This chapter provides a background to the concept of “design thinking”, as it is defined and used in the field of design research. Thereafter, the chapter introduces three themes in design thinking—creativity, collaboration and culture—which have become increasingly important in the last decade. It briefly describes the content and structure of the present book, which includes detailed explanations, explorations and developments of design thinking in terms of creativity, collaboration and culture. In addition, throughout this book, empirical studies of these themes are typically presented using data derived from protocol analyses of experiments, sometimes coupled with expert assessment. Thus, this chapter also outlines these methods and their capacity to support the exploration of design cognition, processes and activities.