What is the first actionable step in the design thinking process?

The first actionable step in the design thinking process is to empathize with users. This stage is crucial as it involves understanding the users' needs, experiences, and challenges. By conducting user interviews, observations, and other forms of research, designers gather insights that inform the entire design process. Empathy helps to see the problem from the users' perspectives, ensuring that the design is user-centered.

Starting with empathy establishes a strong foundation for the rest of the design process, allowing designers to identify the right problems to tackle. This user-centered approach facilitates more relevant and effective solutions later on in the process, ensuring that the final designs truly address users' real needs and not just assumptions.

The other options represent later stages in the design process. Defining the problem comes after gathering user insights through empathy, brainstorming solutions is a collaborative ideation stage that follows the problem definition, and prototyping is about creating tangible representations of solutions based on the ideas generated. Therefore, empathy is a vital first step in creating a successful design outcome.