Design Education

Asked BI members during 11/13/12 meeting about what parts of the design process they tend to have problems with:

Identifying Needs: 

phrasing needs properly

not being too constrained in characteristics

getting to core of the problem

We previously posted about Idea Couture's Design Thinking Primer—below is the summary of the principles it brings up.

From Design Thinking Primer: Design Thinking for Creativity and Business Innovation Series 1) Design Thinking is Action-Oriented.

learning-by doing approach to problem solving

getting your hands dirty and trying things instead of being an armchair strategist.

2) Design Thinking is Comfortable with Change.

disruptive and provocative by nature

promotes new ways of looking at problems, often through new lenses

step out of conventional roles and escape from existing dogmas.

3) Design Thinking is Human-Centric.

focused on understanding the customer’s needs, including unarticulated, unmet and latent needs, using various observational research techniques and design tools, such as journey mapping.

4) Design Thinking is Integrates Elements of Foresight and Anticipatory Imagination into the Strategic Planning Process.

opens up the future and invites us to explore uncertainties.

be comfortable with working with many unknowns

Design Thinking expects us to cope with inadequate information multiple unknowns

5) Design Thinking is a Dynamic Constructive Process that is Iterative in Nature

ongoing definition, redefinition, representation, assessment, and visualization.

goals may change as you acquire more in-depth knowledge of the problem.

prototyping and the creation of tangible “sharable” artifacts becomes an important piece of the Design Thinking tool kit.

6) Design Thinking Promotes Empathy

puts users at the very core of everything

communicate with people in order to better understand their behaviors and expectations, the values, motivations and needs that surround and drive them.

7) Design Thinking can Greatly Reduce Risk for Developing New Products or Services.

design thinking practices should help reduce risks, including technology, market, and customer risks.

8) Design Thinking can Create Meanings.

creating meaning = hardest part of the design process

communication tools employed by Design Thinking (maps, models, sketches, and stories) help to capture and express the information required to form and socilaize meaning.

9) Design Thinking as Organizational Culture Can Bring Enterprise Creativity and Knowledge Management to the Next Level.

embraces questioning, challenge and discovery including frequent reflection-in-action, celebrating creativity, embracing ambiguity and visual sense-making

strong “inspirationalization” and “sensibility” to give tangibility to the emotional contract that employees can have with organizations.

10) Design Thinking as the new “Competitive Logic of Business Strategy.”

allows companies to create new products, experiences, processes and business models beyond simply what works and turns them into something people desire—a truly sustainable competitive advantage through innocation.

In short, Design Thinking can...

increase an organization’s “sensitivity”

improve communication between all stakeholders (internal and external)

In the previous post, we saw how Idea Couture applied Design Thinking to a business context.  Here are some articles that applies design thinking to the classroom

Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom. from Edutopia

This one talks about various types of thinking and how teachers can approach students: http://www.idesignthinking.com/03teachdt/04teachdt_text.html