Design Thinking for Proposals

By Kirsten Dockter 

As proposal managers, we rely on structure—checklists, compliance matrices, schedules. Frameworks help us stay organized, aligned, and sane under pressure. But what if we could borrow a framework not just for managing the proposal process, but for shaping the proposal content itself?

That’s where design thinking comes in.

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving framework that originated in product development and innovation. It’s built around one key idea: solve the right problem in a human-centered way—by understanding the user, brainstorming possibilities, testing ideas, and iterating toward a better solution. The framework helps teams stay focused on what the end user (or customer) actually needs—and how to deliver something that works for them.

Human-centered design (HCD) offers a fresh outlook on proposal development, with a roadmap not just for organizing work, but for building stronger, more persuasive content.

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Empathize with the Evaluator

Design thinking starts with empathy. In proposal writing, that means understanding the people scoring your document. Reading through pages and pages of proposals, one after the other, to score them on strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies is tedious. What makes it easier for them?

When we start from empathy, we move from “Here’s what we do” to “Here’s how we help you succeed.” That shift makes a big difference in how proposals read—and how they score.

Step 2: Define the Real Problem

Before jumping into writing, design thinking encourages us to define the problem we’re solving. For proposals, that means answering:

• What is the agency really trying to accomplish?
• What challenges are we helping them overcome?
• What’s the story of our strengths that we want to tell across the entire response?

When we define the “problem” well, our strength statements get sharper, our writing becomes more focused, and our reviews become less chaotic.

Step 3: Ideate Boldly

This is the brainstorming phase. For proposal teams, this is where we generate win themes, creative visuals, approaches that differentiate, and ways to ghost the competition. The key here is not to self-edit too soon—give your team space to think big before narrowing down.

Step 4: Prototype with Early Drafts

In design thinking, prototypes are early models you can test. For us, drafts are our prototypes. Annotated outlines, executive summaries, or rough section openers can help us test messaging and gather feedback before we get too deep into full drafts. This is efficient and effective, and helps to avoid the “death spiral” of feedback in color team reviews.

Step 5: Test and Refine

Color team reviews fall into this category. The value of this step is not just finding typos—it’s seeing what’s resonating and what needs to be reworked. Can reviewers easily score the proposal using the evaluation criteria? Can they identify strengths readily? Good proposal processes are iterative.

Final Thought

Design thinking reminds us that proposal writing involves solving a problem—for real people, with real goals and constraints. And like any good design, the best proposals are user-centered, clearly structured, and full of purpose.

Next time you kick off a response, try applying design thinking—a framework built around empathy, creativity, and clarity. Design thinking is a way to keep the focus on the customer, from beginning to end. And that is a winning framework!