Using Jira for Design Thinking
Industry standard for software development teams — most PMs will encounter Jira in their career. When combined with Design Thinking, this makes Jira a strong candidate for teams who want a structured, repeatable workflow without sacrificing flexibility. Design Thinking works best in Jira when you leverage its idea management to implement the framework's key practices directly in the tool your team already lives in.
Design Thinking is a human-centred problem-solving process: Empathise → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test. It emphasises understanding user needs deeply before jumping to solutions.
How to set up Design Thinking in Jira
Create an Empathy and Research workspace
In Jira, create a project named "User Research". Each card represents one research session. In the card, log: participant context, key observations, direct quotes, and emotional signals. Use labels for: observation type (Pain, Gain, Context), urgency, and user segment.
Define the problem (HMW statements)
Use Jira's idea management to create a "Problem Framing" board. Each card is a "How Might We" (HMW) statement derived from research. Vote on the most promising HMWs with your team. The top-voted HMWs become the focus for ideation. Add a "Votes" custom field to track team consensus.
Run an ideation sprint in the tool
In Jira, create an "Ideation" board or list for each HMW statement. Team members add solution ideas as cards — no filtering or evaluation during this phase. After divergent ideation (aim for 20+ ideas per HMW), add a "Feasibility" and "Impact" field and do a quick dot-vote.
Track prototypes and test cycles
Set up a custom workflow in Jira for the Test track: Concept → Prototype Building → User Testing → Insights → Decision. Each prototype card links to the HMW statement it addresses, the user testing sessions, and the insights captured. Only prototypes that pass testing graduate to the roadmap.
Which Jira features matter for Design Thinking
Jira has 1 of 2 core Design Thinking features natively.