As design thinking continues to evolve into 2018…
First of all…what is Design Thinking?
“Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO
As Tim says, Design Thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from a toolkit. This toolkit is vast and full of numerous exercises that can be pulled out at different points in the design process. — Jonathon Courtney
Design is continuing to evolve into 2018, we can see plenty of posts about design in particular finally having a seat at ‘the table’ and what influence this will have as design continues to evolve but what I find most interesting is the contrasting opinions of how people have embraced design thinking along with its culture.
There is so much content on this so I didn’t want to reiterate any of it but instead provide a discussion on how design thinking is pushing the design industry to its limits, forcing us to break our boundaries and change our mindsets on how we see and practice design.
Shh! Don’t Tell Them There’s No Magic In Design Thinking When the term Design Thinking first emerged on the scene, I found it completely puzzling. People were treating it as if…medium.com
Perhaps the most pertinent evolution is that design is no longer seen as an internally exclusive, it’s seen as inclusive. I say this with the thought that design is evolving to a point in industry and education where designers are recognised as people are able to facilitate the use of toolboxes such as design thinking to encourage and champion ‘creative’ problem-solving in an organisation. Let me explain these thoughts.
“Inclusive design emphasizes the contribution that understanding user diversity makes to informing design decisions for problem solving approaches.” — What is inclusive design?
Looking at this definition of inclusive design as it is and has been practised I would agree. However, what this statement does not consider is the inclusion of the team solving the problem. I believe that problem solving should be people-centred on both sides of the party, not just the users. User-centric design is for everyone involved in the problem-solving approach to get on board with, it’s key for alignment, decisions and how can it just not make more sense?! Excuse me if I am wrong…
With today’s rapid shift of culture towards the infamous design thinking death hexagon piece of 💩 the biggest mistake teams can make is that they approach design thinking as a step by step process. Thinking they need to ‘level up’ with a certain amount of understanding of each phase or spend a certain amount of time in backwards iterations.
In reality, this fails and I think this is why most of you reading can recall the last time you read a “design thinking is doomed” post…
Design thinking isn’t doomed, it’s misused.
As design is evolving methods have been created that are used to facilitate design thinking as a toolbox/kit rather than a singular tool. The design sprint or IBM’s Loop method are two such facilitators that use design thinking as a flexible and suitable toolbox.
In a comparison between design thinking and the design sprint — design thinking makes up the ingredients and mindset for a sprint, it is NOT a step by step process. This is perhaps why the design sprint has been so successful as IT IS a step by step process where design thinking is embraced in a facilitated structure for problem-solving.
Design Thinking is a foundation, a philosophy, a toolkit for innovation — it’s definitely worth doing. But the Design Sprint is one great way of systematically executing all of it. — Jonathon Courtney
The IBM Loop on the other-hand is IBM’s approach to making design thinking a more understandable culture across a large organisation. They needed everyone to be on board, for everyone to understand that design thinking was not a process but a toolkit & mindset — so came The Loop.
The Loop is supposed to be Design thinking “that anyone could pick up” the principles are based on three core areas: a focus on user outcomes; enabling the building of multidisciplinary teams; and “restless reinvention”, or the idea that “everything is a prototype”. I would 100% recommend watching invision documentary on The Loop for a better understanding.
THE LOOP, a short documentary about design thinking at IBM General Manager of Design at IBM Phil Gilbert and his team have achieved something remarkable over the past 4…www.invisionapp.com
It fascinates me to see how design thinking is progressing in different industries and organisations — how some have embraced it and changed it to make it work for them or how sprints have facilitated this culture without people knowing — I’m very excited to be a part of this change and see how these different cultures drive innovation for the future.