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.”

It helps for a designer to have multiple interests. “The people who are going to flourish are the schizophrenic ones,” said Bill Moggridge (shown at left in the photo above), co-founder of IDEO. “A lot of people at IDEO have degrees in different areas than they work in. You have to be great at one thing, but interested in working with people in different areas.” His term for this personality type: “cross-dressers.” Example: Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfus both designed theatrical sets before turning to industrial design.

Design thinking works best when integrated. Engineers start with technology. MBAs start with funding. Designer start with people. The trick is to get interdisciplinary teams to raise their collective I.Q. by working in the overlap of those three areas. “That’s where innovation flourishes,” said Moggridge.

PowerPoint is the enemy. The kind of discourse associated with Power Point presentations, with bulleted observations marshaled in support of an argument, tends to be team divider, not a unifier. “What organizations are good at is debating,” said Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. “Debating very rarely leads to real solutions.” That’s because debates tend to revolve around data and examples drawn from the past. Design thinking should be about future possibilities.

Be stupid often, but early. Executives often harbor the unrealistic ambition of being right 100% of the time. A few stupid mistakes can actually make you smarter, in the same way that physical exertion rounds you into shape. For obvious reasons, mistakes are less costly if they’re committed early in the process.

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.

Thinking about design as a universal problem solving method radically enlarges the arena for design and provides the design discipline with a sense of authority. It provides a credibility to the discipline that is instrumental in getting designer involved in projects at a point where the fundamental decisions are made, instead of calling designers in to only deal with the cosmetics of a project. One has to read the efforts of IDEO and Bruce Nussbaum in this light, as advocating for a design discipline that is more involved at the moments and places where it matters and where it can make a significant impact.

Beside propagating design thinking to businesses, selling the design way of thinking as universally applicable, provides design with a legitimization for engaging with fields that are normally well beyond their reach, beyond the confines of the design discipline. This is something also propagated in the Volume’s opening issue (#1) under the term ‘Architectural Intelligence’ and there is also some of this attitude present in the “Office for Unsolicited Architecture” issue (#14). I think these ideas bear fruit, but suffer from overestimation, but that’s what usally happens when one advocates something, it quickly turns into a one dimensional argument.

I would like to point out a few problems I have with the current discourse around design thinking:

Design as problem-solving
The underlying paradigm of what “design” actually is in the “Design Thinking” school, is that it is synonymous with problem-solving. This is a limited view of design, and a problematic one. First of all what does it mean to solve a problem? In design there is not one possible answer to a certain question, there are a lot, see the architectural competition as example.

Also one can always question whether any problem is permanently solvable, especially when its problems have a socio-economical dimension, these are known as wicked problems. (see Rittel, Webber – “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning”) The term problem solving sounds too absolutist. How many solutions from 50 years ago are regarded as the root of today’s problems?

The more design becomes technical and a from engineering in which the criteria are technical as well, where the margins of error are so small that solutions can be measured in absolute dimensions, in this sense there is a relation between problem and solution that becomes traceable. Design has a huge cultural component, often the problem is artificial, or invented by the designer themselves and is connected more to a cultural zeitgeist than anything else. In what way can we talk about the brief for a project in terms of a problem?

A problem is something undesired that needs to be resolved, but the brief is defined as a wish-list not a problem definition. The brief inspires a projection of the future, and over the course of a design process there surely is problem-solving going on, but it’s mainly a problem-solving cycle that deals with ones own invented or perceived problems, which is legitimate, but one has to acknowledge that problems are not absolute.

Design is a discipline but not a scientific one!

Design as innovation
Another paradigm underlying “design” in design thinking is the one of progress, that design is instrumental in improving our lives, society and the whole world basically. The term “innovation” embodies the believe that the new is better, that technology will improve our lives, its propelled by the assumptions that science, rationality and efficiency will move the world to a better place. It’s a very technocratic conception of design, one that fits perfectly in our capitalist society. Innovation and problem-solving are two branches that grow from the same tree.

Design thinking doesn’t tell us much about thinking.
The “thinking” in design thinking, doesn’t really deal with explaining the thinking in design, it only scratches the surface of what design thinking is really about. Design thinking as propagated by IDEO and Nussbaum is mostly deals with methodology, process, ‘how-to,’ it doesn’t deal with how design thinking actually works. Usually cases are brought forward of how a typical design approach has been successful in tackling a problem, but from this we don’t learn how thoughts unfold in the design process, how thinking unfolds.

Thus design thinking currently deals with describing behavior, symptoms, the consequence of thoughts but not what design thinking consists of itself. It is much like how the Turning Test for testing if a machine is intelligent or not doesn’t tell us anything about what intelligence itself actually is, it only shows that a machine can behave as a human does! But this tells us nothing about the nature of intelligence itself (John Searle’s ‘Chinese Room‘ thought experiment effectively exposes this flaw of the Turing Test)

Especially this last part intrigues me, i’m interested in how designer have their own rationality, how a design can have its own rationality. Just like a mathematician can say this equation is false, an architects can say, this detail doesn’t make sense in the overall concept of the building. Apparently design choices can be more or less right or wrong, within the network of choices made during the design process, while at the same time all most of the choices are more or less arbitrary! intriguing isn’t it!? What is this kind of logic that is operative in design? What is this intelligence that seems irrational but gives enough foundation for making a choice? What mode of reasoning is at work here?

I researched these questions in my graduation work, which consisted of a comparative literature research of three perspective on “reasoning in architecture“, although the findings are relevant to all design disciplines> The three perspectives come from three authors, from three different fields:

Donald A. Schön (1930-1997) a design researcher, but trained as philosopher who succeeded in describing ‘how designers think’ in a way that designers actually recognize themselves. Shön’s work is interesting because of the categories he introduces. These are fundamental descriptions of how a designer engages in the design activity. His categories are open but still defined enough for designers to recognise the fundamental process they are involved in. It describes an iterative process, but does not specify tasks, design phases or steps from beginning to end. It’s not a method for how-to think, it’s provides insight in how thinking works in design. Schön theory is presented in his book The Reflective Practitioner (1983)

Jeff Hawkins (1957) is a computer architect turned neurologist. He is interested in making truly intelligent machines, but believes one can only do so when we understand how the brain produces intelligence. He states that in the cognitive sciences intelligence is judged by the wrong parameter: behaviour. According to Hawkins this is only a manifestation of what intelligence really is, behaviour is but the surface. Hawkins puts forward a theory that intelligence is determined by prediction. According to him the brain makes continuous predictions about the world it ’sees’ through its senses. It makes this predictions by analogy to the past, to what is already stored in our memory. Hawkins theory in presented in his book On Intelligence (2004) You can watch a lecture by Hawkins on TED and here if you want to get in a bit deeper.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a philosopher, logician and mathematician. Peirce was interested in where new ideas came from, how the mind was able to put forward fruitful ideas, and in that way it was instrumental in the development of knowledge. Peirce believed that deductive and inductive reasoning were not adequate in describing how this worked, thus Peirce developed a third mode of reasoning, abduction, with which he tried to clarify processes of invention and discovery. Another theory of Peirce is also of importance more specifically for the work of architects, that of diagrammatic reasoning.

He developed the concept of diagrammatic reasoning in the context of explaining creativity in mathematics, but it also gives us a deeper insight in how architects reason through making drawings and models. Because like mathematics also architectural design is mediated activity. Peirce’s theories were developed over his entire career, publishing many papers and articles. For this research the explanation of Peirce’s theories is based on the readings of Michael H. G. Hoffmann and Sami Paavola.

Besides these main protagonists, Aristotle’s Rhetoric plays a significant role in describing the nature of reasoning in architectural design.

What all these authors have in common is that they deal with developing a framework for the fundamental elements and processes of creative thought, by naming them, formalizing and theorizing these they open up a possibility of discourse on these ideas. I’ll elaborate the theories these men have put forward later, for now I’ll leave you with a quote:

“. . . in speaking of logic, we do not need to be concerned with processes of inference at all. While it is true that a great deal of what is generally understood to be logic is concerned with deduction, logic in the widest sense, refers to something far more general. It is concerned with the form of abstract structures, and is involved the moment we make pictures of reality and then seek to manipulate these pictures so that we may look further into the reality itself. It is the business of logic to invent purely artificial structures of elements and relations.” (Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form, 1964)”

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. The agency’s design initiatives have ranged widely in nature and scope. They include products for existing clients—like BK Joe, a variably caffeinated house coffee and Chicken Fries for Burger King, and a whimsical new pizza ordering device called the Knock Box for Domino’s. They also include self-propelled product initiatives and industrial design-driven partnerships—like developing a range of new products for Twist, a startup sponge company, and creating a large scale new public bicycle sharing system for cities and large institutions.

Cab Cam for VW

But all of the agency’s design efforts are united, and guided, by a big picture belief about how brands really find love and success in today’s marketplace. At the core of that belief is not just the (correct) assumption that a great product usually means more to a marketer’s success than anything else. It’s that brands are at their best when product and communications share a narrative, when the product, and the whole brand experience, are created through an insight-driven marketing process. It’s something that gets discussed with greater frequency these days, but it happens surprisingly infrequently. When it does happen, it’s obvious (see: Apple) and it’s not an accident.

CPB’s design “department” actually consists of just six full time staffers, including former art director Neil Riddell who now acts as VP/director of product innovation. But as it builds its repertoire, design thinking is more intrinsically woven into the creative cloth of the agency, meaning that many of the agency’s ad creatives contribute to design ideas, and that clients are now often briefing the agency on design and communications. A 3D printer allows the design team to prototype all the agency’s industrial design ideas in house.

CPB bolstered its design resources with the acquisition, in spring 2007, of Radar Communications, a Boulder-based consultancy and market research company. Radar was joined with CPB’s existing Cognitive and Cultural Studies contingent to form the new Cultural Radar department, with Radar founder John Winsor acting as VP/executive director of strategy and product innovation.

Winsor, previously a sports magazine publisher, met Bogusky in the classic Colorado way—mountain biking (“John is out of his fucking mind,” says Bogusky, approvingly, of Winsor’s outdoorsmanship ). “The agency’s products department is now closer to a design studio’s,” says Winsor. “Where you’ve got anthropologists and people from social sciences and journalists. It means a broader way of thinking about the cultural effects of something, about what can be solved.”

The upshot of the industrial design and research rigor is that marketing thinking is applied at the beginning of the brand process—so design applies to product, communication, total experience. The goal of CPB’s product innovation efforts is to have marketing and design thinking considered together, from the start, or as Bogusky is fond of saying, to create a product with marketing baked in (he and Winsor are co-authoring a book on the subject).

“Here’s the old approach,” says Bogusky. “As an agency you’re given a product, then you come up with your consumer research and figure out what’s going on around the product. Then you figure out how to position the product or lie about the product so it seems to answer all the issues around it.” A better way, he says is “to take the cultural insights and move them to the beginning of the process. Your cultural and consumer research instructs the product. So it creates something you don’t have to lie about. The product not only fulfills a need, but it fulfills it in a way that is very apparent to the consumer. Because that’s the other part of it; people have to see that a product has what they want. It has to be very explicit in its design that it solves a unique problem.”

And that’s another unfortunate reality of most advertising produced out of communications silos (aka ad agencies), he says. Any genius that might be in the product has a good chance of getting lost in an advertising narrative that is built discretely, well away from anyone or anything having to do with the creation of the product’s own narrative. “One of the things I always found fascinating working on strategy and research for products is that many companies, too, have silos,” says Winsor. “There are product design teams and marketing teams and really they don’t talk. At Radar we were connected to the product folks but we never worked with the marketing folks.” Deepening the design/marketing chasm is the surprising fact that at most companies, design does not occupy pride of C-suite place.

“If you look at the way companies are structured, the people in charge of product are not in the boardroom,” says Bogusky. “There’s no product executive officer. Agencies are in the boardroom all the time. We know the CEOs of the companies we work with and obviously we know the CMOs. Product doesn’t work like that. It sits further down.” Different product managers also likely work independently of each other, so a common design language among a marketer’s various products is a rarity. “They don’t see that language as part of marketing or part of branding. We’re lucky enough to be in that boardroom and we bring industrial design, we bring product ideas. Then it becomes a long term vision for the company.”

Twist Holey Sponge

One of the cleanest, if least sexy examples of CPB’s design initiatives is the Twist sponge. A startup from the creators of Izze soda, Twist makes non- toxic, biodegradable sponges (which are also, apparently, a rarity. Typically sponge making is a very earth unfriendly business). The company had just begun to gain traction with retailers and approached CBP to develop a new range of products. The agency developed products, packaging and an overall identity for the brand, incorporating a sensibility more akin to gardening (a chore most people consider more pleasurable than cleaning) and fashion and health and beauty than to household products. New sponge designs include the Holey Sponge, a basic sponge with a handy split in the middle which allows the thing to be hung from a kitchen sink, the Dish Trowel and the Sugar Stick, a hemp and bamboo combo for cleaning glasses. CPB receives a royalty for product it’s developed. “If something sells we make money there as well so we are more integrated into their success which is good for them and allows us to work on smaller brands,” says Bogusky.

The agency is also working on a larger scale self-propelled initiative called B Cycle. Inspired by a trip to Paris and that city’s Velib program, Winsor and Bogusky started thinking and talking about the idea of a public bicycle rental scheme for Boulder and beyond. A series of connections led to conversations and ultimately a joint venture with health insurance company Humana and bike maker Trek to bring B Cycle to cities across the U.S.

B-Cycle

Winsor had the B Cycle prototype set up in the atrium of CPB’s vast warehouse space on a recent fall morning—Denver mayor John Hickenlooper was scheduled to drop and kick tires later that day. In its current form, the B Cycle terminal includes a gleaming metal rack attached to a solar panel-topped electronic kiosk that’s slyly evocative of an old timey gas pump. CPB acts as industrial designer for the stations and is, of course, looking at all marketing possibilities as a function of that role. “Humana brought a health aspect to this,” says Winsor. “We want to bring that to life digitally, so you’re able to track how many miles you’ve gone, calories you’ve burned, how many miles all the people in that community have gone, a whole social networking component. Which is a component that other cities’ systems don’t have.”

Needless to say, the agency also aims to bake its design thinking into its new and existing client relationships. CPB has a history of innovating outside of strict communications—the 3 million-selling BK Games come to mind. One of its earliest marketing products—a design idea that complemented a bigger brand initiative— was the Fast, the demonic little creature the agency invented to ride along in GTIs it was advertising in 2006.

The agency is currently working on another covetable little product for VW—a slender camera that takes a steady stream of pictures inside and outside the vehicle, effectively documenting a driver’s road trip. The camera design is still a work in progress—at this stage looking like a snap happy homunculus that can cling to a rear view mirror or stand on a surface to capture images. Another project has CPB re-creating a portable stick for WD-40, now called the Go Pen. The agency develops its own design projects under the banner Duh.

Domino’s Knock Box

CPB also had success with some non-advertising efforts for Domino’s including the excellent utility the BFD Pizza Builder. More recently the agency took convenience perhaps too far, building a TiVO ordering system, which replaces the awful burden of picking up a phone or your laptop with a few clicks of a DVR. Next up, an offline, industrial design-driven ordering gadget for Domino’s customers called the Knock Box—when it comes time for pie, they can simply knock the box and they’re connected with an order taker. “Something like the Knock Box came about because the industrial design group gets briefed at the same time as the art director and writers and everyone else,” says Bogusky. “So if the brief is about ease of ordering, writers might think of advertising ideas, these guys look at everything through products.” And though details are scant, design will also factor into the agency’s new relationship with Old Navy. One of the perhaps unsung but most significant client-related design efforts was the invention of Chicken Fries for Burger King. Bogusky calls it more of an accident, a “hare-brained idea” from ECD Rob Reilly that ended up getting produced and is now among the chain’s biggest selling products. Burger King now briefs the agency on products as well as communications. Results of that broader marketing relationship have included CPB designed products like the Have-it-Your-Way coffee, BK Joe and Burger Shots, a six pack of smaller sandwiches. It’s here that Bogusky says the thing that a lot of people in advertising think but don’t say: “You could probably argue that Chicken Fries has done more for BK’s business than any amount of advertising we’ve done.”

Which, well, sort of rams one face first into the question of how agencies are going to evolve to remain relevant into the next marketing era.

“CPB is often seen as doing new things,” says Bogusky. “But when I look at the history of advertising we’re really just trying to grab back the old things that agencies gave up over the years. People say ‘we want to be strategically involved.’ Well agencies stopped being strategically involved because it was profitable to stop being strategically involved. Then they stopped being involved in media because it was profitable to stop being involved in media and to spin it into something else. So we’ve reclaimed that territory; we’ve realized that creativity and media are connected.” Bogusky compares the nascent design division to the building of the shop’s digital discipline—the agency now has 200 people who work in digital. He sees the industrial design arm growing to about 30 specialists, and like digital, involving everyone in the creative department. “I don’t think we’re all that newfangled. Everyone will have to have serious digital capabilities, any good sized agency. To me (design) is very much the same thing. We’re beginning a process of something that clients will expect. It won’t be something that they will have any comfort level with you not providing.”

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.”
Me (resisting the urge to be painfully creative with my bottle): “Sorry, no. That would be fashion. I design products.”
John Public: “Oh, you’re in finance then. My brother-in-law sells financial products too. He designs them to be loaded on the front end.”
Me: “Are you in the mood to fund my son’s iShare 529 Plan?”

And so it goes.

If I let the conversation drag on, we might discuss hair, interiors, software, signage, cookies, automobiles, t-shirts, the web, or Design Within Reach. Design is the planning that lays the basis for the making of every object or system. It can be used both as a noun and as a verb. In its broadest sense, no limitations exist and may include anything from clothing to computers, or user interfaces to annual reports. We may design products, processes, events, environments, and services.

At that moment, I was formulating a design theory to modify my party position.

John Public: “Sorry?”
Me: “I own a product innovation firm that conceives of products like illuminated dog leashes and talking power tools. We use creative thinking to solve business problems for clients that manufacture stuff.”
John Public: “Cool. Have you designed anything I have ever heard of?”
Me: “I don’t know. What have you heard of?”

How many of you are nodding your heads in the affirmative, realizing that you too have been misunderstood too many times?

Who wants to yell, “Design Thinking solves all?”

The word, design, has been abused, misconstrued, and overused. I am not sure the there is even consensus about a true definition among insiders; supposedly those people in-the-know. I am sure that I cannot give an all-encompassing, perfect elevator pitch either. So, if there is no accord on the designation of design, then how do we describe and defend the notion of Design Thinking?

I am always in a quandary when this comes up even though I have been in the design profession for 25 years. If all of us are using a term based on flawed underpinnings of design, then how is anyone to grasp the bigger concept attached to thinking?

When we cram them together, as in Design Thinking, do we have a house of cards, a seemingly familiar structure with no clear intent and lots of room for interpretation? Is that all right? Should we be comfortable with this notion? Is there cause to modify the phrase to “Creative Thinking,” ‘Hybrid Thinking,” or “Critical Thinking?”

When designers want a seat at the adult table, what do they claim to bring to the corporate purpose?

Corporate leaders need clear rationale backed up by tangible evidence to change behavior. Some may be swayed by the latest business fad, but the really great leaders will only have a meaningful relationship with Design Thinking when they understand it.

I propose that they will more readily understand it when either:

1) everyone in the world knows what Design Thinking is because sheer repetition of a long period of time sinks in; or

2), designers can effectively articulate their purpose to the cause and back it up with success.

There! I got that off my chest. I am hoping this sparks some dialogue and a modification in my [design] thinking. I eagerly await the exchange of ideas.

Comment and participate in the discussion on this article at DMI’s Linkedin Group

Brian Matt:

Email: b_matt [at] altitudeinc.com
Blog: dustbowl.wordpress.com/altitude
Twitter: @BrianMatt
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/brianmatt

Overview of Post

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!]

Thinking About Design Thinking

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?

Certainly, design thinking is creative, innovative, and focused on problem-solving. But so is the thinking of many different types of professions: lawyers, engineers, and contractors, to name only a few. So lets remove those as differentiators right away. No, if there is such a thing as design thinking, it’s probably shorthand for these things:

• A Focus on Customers/Users. It’s not about the company and how your business is structured. The customer doesn’t care about that. They are care about doing their tasks and achieving their goals within their limits. Design thinking begins with those.
• Finding Alternatives. Designing isn’t about choosing between multiple options, it’s about creating those options. Brenda Laurel speaks of her love of James T. Kirk’s “third option” instead of two undesirable choices. It’s this finding of multiple solutions to problems that sets designers apart.
• Ideation and Prototyping. The way we find those solutions is through brainstorming and then, importantly, building models to test the solutions out. Now, I know that scientists and architects and even accountants model things, and possibly in a similar way, but there’s a significant difference: our prototypes aren’t fixed. One doesn’t necessarily represent the solution, only a solution. It’s not uncommon for several prototypes to be combined into a single product.
• Wicked Problems. The problems designers are used to taking on are those without a clear solution, with multiple stakeholders, fuzzy boundaries, and where the outcome is never known and usually unexpected. Being able to deal with the complexity of these “wicked” problems is one of the hallmarks of design thinking.
• A Wide Range of Influences. Because design touches on so many subject areas (psychology, ergonomics, economics, engineering, architecture, art, etc.), designers should bring to the table a broad, multi-disciplinary spectrum of ideas from which to draw inspiration and solutions.
• Emotion. In analytical thinking, emotion is seen as an impediment to logic and making the right choices. In design, decisions without an emotional component are lifeless and do not connect with people.

Other disciplines, I’m sure, do one or more of these at any given time. But I think it’s the combination of these that people mean–or should mean–when using the phrase “design thinking.”

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.

Original Article and comments HERE at Strategy-Business.com

The Thought Leader Interview: Tim Brown

The CEO of Silicon Valley–based design firm IDEO contends that elegant, customer-centric design stems from a simple set of thinking practices.

Overview of Article:

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.

Original Post and comments HERE at BusinessWeek.com

How to Nurture Future Leaders

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.

Should design schools create more business-focused creatives, or should business schools foster creative thinking in their MBAs? For now, both approaches to innovating education are rolling out, and both types of programs appear on the 2009 BusinessWeek D-school List.

Different Programs, Different Results

As departments build on their unique strengths to formulate new programs, varied results have emerged. Some programs are co-taught by professors from design, business, and other departments, such as at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school).

Others, such as a partnership between three schools in Helsinki, bring together students from various universities for cross-disciplinary project work. Another approach: dual degrees in business administration and design, such as the MBA and Master’s in Design program from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Despite the different approaches, the programs have a similar aim: to merge design, business, and technology. Professors urge students to value cross-disciplinary teamwork, to defy inclinations and shatter silos. The theory: Working across functions will offer fresh perspectives on perennial problems and generate more comprehensive and original results.

The goal is to combine creative confidence and analytic ability, says David Kelley, founder of Stanford’s d.school and design consultancy IDEO.

“The best students are competent in both.”

It’s still early days, and the chasm between business and design yawns. Closer cooperation is necessary. Designers who exhibit business acumen can be involved at a more strategic level within a corporation. Executives who learn to apply design methods such as prototyping or brainstorming have a better shot at building a corporate culture that nurtures innovation—and the business’ bottom line.

What to Expect?

According to Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and one of the early supporters of the discipline, “Every corporation needs a design-thinking type.” That includes industries that may seem like unlikely bedfellows for design, such as banks and law firms.

Visa (V) launched the Global Innovation Strategy Group in September 2008 to align corporate strategy with consumer needs. “As great as an MBA is, we were looking for something more,” says Scott Sanchez, senior business leader for the group. Earlier in 2009, Sanchez hired Laura Jones, 27, a recent graduate from Stanford’s d.school program.

And a number of corporations such as Procter & Gamble (PG), Samsung, and Steelcase (SCS) are beginning to integrate design thinking and its proponents across operations.

Harley-Davidson (HOG) has hired graduates from Northwestern University’s joint MBA and Master’s in Engineering Management program into its Leadership Development Program and gradually promoted them to all levels of management—from product development and marketing to finance and global manufacturing strategy, says Matt Levatich, president and chief operating officer.

Designer-Led Backlash

And yet, as design thinking moves to the front burner as an innovation tool of choice, questions remain about how its theories can slot into the framework of the business world. Jones is quick to detail that not all of her classmates have found jobs that call for design thinking. Not all corporations know what it is or how to apply it. “It is a work in progress,” she says.

Some designers also balk at the concept, seeing it as a dilution of an industry and discipline they themselves have studied so hard and for so long. “If you teach design thinking, you’re teaching talking: how to use words to describe design,” says Dev Patnaik, founder and chief executive of San Mateo (Calif.)-based design and innovation consultancy Jump Associates. Patnaik says he looks to hire designers and then trains them in business skills as necessary.

Gadi Amit, founder of San Francisco-based NewDealDesign, also has reservations. “Some people think they graduate with industrial design plus capabilities,” he says. Instead, he says, the graduates lack grounding. Nonetheless, Amit acknowledges things may yet evolve. “I am not precluding that maybe there will be a new type of designer, splitting the profession into all sorts of strands and directions, but we are not there yet.”

At this stage, the true impact of design thinking has yet to be seen in industry, as classes are small and graduates are a mere drop in the ocean of global business. But educators, executives, and public officials around the world are investing in the potential of the technique to provide new insight and enhance innovation in a time that desperately needs both. We may not truly appreciate the fruits of these educational experiments for some time, but if effective, these graduates might just redefine the way the world does business.

Venessa Wong is an innovation and design writer for BusinessWeek.

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.

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.

Design Thinkers in the field of mobile devices are just as likely to go to the zoo for insights and inspiration as they are to look at other Industrial Design concepts.  The arrogance so often associated with “pure” schools of thought is absent for true DTrs. (This is actually where Design Thinking departs from traditional Design).

It is also holistic in the emphasis on tapping the ENTIRE brains’ ability to bring insight and create solutions.

While this is not a new concept (LB/RB approaches have been around for at least 25 years) Design Thinking has given a reliable development and delivery approach for the concept.  In most of the LB/RB models, each group is given the opportunity to have input into the project, and someone takes the input and decides which group really has the better approach.  This does not bring the SYNTHESIS that Design Thinking values, but rather a push towards discernment of one view over the other.

Creatives FEEL they have the best approach, Analytics KNOW they have the best approach…and the two groups will argue and dismiss one another almost every time. Design Thinking provides a way for both RB (creatives) and LB (analytics) to VALUE each other and BUILD on each others’ insight.

Another holistic factor is that the person(s) that will be most impacted by the solution (UX, user, customer, patient) is allowed to be part of the project from the very beginning.  Their perspective is unique and important.  They give insights into the underlying problems that may have been overlooked, and provide valuable  feedback along the way. They can also speak to the likelihood of proposed solutions actually being adopted and advise on how best to present the final product/service to those who are expected to use it.

While having end users as part of the process is not new (focus groups have been around for a long time) what is new is the level of importance that is placed on the insights they bring to the process.

Every now and then I will have someone bring up the infamous quote attributed to Steve Jobs “We don’t build for focus groups – we build what we like”.  Clearly, Apple has done a fantastic job figuring out what to build that works well, looks great, and people will use.

So does that kill the entire argument for users being a part of the process?  No.  It validates the concept.

In reality, what Apple does is function in all three areas (LB/RB/UX). They hire great engineers and designers and let them build stuff they would like to use. But in most situations, the company/organization working on a new product or solution does not have that privilege.  They are somewhat removed from those that are end users of the product/service.

Another interesting variation of Apple’s approach is the group Mother Teresa led, the Missionaries of Charity.  They live and work with those they are serving.  They use all their God given abilities to understand the problems of those they serve and bring them effective solutions.  And they have also been very successful.

If there is one area that Design Thinking has not effectively addressed is it the implementation challenge.  In some situations, the biggest challenge is not really determining the best product/solution, but getting that product /solution implemented.  Design Thinking teams should put as much effort into making sure that it happens as they do into making sure it is created.

Overall, Design Thinking really does have tremendous advantages over most traditional approaches.

It is a framework that is holistic,

a method that is teachable,

and a process that is proven.

Why wouldn’t you want to use it?