Design Thinking Blog

Overview: Tim Parsons gives us a look at some of the implications of the ‘everyone is a designer’ thinking that is becoming more and more popular.

Thoughts: I can see some validity to his position.  He is coming from the perspective of a professional designer. The skill set and training that this group brings to a design project is vital.  However, when it comes to designing things or products – to say that the end user should be ignored is a bit short sighted.  Many product designers have gone through the soul killing process of creating a beautiful work, only to have it changed over and over again until it can be produced for the masses.  Why not talk with those you are designing for from the beginning and bring beauty to a collaborative process.  Very few designers have the luxury of behaving like highly paid artists. Most have to live in the practical world of making a living.

Original Post and Comments HERE at BlueprintMagazine.com

The Myths of User-Centred Design

Tim Parsons

The extent to which members of the public not trained in design should be involved in the design process has become something of a hot topic over the past few years. Before the emergence of user-centred design, except for consulting market research reports or focus groups, designers were largely left alone to channel their predictions of the public’s desires and behaviour into their creations. Today in many areas of design and architecture, seeking the opinions of the public, and even designing with them, is now considered good practice. Global design consultancies such as IDEO expound the virtues of the designer acting as a facilitator, working in teams with non-designer stakeholders. Co-design has become a business model, both for companies selling research insights and as a means of enabling the public to have a more direct impact upon the look of the products they buy. Read the rest of this entry »

Just had a very insightful meeting with Jeneanne Rae.  Jeneanne has been in the Design Thinking field since before it was called Design Thinking.  She was hired by David Kelley at IDEO to help grow the business integration part of that company as an MBA and a significant part of the growth into the company that they are today.  Since leaving IDEO, she has been working as a consultant to fortune 500 companies in the area of Service Design.

She regularly speaks at conferences and is an ongoing contributor to BusinessWeek.  She drinks dark roast coffee with both cream and sugar.

The majority of our time was focused on the best practices to involve End Users in the Service Design process.  One of the hallmarks of Design Thinking is breaking away from the “stakeholders only” mentality where insiders decide what they believe is needed, and then create and roll out the service or product. To be truly effective, the process must include regular involvement and feedback from those who will actually use the services (Users).

There are 3 key times for End Users to be involved:

1. When you are doing your initial research into the “problem” that you are solving (your service proposition)
2. When you are prototyping your services – BEFORE you implement
3. Immediately after implementation – to make sure that you are actually solving the problem.

Let’s go deeper into each of those. Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Video: This is a talk from the LIFT Conference 2008. Fabio Sergio, Design and User experience strategist and creative director at frog design, focuses his presentation on Design Thinking and its role in creating habitable and desirable futures. He shows various examples to explain how people-centred design goes beyond usage or consumption and should be about culture and seeing people how people react to things within their own culture.

Thoughts on this Video: Really interesting look into the way that Design Thinking can be applied to issues well beyond products.  This focus us on the delivery of service, and how to make that effective using DT.  I think this may be more of a UX (user experience) talk than a DT process talk.  A bonus is some cool designs that may appear in the future.

Overview of this Article: Jim Nieters brings a perspective from the User Experience (UX) arena to the conversation on Design Thinking.  He looks at how that area can and should interact with others in the product design and development process.

Thoughts on this Article: It is a good look into the overall process and how all the parts can benefit if and when they work together.  He makes several very good points especially that different areas have very different ways of thinking…and that is actually a good thing.

Appears at UX Matters

By Jim Nieters

Published: July 19, 2009

I hope so! Every discipline on a product team provides unique value—including User Experience, Product Management, Engineering, Sales, and Business Development. But each of them views the world through a different lens. When all of these disciplines deliver strategic value, their products delight users and their companies successfully differentiate themselves in the marketplace—which translates to greater revenue and profitability. Successful companies deliver a tangible value proposition. Think about it. What are the value propositions for Southwest Airlines, Apple Computer, Toyota, and Starbucks? Are they the same? No. Each is unique, and their value propositions are clear.

Read the rest of this entry »