Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that uses empathy, ideation, and prototyping. It involves observing users, understanding their needs, coming up with ideas to address those needs, testing prototypes, and getting feedback to improve solutions. A key part is the empathize mode, where users are observed in their own context to understand their behaviors and experiences. Insights from empathy inform the define mode, where needs are identified. The ideate mode focuses on generating many ideas, while the prototype mode makes ideas tangible to test with users. Customer journey maps can be used to document a user's experience over time and identify opportunities to improve it.