Design Thinking Blog

Recently, there has been a flurry of activity around some new terms, Design thinking and Design leadership. I think they are interesting terms, and describe some new directions for design. Design thinking, suggests to me, that designers have a different way of thinking – visual, abductive etc, which means that they have relevance outside of the product sphere (meaning also services).

Design leadership means two things to me. One is to achieve a leading position in the market through the strategic use of design (Apple comes to mind here… again). The second is to use design thinking in your role as a leader – that is – using design qualities in your leadership role. These are both exciting terms and a useful development from the design management term that has been around for quite some time. Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Article: There is a distinct skill called “Design” that is getting lost in all of the focus on Design Thinking.  As schools try to create multiple options for students, they are getting away from actually training the classical Designer.

Thoughts on this Article: I like Gadi and his insights. He is a hand’s on, real world designer that understands the demands that come with clients who expect quality.  This article reminds all of us that the whole Design Thinking movement is not simply the progression of Design, but rather the cousin of Design (I would say the brother of Design is the CAD). It is important that we do not diminish classical Design as we engage the growing world of Design Thinking, and that our schools find a clear way to distinguish between the nuances that are emerging.

Original article and discussion HERE at FASTCOMPANY.COM

American Design Schools Are a Mess, and Produce Weak Graduates

As head of a major Silicon Valley industrial design studio, I review hundreds or even thousands of portfolios every year. It is an essential part of my job as I look for the best people to join our growing team. Because the right mix of talent is so crucial to our success, I make it a principle to review every portfolio sent to us myself.

That commitment puts me in a bit of a tight spot, as I struggle to find the right way to say the right things to people whose high hopes I’m forced to dash. Despite the recent surge in interest in design careers, the quality of candidates’ portfolios seems to have stagnated or even diminished.

The problem has become increasingly acute. I’m eager to hire the next great class of designers, but to my dismay–and the dismay of many young hopefuls who’ve often spent many years and thousands of dollars preparing to enter the industry–I’m finding that the impressive academic credentials of most students don’t add up to the basic skills I require in a junior designer.

The quality of recent grads has stagnated or even diminished

Simply put, the design education system today is failing many aspiring young students. Read the rest of this entry »

Overview: This addresses the ongoing conversation about the term “Design Thinking”

Thoughts: In all honesty, it really doesn’t matter, does it?  If people get the concept, and are able to be more effective in their processes, then who cares what it is called?  I do think the links in this post are worth following .

Original Post HERE at Peter Merholz site

I have a… complicated relationship with the phrase “design thinking”. Over 4 years ago, I wrote a post, “The Dark Side of Design Thinking” that looked at the shortcomings of the designer’s perspective, and even earlier, lamented how the phrase “design thinking” was being used to mean “thinking that I like,” and not really about design.

But then I also co-wrote a book that addresses the value of design approaches (and I’ve been known, in person, to say that it’s a book about “design thinking” that never uses the phrase “design thinking”).

I most recently blogged on Harvard Business about “Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You”, because I find myself, again, fed up with how people use this phrase in such a way that it’s essentially meaningless, and it seems to serve little more than helping sell design firms trying to be more strategic, or sell business magazines in desperate need of appearing hip.

The problem I faced in that post is that there’s no good alternative term for the kind of thinking I promote, which is a wildly multi-disciplinary approach. Dev tried with “hybrid thinking”, but I found that phrase too limiting. I considered “integrated thinking,” but it’s too vague, and too similar to Roger Martin’s integrative thinking. Perhaps the best term I found was “post-disciplinary,” ironically enough from IDEO’s Jane Fulton Suri (ironic because the rise of the phrase “design thinking” is pretty much all due to IDEO).

Something I don’t address in my post, but where I think there’s a real opportunity for exploration, is to identify how this wildly multi-disciplinary thinking actually does contribute to organizational success in the 21st century.

Overview of Article: This is a recap of a conversation about what ‘Design Thinking” is supposed to do for a business and where it came from.

Thoughts on this Article: I like the thought process that is represented here.  It reflects a positive view of changing the way things are done and a collaborative approach to solving business challenges.  I agree that it makes sense to pick the best from various fields and integrate those things.  That is how we have some of the best things we have (including dogs).

Original Post HERE at EmergingFuturesLab.com

This is an attempt at articulating the implications of using design thinking as an approach to innovation. It emerged from a conversation this afternoon at the Aalto Design Factory with Mikko Koskinen and Lotta Hassi.

5 Ways Design Thinking Can Raise the Collective IQ of Your Business

Original Article HERE at Fast Company

BY Michael Cannell

Business executives love stability and the cold imperatives of logic. Ambiguity gives them fits. Designers, by contrast, can’t abide the status quo. “That tension never goes away between inventing the new and preserving the old,” Sam Lucente, vice president of design for Hewlett-Packard, said yesterday at a panel discussion conducted by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum during its National Design Week. “It’s like navigating no man’s land,” he said.

The panel, entitled “The Business of Design,” addressed ways to integrate designers, and design thinking, into organizations that usually resist change. Here are some of their observations:

The most effective designers know instinctually how to navigate bureaucracies. They handle matters “often in subversive ways,” Lucente said. “They quietly figure out how to end run the system and get things done. They know how to work it.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Original Post and Comments HERE at Archis.org

Thinking through Design Thinking

IDEO /Tim Brown, Bruce Nussbaum and Stanford d.school call it Design Thinking.

Michael Speaks, Michael Shamiyeh, Bruce Mau talk about Design Intelligence,

Nigel Cross writes about Designerly ways of knowing (one of the best books i’ve read so far on design thinking).

All these ideas deal with design as process rather than object. They all articulate and confirm the idea that there is a ’specific way of thinking that is unique to design’ and ‘that this way of thinking is applicable on any problem’ It is a way of seeing, understanding and making the world, and the ‘design way’ is a universal way, there is no problem that can not be solved, … or so it seems (this is one of the claims of Bruce Mau’s Massive change exhibit and book anyway).

Although one has to acknowledge a certain naivety behind this idea, it is non the less very appealing, especially for a designer, or well … an architect like myself.

Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Article: This is more or less an interview with Alex Bogusky.

Thoughts on this Article: This reads a bit like a commercial for CPB, but offers some very good insights into what they are doing and why.

Original Post HERE at Creativity-Online.com

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Post: Brian Matt jumps in from a designers perspective on the issues that arise with explaining what design, much less Design Thinking actually is…

Thoughts on this Post: I like this style of looking at the problem.  Right now, there is a huge amount of ambiguity as Design Thinking gets more press, and the lines between design and Design Thinking are not understood.

Original Post HERE at dmi.org

What the Hell Have We Done to Design?

(Really Thinking about Design Thinking)

By Brian Matt, Founder & CEO, Altitude, Inc.

Hey, design-types, picture this…

I stroll into the neighborhood party with a swell bottle of wine in one hand and my lovely wife’s arm in the other. Three steps into the house, she peels off to greet her friends and I head for the kitchen to drop off the vino. I am immediately cut off by a doughy-faced but pleasant sort of fellow wearing black pants and a black mock turtleneck in June.

John Public: “Hi. I’ve been waiting for you to arrive. Jill said that you’re a designer.”
Me: “Yes, that’s right. I am a designer.”
John Public: “Were you ever on Project Runway? My wife loves that show.” Read the rest of this entry »