Of late there has been a sudden rise in interest in the propagation of Design Thinking. The impetus to this has been hugely due to some articles in the Harvard Business Review(last year), and Businessweek (this year).
If the need of the hour is to think innovation and think beyond the obvious, Design Thinking is definitely an essential tool. A lot of companies like Apple, who are driven by Design, have been doing it for years now. A few more have joined the bandwagon, as mentioned in this another post by BusinessWeek.
Apart from these above, there has been the recent publicly available talk by Tim Brown at the TED conference this year. Brown is evangelizing that Design Thinking needs to go to a much larger scale and also that designers should start to think big.
Everyone seems to be acknowledging it. A few seem to understanding it, and a fewer seem to be to be understanding it. The interesting point about Brown’s talk is that he looks at going beyond the notion of consumerism with which Design has been traditionally associated with.
One of the other great design thinkers, who I admire, and have been a student of myself, Erik Stolterman also talks about the notion of Design Thinking in his blog Transforming Grounds. He also makes the very valid point that Design Thinking is been there since a long time and has found its applications in numerous fields.
I strongly believe that one of the areas where Design can play a huge role is Design for Social Impact. This also happened to be the topic of my Masters thesis at Indiana. The challenges are immense, and the solutions are rarer to find, and that is why Design Thinking becomes important.
The outcome of the application of Design Thinking to create Design Models, to create actual solutions for a social cause, is not been explored much. Therefore in the Design Research Company that I have started, Deskala, we are primarily aiming to achieve this. The questions that we ask day in and day out, in due course of our field studies, is how Design can be used to bring about the Social Change. Being in a country like India, where there is a certain amount of Social Innovation happening at the Base of the Pyramid, we stand a good chance to see the applicability of Design Thinking and its measure its success.
Design Thinking however need not be culminating in Social Innovations in the form of products only. The outcome could be an interface, it could be a service that is designed, it could be a model etc. Because Design Thinking itself tends to see its application in different areas, the outcomes vary.
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…)
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.
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.” (more…)
Overview of Post: This is a blog entry from Dan Saffer a designer in the San Francisco CA area on what he believes are the distinctives of Design Thinking.
Thoughts on this Post: This makes a lot of sense from the designers point of view, but the things that Dan says are “givens” are not “givens” to non-designers. As this field continues to define itself, it is important to remember that a large percentage of the people who are getting interested in Design Thinking are not familiar with any of the terms and methods that designers use. [ Again that is one of the primary purposes of the dTblog!]
Probably the phrase in design circles I’m hearing the most these days is “design thinking.” As in, “We need to bring some design thinking to this project.” Or “What sets designers apart is their design thinking.” It’s even on the main image of Stanford’s new d school website. Interestingly, I haven’t seen much about what “design thinking” really is though.
I’ve heard it used in any number of ways, some of which are vague enough and/or general enough so that they are insulting to other professions. Are we saying other disciplines aren’t creative or aren’t problem-solvers? I didn’t really become a designer until I was 30 years old: does this mean I was thinking differently before then? (more…)
Overview of Article: This is an interview with Tim Brown, primarily on the information in his book, Change for Design, but also on his views of the implications of Design Thinking in a few specific areas.
Thoughts on this Article: I like both the questions and the answers in this interview. The S+B team did a good job of getting into the ideas and asking appropaite questions that give deeper insight into the topics that Tim addressed. This interview also continues to highlight for me the differences between Tim Brown’s views of Design Thinking and Roger Martin’s views. It will be interesting to see who becomes the primary voice on the Design Thinking movement.
The screensaver on Tim Brown’s office computer is a selection of photographs of classic automobiles. Some of the pictures came from colleagues at IDEO, including a few of the cars in company cofounder David Kelley’s collection. As one might expect, fascination with objects is a common trait at this 550-person design firm headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. “We all grew up,” says Brown, “making or working with beautiful things.”
Another common trait at IDEO is a fascination with systems — especially those involving such complex, interconnected issues as reconceiving marketing campaigns, rethinking the materials in packaging, and redesigning health-care delivery and early childhood education. IDEO is perhaps the earliest and best-known design firm to promote what Brown calls “design thinking”: a holistic approach to innovation, including in-depth customer insight and rapid prototyping, aimed at getting beyond the assumptions that block effective solutions. This means addressing the look and feel of the product being designed, as designers conventionally do. But it also means reconsidering the way it meets consumers’ unspoken needs, as well as reworking the infrastructure that enables the product and the supply chain that delivers it. (more…)
Overview of Article: In this article, Vanessa Wong of BusinessWeek looks past the “idea” of Design Thinking and focuses on the discussion revolving around the ways to teach Design Thinking.
Thoughts on this Article: The more I am involved in the Design Thinking community, the less hopeful I am that an answer to this question will come from the community itself. It looks like our community is going to be engaged in this and other discussions while a business model of Design Thinking emerges, which will ultimately dictate what is taught and how.
Design thinking brings creative techniques to business. The only problem? No one can agree on how to teach its methods
It’s a scary time to be a new graduate. But some seem more optimistic than others.
Around the world, graduates are emerging from interdisciplinary master’s programs that integrate design, technology, and business. These professionals are trained in “design thinking.” Sure, it’s the latest trendy term to sweep the business world, but it’s a technique that designers and executives alike hope may help to provide a solution to some of the world’s serious challenges.
The only problem? There’s no consensus on how to teach it. And there’s no agreement on where these thinkers should spring from. (more…)
Overview of this Video: Tim Brown (IDEO) gives a talk on what Design Thinking is and why it is important in this TED talk from 2009.
Thoughts on this Video: If you prefer to listen over reading, then this is a great way to get a shortened version of most of Tim’s written interviews on Design Thinking and the core of the Changed by Design book. It is good stuff. I especially like the section on the rise of the participatory systems.
In reading business magazines and new book titles, it seems that the world is getting curious as to what Design Thinking is all about – or maybe wondering if there is money to “found” in this new concept.
For those of us who teach and practice Design Thinking, there is still a huge debate over the “true” definition and whether the process that is used should even be called “Design Thinking”. Our internal debate can be challenging at times.
What we do agree upon is that the single most significant contribution of Design Thinking is that it offers a holistic approach to solving problems/creating products. “Holistic” in that it is not self limiting – it does not focus one “type of knowledge” or “school of thought” to find possible solutions. (more…)
Overview of Article: Tim Brown gives the background story on how he ended up in Design and then became one of the leading voices in the field of Design Thinking.
Thoughts on this Article: This connects Tim’s new book Change by Design and the overall story of what Design Thinking is, how it came to be important and what it can offer.
The Making of a Design Thinker
It took years before this industrial designer realized that the true power of his craft transcended the physical object.
I was trained as an industrial designer, but it took me a long time before I realized the difference between being a designer and thinking like one. Seven years of undergraduate and graduate education and 15 years of professional practice went by before I had any inkling that what I was doing was more than simply a link in a chain that connected a client’s engineering department to the folks upstairs in marketing.
The first products I designed as a professional were for Wadkin Bursgreen, a venerable English machinery manufacturer. The company invited a young and untested designer into its midst to help improve its professional woodworking machines. I spent a summer creating drawings and models of better-looking circular saws and easier-to-use spindle molders.
I think I did a reasonably good job—it’s still possible to find my work in factories 30 years later—but you’ll no longer find the Wadkin Bursgreen Company, which has long since gone out of business. As a designer, I didn’t see that it was the future of the woodworking industry that was in question, not the design of its machines. (more…)
Overview of Video: Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, talks with BusinessWeek about the design approach to solving problems and how to apply it to recent events, including the financial crisis. Thoughts on this Video: Martins’ definition of Design Thinking hit me as odd initially, by made more sense as the interview progressed. I don’t always think Design Thinking has to create a “model”. However, his definition may be more suited to the business world than some others.
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…
Overview of Post: This is a blog entry from 
Overview of Article: In this article, Vanessa Wong of BusinessWeek looks past the “idea” of Design Thinking and focuses on the discussion revolving around the ways to teach Design Thinking.
In reading business magazines and new book titles, it seems that the world is getting curious as to what Design Thinking is all about – or maybe wondering if there is money to “found” in this new concept.
Overview of Article: Tim Brown gives the background story on how he ended up in Design and then became one of the leading voices in the field of Design Thinking.