Kelly Sutton provides a great reminder of what design thinking is all about in Your idea is terrible, a post about startups and the current obsession with “social layers”:

The problems that your project solves shouldn’t start with “Wouldn’t it be nice if”¦” Instead, they should always be phrased, “X sucks because Y and Z.” You may not even have a solution. Technology may not even be the right solution. But please stop adding social layers to social layers and raising 5 million dollarbucks.

Every UX project should be framed in the same way.

Don’t start with “What would happen if we move this button over here?” Instead, start with “Our checkout process sucks because our research shows that users are not seeing the ‘Pay now’ button.”