The idea of design thinking is ever flexible, allowing viewpoints and concepts to grow into something that wasn’t thought, initially. Additionally, these initial concepts continue to grow into more hypotheses that construct a field of stemming possibilities, thus creating an array of varying potential. Design thinking and implementing ideas have a limitless capacity of outcomes in the modern technological world we live and create in.
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the design company that popularized the term design thinking, states “Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” Designthinking.ideo.com, Brown’s primary engine, which drives this concept of design thinking, is people. Someone highlights an issue, and wants to transform it into a physical, useful, and innovative tool for other people. With design thinking constantly adapting to new technological ways of creating, there is a repetitive cycle of methods evolving to feasible, viable and desirable conclusions. This ever-evolving process implements, empathizes, defines, ideates, prototypes, and tests the concepts that are presented.
A designer’s mindset is creative and innovative, taking action and bestowing solutions, rather than focusing solely on a problem. This thought process requires imagination, intuitiveness, and thinking logically or illogically, outside of the box for the end user to deem the outcome diverse and beneficial. Imagination is a key characteristic to jumpstarting the design thought-process. The next step after implementing a vision is to empathize; consequently researching the user target and listing ideas that would become a successful solution. After researching and brainstorming, definition and ideation of the concept are up next; integrating and finding the problem while generating value-added, unique, and even off-the-wall ideas, which seem cohesive to the end user’s benefit. Thereafter ideation and narrowing down the best concepts, creating many different physical prototypes and versions of the designs is when the user and designer hone in on the most desirable and viable compositions. Analysis and feedback stem from created designs and eventually, the ideas evolve into the development cycle to be updated and restructured. It is important to keep in mind that design thinking is constantly changing the way people judge a design as successful, thus creating a time for criticism and innovative thinking, which is detrimental to improving a prototype.
Inspiration, implementation, and ideation consistently bounce off of each other, thus spawning new ways to make a completed design even better than it was before. There are many examples of this modern concept; the progression of large wired telephones to computerized cellular phones in the palm of our hands, or the advancement of the first Apple Macintosh computer to the slim, lightweight MacBook Air that one may take with them anywhere they go.
The concept of ice making was also a major design thinking resolution; a couple men in the late 1800s cut blocks of ice during the winter and brought it to the consumers who wanted it. Thirty years later, the idea of innovation was to create a factory that produced ice in any season and having an iceman deliver it. Another thirty years go by and the prototype of ice making is implemented into homes through refrigeration, creating easy access for everyone through their personal ice machines. This improvement of an initial idea is a perfect example of the way design thinking continues to improve consumer feasibility and accessibility.
In conclusion, learning by doing is critical in the process of design thinking. A concept or physical prototype must be tested and critiqued in order for improvement to be achieved, therefor evolving an idea into it’s greatest potential.
The first prototype of a concept is most likely not going to be the end result or final product of the design, thus creating a problem or challenge to revise. There are always new varieties and styles that are created because of the critiques provided in the initial product presentation. The act of design thinking is to continuously create and conceptualize without being fearful of the next great innovative improvement. Keeping people at the center of every process, and arriving at optimal solutions that meet customer needs, is the key to success.
