and David Kelley note the importance of empathy with clients, users, and customers as a basis for innovative design. Designers approach user research with the goal of understanding their wants and needs, what might make their life easier and more enjoyable and how technology can be useful for them. Empathic design transcends physical ergonomics to include understanding the psychological and emotional needs of people—the way they do things, why and how they think and feel about the world, and what is meaningful to them. Ideation: divergent and convergent thinking Ideation is idea generation. The process is characterized by the alternation of divergent and convergent thinking, typical of design thinking process. To achieve divergent thinking, it may be important to have a diverse group of people involved in the process. Design teams typically begin with a structured brainstorming process of "thinking outside the box". Convergent thinking, on the other hand, aims for zooming and focusing on the different proposals to select the best choice, which permits continuation of the design thinking process to achieve the final goals. After collecting and sorting many ideas, a team goes through a process of pattern finding and synthesis in which it has to translate ideas into insights that can lead to solutions or opportunities for change. These might be either visions of new product offerings, or choices among various ways of creating new experiences. Implementation and prototyping The third space of the design thinking innovation process is implementation, when the best ideas generated during ideation are turned into something concrete. At the core of the implementation process is prototyping: turning ideas into actual products and services that are then tested, evaluated, iterated, and refined. A prototype, or even a rough mock-up helps to gather feedback and improve the idea. Prototypes can speed up the process of innovation because they allow quick identification of strengths and weaknesses of proposed solutions, and can prompt new ideas. Applications In the 2000s and 2010s there was a significant growth of interest in applying design thinking across a range of diverse applications—for example as a catalyst for gaining competitive advantage within business or for improving education, but doubts around design thinking as a panacea for innovation have been expressed by some critics (see ). In business Historically, designers tended to be involved only in the later parts of the process of new product development, focusing their attention on the aesthetics