DESIGN Thinking Review

We’re on the tail end of technology being special. 

 

We have this exciting next step for design. Now that we have enough technology to do anything, design can now begin to be better than the technology itself.

 

We want to make the product emotional for the person using it, and that happens with the design of it.

 

The worship of design has taken designers out of the back office and into top executive jobs. Design used to be the gravy at the end of the meal.

"I am a huge believer in “innovation,” but the term has become over-used, and its meaning is often lost. And innovation is regularly confused with “invention,” alone. Innovation seems to have lost its alignment with supporting anchors such as values, pervasiveness, creativity, teamwork, customer-centricity, user-experience, collaboration, inquisitiveness and curiosity."

 

Design thinking can apply to every goal set by management and individuals, so it is truly pervasive.

Design thinking is an innovation approach that aggregates ideas in an iterative process that promotes unique and unusual ideas, and rewards failure, such that the resulting design has limited technological, or leadership bias in its outcome. The emphasis on collaboration also drives broad ownership for the success of solutions.

Design thinking, by its nature and foundation can help produce solutions to much larger and difficult problems, often referred to as “wicked problems”. The enemy of design thinking is fear and unwillingnessto let go.  

“We need to bring back creativity. Creativity is crucial to solving the obesity crisis.”

 

“Design thinking is starting with people first and not worrying about whether the solution is feasible. It’s meeting people where they are and inspiring them.”

 

Step 1: Empathy sets the stage.

Step 2: Identify the barriers to success.

Step 3: Make the little things interesting.

Step 4: Find and support the bright spots.

Step 5: Learn from analogous situations.

Step 6: Start scrappy.

Step 7: Change the decision.

Step 8: Don’t lead with health.

Step 9: Meet people where they are.

Step 10: Find the moments that matter.

Banks that survived the dramatic downturn now have to answer questions about how they’ll differentiate themselves to gain a competitive advantage. Banks that survived the crash were adept at optimisation, but although optimisation may have helped banks avoid insolvency, it’s not a differentiator.

 

How can banks shift from an optimisation-centric approach to one that balances optimisation and innovation?  From experience we’ve found the Design Thinking model is an ideal way to promote innovation.

 

Deutsche Bank for example has already built its own design thinking division to solve complex business problems.

 

Although Design Thinking offers a good way to encourage banks to be more creative and innovative, there’s a more fundamental question that we need to consider. Do banks have the ability and willingness to innovate and evolve?

To be honest, I get a bit bored about the mantra that design thinking will solve the problems of large corporation. ...I have seen several design thinking sessions and I am not impressed at all with the output. The results are very often: More-of-the-Same but with fancier design.

 

The problem with design thinking starts very early in the process with the problem definition phase. And that is where large corporations fail. They define the scope too narrow and than you get nice new things that sustain your current business but not new business models that rock your industry and yourself.

To turn great ideas into great designs that sell, you need three sets of toolboxes: a designers toolbox, a makers toolbox, and a business toolbox.

"He may have been a genius and a charmer, but he was far from the person the leadership books tell you to be. And even the authors of those books are chiming into the global choir singing his praise. How did that happen?..."

 

We need creative leaders in business. The lifespan of large companies will continue to shrink unless they learn to reinvent themselves.

 

John Maeda, the president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and author of the book  Redesigning Leadership, predicts that artists will emerge as the new business leaders

 

But imitating Steve Jobs isn’t the answer. He was an outlier...

 

To develop more artist leaders for the 21st century economy, we need to recognize the contribution of experimental innovation and encourage it — and failure — in our schools and workplaces.

A design thinking oriented approach to business model innovation.

 

1. People deny that the innovation is required.
2. People deny that the innovation is effective.
3. People deny that the innovation is important.
4. People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it.
5. People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it to people other than the innovator, and deny the existence of stages 1 to 4.

Look more into  design thinking  and engage empathy in all areas of life and work. We already know empathy makes relationships rich, but more and more it is becoming recognized as a relevant lens to look through to help us be creative and get to better quality solutions in whatever domain we work in.

Principle 1: Start with needs

Principle 2: Do less

Principle 3: Design with data

Principle 4: Do the hard work to make it simple

Principle 5: Iterate. Then iterate again.

Principle 6: Build for inclusion

Principle 7: Understand context

Principle 8: Build digital services; not websites

Principle 9: Be consistent, not uniform

Principle 10: Make things open: it makes things better

 

“People ignore design that ignores people”.

Design thinking can be a powerful approach that helps organizations break through their limiting assumptions of what is possible. It creates deep empathy and gets us out of the abstract debate over ideas in meeting rooms, to a place where we can collaboratively create and test tangible concepts.

 

The theory is great, but getting to implementation is often difficult. Why is that?

 

 

Intelligent and simple design is the key solution to creating meaningful experiences out of the connected world.