# 33 Claude Skills for Design Thinking That Ships AI for design thinking: 33 free Claude skills from a fuzzy challenge to a tested concept, through framing, user research, synthesis, ideation and testing. - Page: https://lantern.meet-polar-bear.com/skills/design-thinking-pack - Download: https://lantern.meet-polar-bear.com/skills/design-thinking-pack.zip - Source: https://github.com/polar-bear-org/claude-skills/tree/main/packs/design-thinking-pack - Price: free ## Install in Claude Code ``` /plugin marketplace add polar-bear-org/claude-skills /plugin install design-thinking-pack@polar-bear-skills ``` ## The 33 skills you get The set follows the arc of a real project, in seven phases: frame, prepare, make sense, define, shape, test, land. ### 1 · Frame the challenge - **Design Challenge Framer** — use when: A project is starting and the problem is still a feeling rather than a statement. Output: A one to two page challenge brief: context, the problem statement, scope in and out, constraints, success criteria, open questions. Nearly every other skill in the pack reads it first. - **Stakeholder Mapper** — use when: The project is starting and it is unclear who can kill it. Output: The grid as a table, an engagement note per key player, and the missing-voices list — who is affected but has nobody in the room. One page, two at most. - **Assumption Mapper** — use when: The team is confident and nobody can say where the confidence comes from. Output: The full know/believe sort, the top five risks ranked with a one-sentence kill scenario each, and the cheapest test per risk with rough effort. Under two pages. - **Desk Research Digest** — use when: A discovery is starting and old reports, analytics and support logs are sitting unread. Output: Established findings with sources, suggestive findings with their caveats, contradictions, and the questions only primary research can answer. Every claim traceable to a named source. ### 2 · Prepare the research - **Interview Guide Designer** — use when: Interviews are scheduled and the question list is a blank page. Output: Intro script with the consent line, warm-up, timed arcs with probes, close. One to two pages, printable, opening with the reminder that the guide serves the conversation and not the other way around. - **Participant Screener Builder** — use when: Recruitment is starting and “eight users” has to become eight specific kinds of person. Output: The screener ready to paste into any form tool, the answer key showing which responses qualify and why, quotas, and disqualifiers. - **Survey Designer** — use when: Someone wants numbers from many users and the draft questions all start with “don't you agree”. Output: Goal statement, the questions with types and answer options, the analysis plan per question, pilot instructions, and a stated length cap with an estimated completion time. - **Observation Plan Builder** — use when: The team suspects that what users say and what users do are two different stories. Output: Focus list, capture sheet, visit logistics, consent script, and the same-day debrief checklist. Two pages, field-printable. - **Diary Study Designer** — use when: The question involves habits, moods or moments nobody can recall accurately afterwards. Output: Research questions, trigger design, the prompts verbatim, the participant onboarding script, an honest burden calculation, duration and sample, the incentive note, and the follow-up interview plan. - **Research Kickoff Brief** — use when: Methods and guides exist but nobody has agreed on paper who is doing what by when. Output: One page: questions, methods with rationale, sample, timeline, roles, and a “decisions this research feeds” line at the top so nobody forgets why it is happening. ### 3 · Make sense of it - **Interview Debriefer** — use when: An interview just ended and the notes are a wall of raw text. Output: One page per session: participant descriptor with no real name, quotes by territory, observed behaviors, surprises, follow-ups, and the interpretation section marked as interpretation. These files are what the synthesizer reads. - **Transcript Synthesizer** — use when: A stack of sessions is done and the team needs themes instead of nine separate stories. Output: Each theme with its definition, count, supporting quotes with participant tags, counter-examples and a confidence note; then single-voice observations, tensions, and open questions. - **Survey Analyzer** — use when: Response data exists and someone is about to average their way to a wrong conclusion. Output: The evidence base first — n, response rate, fielding dates, known biases — then findings with distributions and segment cuts, then the section on what this data cannot tell you. - **Insight Writer** — use when: Themes exist and the team needs the sentences that make a room lean forward. Output: Five to nine insight statements, each with its evidence trail and a confidence note, ranked, with the mere confirmations listed separately at the end. - **Empathy Map Builder** — use when: Research exists and the team wants the says, thinks, does, feels view of a segment. Output: One page per map: the four quadrants plus pains and gains, every entry sourced or explicitly marked as inference, an evidence footer, and the gap list. ### 4 · Define the problem - **Persona Designer** — use when: Research data exists and the team needs people-shaped summaries of who they are designing for. Output: Three to five personas, each under a page, each with its evidence footer and at least two verbatim quotes from real participants, plus a summary table: persona, core goal, sample size behind it. - **JTBD Writer** — use when: The team keeps describing features and needs to describe the progress people are trying to make. Output: Job statements with their functional, emotional and social layers and evidence tags, the outcome ranking (or the honest note that ranking needs more data), and the opportunity flags. - **Journey Builder** — use when: The team needs to see the whole experience end to end instead of their own touchpoint. Output: The structured map — stages as columns; actions, touchpoints with owners, thoughts, feelings, pains, moments of truth and opportunities as rows — plus a narrative a stakeholder reads in three minutes. Unresearched stages are marked, not smoothed over. - **Five Whys Runner** — use when: A pain point is well documented and the team is about to solve its symptom. Output: The causal chain with evidence at each step, branches shown, unverified rungs marked with their follow-up research questions, and the recommended solving level with reasoning. - **Problem Statement Writer** — use when: The research is synthesized and the team must choose which problem gets solved. Output: Three to five candidate POVs, each with its evidence trail, traits check and the trade-off that framing implies; a comparison table; and a recommendation with reasoning. - **HMW Generator** — use when: A problem statement exists and an ideation session needs its launching questions. Output: Eight to fifteen clustered How Might We questions, each traceable to its POV or insight, with the rejected-and-rewritten examples shown so the team learns the policing move. One page, printable for the room. ### 5 · Shape the ideas - **Idea Expander** — use when: Everyone keeps suggesting the same three obvious solutions. Output: Twenty or more directions grouped by distance, each tagged with the lens that produced it and the insight or HMW it serves. Labeled as desk divergence: raw input for the team's judgment, not a ranked list. - **Concept Card Writer** — use when: Ideation produced winners and they need a fair, comparable write-up before prioritization. Output: One page per concept in an identical format, plus an index table: concept, who it serves, core bet, first test. These cards are exactly what the matrix and the DFV check read. - **Value Impact Matrix** — use when: A set of concepts exists and the team must choose where the effort goes. Output: The 2x2 as a table with per-concept reasoning, the calibration example and axis definitions, the now/next/later read with owners where known, and the parked list with revival conditions. - **DFV Checker** — use when: Concepts are about to get investment and nobody has asked the three hard questions on paper. Output: Per concept: desirability, feasibility and viability with evidence, verdict and confidence; the weakest leg named; the strengthening prescription. No traffic-light greens without cited evidence behind them. - **Role Play Designer** — use when: A service idea exists only as boxes on a slide and nobody has lived it yet. Output: Scenario, one role card per player, the beat script, props list, observer sheet and debrief questions. Ready to run in 60 to 90 minutes with four to eight people. - **Storyboard Writer** — use when: A concept needs to be felt as an experience before anyone commits to building it. Output: Six to eight numbered frames, each with scene description, caption and emotional beat, plus a two-line story summary. Ready to hand an illustrator or sketch from — stick figures are fully sufficient. ### 6 · Test with real people - **Riskiest Assumption Finder** — use when: A concept is heading toward a build and nobody has named the bet underneath it. Output: Per concept: the assumption stack ranked with reasoning, the first-test assumption flagged, and its cheapest honest test with rough effort and the evidence it would produce. - **Prototype Planner** — use when: An assumption needs testing and the team's instinct is to build the product to find out. Output: The question, the chosen method with rationale, build scope with a day cap, the evidence bar committed to before the sessions, the session plan with real-user recruitment, and the cannot-answer list. One page. - **Test Script Designer** — use when: Sessions are booked and the moderator needs words that produce behavior instead of compliments. Output: Intro and consent script, tasks with success criteria, think-aloud prompts, the question bank in order, an observer sheet, and timing for the slot. Ready to moderate from. - **Test Debrief Synthesizer** — use when: The sessions are done and the team is about to remember them more fondly than they went. Output: The evidence base, behavior-versus-opinion findings with counts and quotes, per-assumption verdicts held against the bar set before the data, the recommendation with reasoning, and open questions. ### 7 · Land it - **Insight Playback Builder** — use when: The work is done and the people who were not in the room need to believe what the team now knows. Output: The narrative playback, answer-first, with the evidence base stated up front and the what-we-did-not-find section in the main body, optionally generated out as a deck. Every claim traces to a project artifact. - **Recommendation Writer** — use when: One page has to carry the decision to someone who was never in a session. Output: One page: the recommendation, what it rests on, what is still assumed, the first two weeks, and the walk-away condition. Jargon-free, no appendix required to parse it. ## Workflows - **Frame the challenge** (The client wants an app and nobody has said what it should change.) Design Challenge Framer → Stakeholder Mapper → Assumption Mapper → Desk Research Digest - **Prepare the research** (Interviews next week, the question list is a blank page.) Interview Guide Designer → Participant Screener Builder → Research Kickoff Brief - **Make sense of interviews** (Nine transcripts, no themes yet.) Interview Debriefer → Transcript Synthesizer → Insight Writer - **Define the problem** (A documented pain, and the team is about to solve its symptom.) Five Whys Runner → Problem Statement Writer → HMW Generator - **Shape the ideas** (Five ideas picked, none written up the same way.) Idea Expander → Concept Card Writer → Value Impact Matrix → DFV Checker - **Test with real people** (We're pretty confident, we just want to move.) Riskiest Assumption Finder → Prototype Planner → Test Script Designer → Test Debrief Synthesizer - **Land it** (The steering committee meets next week.) Insight Playback Builder → Recommendation Writer ## The quality bar - Claude prepares and synthesizes, humans meet the users: no skill runs an interview, and none invents one - AI-invented users presented as research is the one thing this pack never does: no persona, insight or journey without real research under it - Evidence means real data from real people or real systems: team conviction, a sponsor's certainty and a competitor's feature list move nothing out of the believe column - Raw words stay raw: quotes are never sharpened, merged, or blended into a composite voice - Silence is labeled silence: unresearched journey stages, thin themes and small samples say so instead of being smoothed over - No solution smuggled into the question, not in the problem statement and not in the How Might We, however much the sponsor likes that solution - The people affected go on the stakeholder map even when nobody in the room represents them - The recommendation never outruns the evidence: a well-evidenced “not this” is a project that succeeded at its actual job ## Questions people ask ### What is in the Design Thinking pack? 33 Claude skills for the whole arc of a design project, in seven phases: frame the challenge, prepare the research, make sense of it, define the problem, shape the ideas, test with real people, and land it. ### How do I install these Claude skills? In Claude Code, two lines install all 33 at once. In Claude.ai or Claude Desktop, download the zip, open Settings, Skills, Add, and upload the skills you want. Either way it takes about five minutes. ### Do I need Claude Code to use them? No. The skills work in Claude.ai, Claude Desktop and Claude Code. In the app you upload them yourself; in Claude Code one command installs the whole pack. ### Do the skills work with ChatGPT or other assistants? They are built as Claude Skills, and installing them is a Claude feature. Each one is a plain Markdown file, so you can read it and reuse the method elsewhere, but it will not load and trigger by itself outside Claude. ### Will Claude invent users or run the interviews? No. Claude prepares and synthesizes, and humans meet the users. No skill runs an interview, and none invents one. No persona, insight or journey is written without real research under it. ### Is the pack free? Yes. It is free to use inside your company and in client work, and not for resale. There is no signup: the download and the install command are on this page. ## About Written by Polar Bear (https://meet-polar-bear.com/). Published on Lantern (https://lantern.meet-polar-bear.com/), which turns your notes, documents and call transcripts into social post drafts you review and publish.