CP+B product innovators John Winsor and Neil Riddell
“I’m a frustrated industrial designer,” says Alex Bogusky, one of the world’s best known advertising men. “I originally wanted to be a designer and my dad told me, ‘No, it’s too hard, you won’t be able to do it.’ So a little of this is a way for me to say to my dad, ‘Yeah? Really?’”
“This” refers to a burgeoning design discipline at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency known for its award-winning, culturally penetrative, category-charging brand campaigns. And while paternal comeuppance is doubtless a satisfying incidental perk, becoming the designer he always wanted to be is really just Bogusky’s next necessary step in making CPB the complete brand creativity factory. (more…)
My partner in Torch, Robin Uchida, and I have been talking about how the application of a familiar analogy might help to illuminate the elusive qualities of design thinking. We thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what folks would come up with if tasked with submitting three entries or nominations for a periodic table of the elements of design thinking. FYI, the current table of chemical elements contains 117 atomic elements.
First, I put out a call on Twitter (got a few bites) and then I posted the question/task to the Google Group of the Overlap community. In short order, the folks on the Overlap list got a very good list going, along with some very interesting discussion about what to do with structure, categories, and how best to visualize these “elements” and their relationships to each other and to the meta of design thinking. (more…)
Overview of this Post: This is a quick look at the concept of Design Thinking in a business environment.
Thoughts on this Post: I like the graphic representation of this process and thoughts offered.
When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for innovation dramatically improves.
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent—not how things are but how they might be—in short, with design. (Simon, 1996, p. xii.)
A design mind-set is not problem-focused, it’s solution focused, and action oriented. It involves both analysis and imagination in problem-solving. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and organizational change. (more…)
From Day One of launching DesignThinkingBlog.com, my goal has been to bring the best as well as the latest thinking on the topic of Design Thinking to one place. The initial concept was based on the challenges that I had encountered while trying to grow in my own ability as a Design Thinker. In some ways, I was assuming that there were others who felt the same challenge. I guess I was right!
Over the past few weeks, the traffic has increased as readers have linked back to this site and told others about it. It has been accessed from 50+ countries with 40% of all traffic being “Return Visitors” . I am glad that I have been able to offer something worthwhile.
One thing that I do want to add to the site is a regular “Perspective” entry. It will be different from the “Thoughts on…” that accompanies each entry now. At times, I will also open that post to other Design Thinkers that I am getting to know through this site. Contact me (ideas {at} DesignThinkingBlog {dot}com) if you have something you want me to consider.
Just this past week, President Obama referenced Design Thinking as one of the ways he is approaching some of the large challenges before him. I anticipate that over the next few years, those of us who undertand this process will be able to come alongside a wide variety of leaders to help bring effective solutions to the problems they face. Imagine the possibilities!
Overview of this article:Fast Companymagazine attempted to answer the question about the “new” field of Design Thinking.Article HERE
Thoughts on this article: Like many others, this comes up short in really explaining what Design Thinking is really all about. It does have some good stuff to consider, and a really good read for those who are just starting to educate themselves on the topic.
Overview of this video: This is a must for anyone who is learning the Design Thinking concept and process. The following text gives a great explaination directly from Nightline. “How does the process of designing a better product work? To show you, Nightline went to Palo Alto, CA to the designers at IDEO, and gave them the toughest problem we could think of. Take something old and familiar like the shopping cart and completely redesign it in just five days.
IDEO’s unique brand of brainstorming is called ”Deep Dive,” a sort of total immersion into the problem at hand. It’s one company’s secret weapon for innovation.” Thoughts on this segment of the video: I want to work there!
Overview of this article: Like many other sources, Wikipedia is struggling to define what Design Thinking actually is. They offer a very broad concept.
Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.[1] It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in these earlier processes since this can often lead to creative solutions. In organization and management theory, design thinking forms part of the A/D/A (Architecture/Design/Anthropology) paradigm, which characterizes innovative, human-centered enterprises.This management paradign focuses on a collaborative and iterative style of work and an abductive mode of thinking, compared to the more traditional practices associated with the traditional M/E/P (Mathematics/Economics/Psychology) management paradigm.
Thoughts on this article: Some OK stuff here, but a bit too broad to help in gaining a real understanding of what Design Thinking is and how it could help someone to develop a more effective process.
Well, mainly because there doesn’t seem to be a place that is bringing all the conversations together. There are many individual sites and blogs that present really good info (see the blogroll) but none that are just focused on Design Thinking. The goal is to bring you – the reader- into the conversation. Please comment on the posts.