design thinking beyond the bounds of your own head
Post on 14-Sep-2014
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THOMAS WENDT UX Strategist
Surrounding Signifiers
@thomas_wendt
WILL EVANS Managing Director The Library Corporation
@semanticwill
WHO ARE WE?
What is Design Thinking?
“Everyone can – and does – design. We all design when we plan for something new to happen, whether that might be a new version of a recipe, a new arrangement of the living room furniture, or a new layout of a personal web page. The evidence from different cultures around the world, and from designs created by children as well as by adults, suggests that everyone is capable of designing. So design thinking is something inherent within human cognition; it is a key part of what makes us human.”
Nigel Cross
“Design is now too important to be left to designers.”
Tim Brown
ANOTHER DEFINITION
An approach to solving problems by understanding people’s needs and synthesizing
insights to solve those needs – in context.
DESIGN THINKING PREMISE
Only through contact, observation, and empathy with customers can you hope to design solutions
to fit their needs.
AS OPPOSED TO?
• We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution
• We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for?
• Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X?
THREE OVERLAPPING CONSTRAINTS
WHERE IS DESIGN INNOVATION?
IDEO’S DESIGN PROCESS
*
Insight about customer behavior and work patterns were never discovered sitting at your desk.
*
Research, when done well, creates a deep sense of empathy for others.
*
Understanding context involves being-there.
*
You are not the user.
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative ideation • Prototyping & validation
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
BASICS OF CUSTOMER RESEARCH
THEORY AND PRACTICE
Theory Thought Disengaged Frivolous Virtual
Practice Action Invested Productive Real
THEORY AND PRACTICE
Praxis
Process by which theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, practiced, embodied, or realized.
THEORY AND PRACTICE
“Apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through
invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the
world, with the world, and with each other.”
Paulo Freire
SYMPATHY syn - together pathos - feeling 1. harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another. 2. the harmony of feeling naturally existing between persons of like tastes or opinion or of congenial dispositions. 3. the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, especially in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration.
EMPATHY
en - in pathos - feeling 1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
In the absence of direct experience, vicarious identification becomes our
substitute.
“Our real goal, then, is not so much fulfilling manifest needs by creating a speedier printer or a more ergonomic keyboard; that’s the job of designers. It is helping people to articulate the latent needs they may not even know they have, and this is the challenge of design thinkers.”
Tim Brown
“To understand a hammer, for example, does not mean to know that hammers have such and such properties and that they are used for certain purposes—or that in order to hammer one follows a certain procedure, i.e., understanding a hammer at its most primordial sense means knowing how to hammer.”
Hubert Dreyfus
Customer Research HOW MUCH RESEARCH?
Lots
People
Insights
12
Lots
People
Insights
A RESEARCH HEURISTIC
UX RESEARCH/EMOTION CURVE
Malkovich Bias
The tendency to believe
that everyone uses technology
the same way you do. - Andres Glusman
ETHNOGRAPHY
Literally “writing culture” Ethnography is: 1. The process of “deep hanging out.” 2. The richest research method we have. 3. Something you should be doing all the time.
Ethnography Allows Us To
1. Discover the semantics of living
2. Decode signifiers of cultural practice
3. Understand the language people use.
CONTEXT
Keys To Good Ethnography
Delve deeply into the context, lives, cultures, and rituals of a few people rather than study a large number of people superficially.
This isn’t about booty calls, this is about relationships.
Holistically study people’s behaviors and experiences in daily life. You won’t find this in a lab, focus group, or 5 minute interview
on the street.
Learn to ask probing, open questions, gathering as much data as possible to inform your understanding.
Practice “active seeing,” and “active listening.” Record every minutiae of daily existence, and encode on post-its.
Use collaborative sense-making activities like cynefin and affinity diagramming to understand and formulate a narrative of
experience.
Map the stories and insights back to the original customer hypothesis and problem hypothesis.
Did it validate or invalidate your hypotheses?
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
FRAMING AND SENSEMAKING How do we make sense of the world so that we can act in it?
ON FRAMING
“A frame is, simplistically, a point of view; often, and particularly in technical situations, this point of view is deemed “irrelevant” or “biasing” because it implicitly references a non-objective way of considering a situation or idea. But a frame – while certainly subjective and often biasing – is of critical use to the designer, as it is something that is shaped over the long-term aggregation of thoughts and experiences.” Jon Kolko
FRAMING THROUGH VISUALIZATION
“By taking the data out of the cognitive realm (the head), removing it from the digital realm (the computer), and making it tangible in the physical realm in one cohesive visual structure (the wall), the designer is freed of the natural memory limitations of the brain and the artificial organizational limitations of technology.” Jon Kolko
SENSEMAKING The act of assigning meaning to experience. Extraction of meaning out of a situation. Sometimes purposeful, sometimes not. Micro and macro.
The place of your multiple affiliations or belongings.
CYNEFIN
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
GENERATIVE IDEATION
Abduction Induction Deduction
What could be.
What likely is.
What logically
is.
DESIGN EPISTEMOLOGY
DESIGN EPISTEMOLOGY
Abduction Induction Deduction
Design Science Absolute Truth
DESIGN EPISTEMOLOGY
Ideation Process
KNOWLEDGE FUNNEL
CREATE PITCH
CRITIQUE
Generate lots of design concepts (options*) Present concept as stories
Check stories for coherence Integrate (steal) & Iterate
Critique using Ritual Dissent Converge around testable solution hypotheses
DESIGN STUDIO
*See Chris Matts Real Options Theory
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
PROTOTYPES AND VALIDATION
WHY PROTOTYPE?
• Explore • Quickly create testable solution options • Identifies problems before they’re coded • Reflection-in-action*
• Experiment • Early frequent feedback from customers • Low opportunity cost
• Evolve understanding of customer behaviors
* “Theory in Practice,” Chris Argyris & Donald Schön
GET OUT OF YOUR
HEAD
WHAT FIDELITY? • Low fidelity
• Paper • Medium fidelity
• Axure • Omnigraffle • Indigo Studio • Clickable Wireframes
• High Fidelity • Twitter Bootstrap • jQueryUI • Zurb Foundation
Beware of “endowment effect,” also called the divestiture aversion. Once people invest time/effort “sketching with code,” its very difficult to throw the concept away and explore new options.” Identify what you want to learn, pick the least effort to go through Build > Measure > Learn
From insights, you can create multiple problem & solution hypotheses sets.
It's not about designing the one right solution and refining.
It's about testing many solutions to multiple problem hypotheses.
It's about many small bets.
MAXIMIZE OPTIONALITY
Conclusions
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative Ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative Ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative Ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? • Empathy through research • Framing the problem • Generative Ideation • Prototyping & validation
4 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
DESIGNER’S MANTRA
We cannot think about solutions until we understand the problem.
DESIGNER’S PARADOX
We cannot think about solutions until we understand the problem. AND We cannot understand a problem until we think about solutions.