design thinking in practice
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Design Thinking in practice
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Improving childhood nutrition in rural Vietnam.
divergenthttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ouicoude
In 1990, to tackle malnutrition in rural Vietnam a team created a childhood nutrition program that was inspired by spending time with Vietnamese families with abnormally healthy children and observing their diet and food habits. Source:http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation/
divergentIn 2011 in an effort to preserve and revitalize endangered languages, a team created an online learning system and put a rough early prototype online inviting potential users to try it out and give feedback. What do these two projects have in common? They’re both examples of Design Thinking in action. And that’s what I’m going to talk about for the next few minutes.
desirable
viablefeasible
Inspired by: http://dschool.stanford.edu/our-point-of-view/#design-thinking
divergentBut what is design thinking?
Essentially it is a methodology for innovation and change.
Design thinking is a way to create innovations that are desirable for people, viable for business and practically feasible.
It draws on mindsets and methods from art, social sciences, business and engineering and covers the full scope of innovation activity from research, planning, development, implementation and evaluation.
Human-centered
Action-orientedPrototypingIterationCollaboration
divergentInspired by: http://dschool.stanford.edu/
Before we understand what DT means in practice we need to appreciate the big ideas behind it.
The house of DT has 5 key foundation stones.
It is fundamentally human-centered - focusing on understanding and designing for human needs and experiences.
DT is driven by collaboration; multi-disciplinary teams, deep stakeholder and user involvement. In DT innovation is a group activity.
DT relies on iterative development - repeated cycles of making and testing, making and testing.
Connected with iterative development, is the extensive use of prototyping to learn quickly about the strengthes and weaknesses of solution ideas.
Despite the name, DT is an action-oriented methodology. It favours practical experimentation, doing over talking, and making over theorizing.
"For judgment thinking, the desired output is truth.... For design thinking, the output is value. For logical thinking, certainty is essential. For design thinking, possibility is essential. ”Edward De Bono, from http://www.cognitivedesignsolutions.com/DesignProcess/DesignThinking.htm
divergentImage source: http://www.flickr.com/people/40773692@N06
So what is DT like in practice? I’m going to cover three aspects - how you think, what you do and what you say.
Firstly and most fundamentally DT is a way of thinking, a mindset. And this mindset can be quite different to how we’re traditionally taught to think in our schools and quite different to how we tend to think in business.
Edward de Bono articulates this difference beautifully when he says “For judgment thinking, the desired output is truth. For design thinking the output is value. For logical thinking, certainty is essential. For design thinking, possibility is essential.”
Critical thinking Creative thinkinganalytical generative
convergent divergent
vertical lateral
probability possibility
judgement suspension
focused diffuse
objective subjective
the answer an answer
left brain right brain
verbal visual
linear associative
reasoning richness
yes but yes and
Adapted from - http://www.cognitivedesignsolutions.com/DesignProcess/DesignThinking.htm
Design T
hinking
divergentTraditional critical thinking emphasises convergence, probability and logic. DT leans on divergence, possibility and insight.
Though DT leans more towards creative thinking, in reality it is a blend of both critical and creative thinking, utilising different thinking styles at different points in the design process.
divergentPerhaps the key behaviour of DT is qualitative research to uncover authentic insights into human behaviour that can be used to inspire innovation. This research usually sees designers going out into the places where people live their lives and seeking to understand peoples’ experiences from their point of view. Designers pay great attention to context and are interested in not only what people say but what they do, what they use and the environments the do it all in. DT favours this kind of research for it’s authenticity and ability to uncover unarticulated needs. DT goes beyond surveys, questionnaires and focus groups and uses ethnography-style research to gain a rich empathy for the reality of peoples’ lives and inspire innovation.
divergentAnother key behavoiur in DT is prototyping.
DT uses prototyping to quickly learn about the strengthes and weaknesses of an idea by making it tangible and experiential and putting it back into the hands of potential users.
DT favours quick and dirty prototyping rather than high-fidelity. This enables us to balance investment with insight. In DT anything can be prototyped, from physical spaces, to events, to services to strategies.
Yes and...
how might we?
what if?
let’s just explore this for a minute?
how about we look at it another way?
there must be a better way!
Let’s prototype this
divergentAnother key practical aspect of DT is language: what you say during the innovation process.
Like any discipline DT has a language of it’s own. Yep there is a bit of jargon to get used to but some of the most important phrases in the DT lexicon feature very ordinary words yet have extraordinary power when it comes to enabling innovation.
Phrases like “how might we?” encourage exploration of possibilities. Phrases like “yes and,” allow designers to build on the ideas of others and synthesise divergent ideas and insights.
Language is a key part of the practice of DT as it sets the stage and gives permission for people to be creative and innovative.
improve inventevolve transform
Source: Cheskin Ltd.
divergentWhat can Design Thinking practically help you with?
DT can help across the full spectrum of business innovation from: improving efficiencies, evolving core offerings, inventing new value and transforming relationships between businesses and their customers.
businesses
movements
strategies
plansexperiences
systems
services
products
processes
policies
internal change
customer-facing change
events
divergentDT can be used to innovate all sorts of things. DT is context and output agnostic. It works equally well for small organisations and large ones, for the private sector and the public.
From products to services, from business models to goverment policies, DT can be used to create change that is more human-centered and therefore more likely to deliver the intended value.
divergentA typical design project looks a bit like this. It loops back on itself at a couple of points, explores divergent paths that can become dead ends but follows a steady trajectory from inception to innovation. DT projects can look and feel chaotic but it’s the openness to possibilities, the willingness to explore and reframe that makes it such a good methodology for innovation.
forming the brief and project planputting together a teamuser-research - going into the wildreframing the problem/opportunity based on user needsgenerating a wide range of solution ideasprototyping to learn fasttesting with usersRefining ideasImplementing to market
a methodlogy for innovation and change
human-centered, highly collaborative, iterative development, prototyping and action-oriented
a mindset emphasising creative thinking over critical
heavily reliant on ethnography-style research for understanding peoples’ needs
framed by language that encourages creativity, permits wild ideas and supports synthesis
drive change right across the innovation spectrum: improvements - transformational change
context and output agnostic
divergentTo summarise...
- a methodlogy for innovation and change- human-centered, highly collaborative, iterative development, prototyping and action-oriented - a mindset emphasising creative thinking over critical- heavily reliant on ethnography-style research for understanding peoples’ needs- supported by language that encourages creativity, permits wild ideas and supports synthesis- drive change right across the innovation spectrum and context and output agnostic
So why should you care about all this?
From a business perspective, design thinking is about innovation, about creating things that meet the needs of your customers therefore helping you to stay ahead of the competition and survive in a complex and rapidly changing world.
As members of the digital industry forum, you are all agents of change and designers of a key part of the Waikato’s future. I think DT has a lot to offer you in that endeavour, so I want to finishby leaving you with a big question to ponder - how do you think DT help to grow the Waikato’s digital industry?
How might design thinking help to grow the Waikato’s digital industry?
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Design Thinking in practice
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