambiguity Journey Map

Map your personal experience on a project that reflects how you felt when you moved in and out of…

Emotional Journey Map

Chart your feelings, both positive and negative, over time as a way to help identify when and where…

Secret Handshake

Introduce new collaborators to each other for the first time or reignite an old group with a new…

The Gifts to Goals Canvas

Bridge the gifts you have to the goals you hope to achieve.

Your Love Is Like a Red Red Rose

Use metaphors and similes to better understand what motivates you.

Write an Internal Op-Ed

Know your values and be brave enough to express them.

What Are Your Attitudes toward Ambiguity?

Difficult challenges require creativity to tackle, and ambiguity is a natural part of creative work.

The No-Build Hack

See how making and question-asking can be key tools in learning, and how prototypes can be used to…

The Layers of Design

Practice seeing beyond physical objects to understand movements, interactions, and the…

What Went Down

Put together a good story about a creative project—or any situation in which you learned something…

How To Give Feedback

No one is naturally good at giving and getting feedback, but you can become great at both through…

Ethnography Expedition

Outline the specific steps for your project: field research, unpack learnings, develop insights,…

Experiment Expedition

This guided journey will help you storyboard, build your prototype, capture data, and make sense…

"How Might We" Questions

Amp up the good, explore the opposite, take it to an extreme—how to use questions to provoke…

Tools in Translation

Our resources are used around the world and many have been translated into other languages.

From the d.school archive