Design Thinking 101

DESIGN THINKING - 101 the emergence of the design economy COLLEEN DAVIDSON SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

Design Thinking 101 – Introduction

This is a post-conference presentation – for two “Design Thinkers” conferences that I attended in 2005-6. The conferences were hosted by the Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario Association.

After attending these conferences (intended for graphic designers), I discovered that the business world is also taking a great interest in “design thinking”.

Some top business schools are going so far as to make radical and fundamental changes to their curriculum to encompass “design thinking”

Thus I wanted to learn more about “design thinking” for business

Design Thinking 101 – Overview

This presentation will look at three areas:

What is design thinking? A graphic designers perspective Bruce Mau Design: Massive Change Exhibition

What is design thinking? According to Daniel H. Pink, a business advisor, and author of two influential business books

What is design thinking? According to Roger Martin, Dean of the U of T Rotman School of Management

Design Thinking 101

What is design? Definition from wikipedia.com:

Design is usually considered in the context of the applied arts, engineering, architecture, and other such creative endeavors. It is used both as a noun and a verb. As a verb, "to design" refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, or component. As a noun, "a design" is used for both the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model, description) or the result of implementing that plan (e.g. object produced, result of the process). More recently, processes (in general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new meaning to the term "process design".

Designing normally requires a designer considering aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object or process, which usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design.

Part 1:

About Bruce Mau:

Bruce Mau is considered one of Canada's leading public intellectuals, an internationally recognized expert on innovation and creativity, and, according to The Globe and Mail , "arguably our greatest designer." He willfully ignores all professional boundaries, expanding the concept of design into intellectual territory it rarely dares to tread. Someone who is applauded for his ambition, humour and optimism, Mau has designed almost everything that can be designed: from books to bookstores; from office textiles and library signage to a museum of biodiversity with Frank Gehry.

Bruce Mau grew up in Sudbury, ON, and studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto

About Bruce Mau Design:

Bruce Mau founded his studio in Toronto in 1985 and serves as the creative director

His company has now grown to a staff of forty and has gained international recognition for its expertise and innovation across a wide range of projects achieved in collaboration with some of the world’s leading architects and institutions, artists and entrepreneurs, writers, curators, academics and businesses

Bruce Mau’s “Massive Change Exhibition” (2003-2005) was commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery, and curated by Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries. The exhibition travelled to the AGO and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

The exhibition invited viewers to consider the dynamic future of design culture and the crucial real-life choices we must make.

The exhibition immersed visitors in a series of powerful encounters with the latest innovations in the fields of urban design, transportation, information design, revolutionary material and more.

What is Massive Change? According to Bruce Mau “It's not about the world of design. It's about the design of the world.”

Design has emerged as one of the world’s most powerful forces. It has placed us at the beginning of a new, unprecedented period of human possibility, where all economies and ecologies are becoming global, relational, and interconnected.

In order to understand and harness these emerging forces, there is an urgent need to articulate precisely what we are doing to ourselves and to our world. This was the ambition of the exhibition.

The exhibition was a celebration of our global capacities but also a cautious look at our limitations. It encompassed the utopian and dystopian possibilities of this emerging world, in which even nature is no longer outside the reach of our manipulation.

The exhibition explored paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the capacities and ethical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets, materials, the image and information.

We need to evolve a global society that has the capacity to direct and control the emerging forces in order to achieve the most positive outcome.

We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything what will we do?"

For many of us, design is invisible. We live in a world that is so thoroughly configured by human effort that design has become second nature, ever-present, inevitable, taken for granted.

And yet, the power of design to transform and affect every aspect of daily life is gaining widespread public awareness.

No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes.

The exhibition mapped the new capacity, power and promise of design.

The exhibition unfolded in a series of eleven general themes , or economies, that addressed the fundamental role of design in all aspects of human life, from manufacturing and transportation to health and the military:

urban, information, transportation, energy, images, markets, materials, manufacturing, military, health, wealth and politics

Each area was filled with objects, images and displays designed to educate, enlighten or even provoke debate among visitors.

LINK TO QTVR >>

Part 2:

Who is Dan Pink?

Dan Pink is an independent business consultant, he's advised start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies on recruiting, business trends, and work practices.

Dan served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore.

He's also worked as: an aide to U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich, an economic policy staffer in the U.S. Senate, a legal researcher in India

Who is Dan Pink?

Dan Pink graduated from Northwestern University and Yale Law School

He has written on business and technology for The New York Times, The New Republic, George, Washington Monthly, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Wired magazine.

In addition, he frequently contributes commentary and book reviews to Public Radio International's "Marketplace" program

Dan's first book, Free Agent Nation, about the growing ranks of people who work for themselves, was a Washington Post nonfiction bestseller and business bestseller in the U.S. and Canada.

Publishers Weekly says the book "has become a cornerstone of employee-management relations."

Dan Pink is the author of two influential business books.

His latest book, “A Whole New Mind”, charts the rise of right-brain thinking in modern economies and explains the six abilities individuals and organizations must master in an outsourced and automated world.

Several publications named it one of the best business books of the year. A Whole New Mind has sold more than 100,000 copies in the U.S. and has been translated into 12 languages.

In this section, I will focus on his new book: “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future - Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age”

The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities - inventiveness, empathy, meaning - predominate.

That's the argument at the center of his new book, which uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.

Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age

Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion

Dan Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes to excel.

A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend, and includes a series of hands-on exercises culled from experts around the world to help readers sharpen the necessary abilities.

This book will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well.

Dan Pink argues:

“ Design is a high-concept aptitude that is difficult to outsource or automate - and that increasingly confers a competitive advantage in business.”

This may explain why corporate recruiters from companies like General Motors or McKinsey & Co. are heading to top arts grad schools in search of talent.

“ The MFA is the new MBA,” writes Pink.

Thus business schools are changing the way they do business.

Part 3:

“ In a global economy, elegant design is becoming a critical competitive advantage. The trouble is, most business people don't think like designers.”

The Rotman School sees great value in the designer's approach to solving problems – the integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business.

Dean Roger Martin has said that “we are on the cusp of a design revolution in business,” and as a result, “today's business people don't need to understand designers better, they need to become designers.”

Design is one of the hottest topics in the business arena in recent years, dubbed “ the new driver of innovation and the new competitive weapon” .

In 2006, the World Economic Forum featured a roster of programs on the value of design as a means of unlocking breakthrough ideas (including three sessions led by Rotman Dean Roger Martin.)

If everyone could get in on what the world’s leading innovators are discovering, we’d see more value and less waste – of energy, time and money.

But before design can impact human and economic value to its fullest potential, it must be translated into an accessible, ‘do-able’ program.

Those who are intrigued by design need to be able to grasp its core notions and begin to put its principles and practices into play, with a long-term conviction to shifting their culture by driving the philosophy throughout the entire organization.

Whether your goal is to develop new products or services, a new way of marketing to your customer, or to reinvent your entire business model, ‘design thinking’ holds valuable clues as to how to get to bigger ideas, faster and more efficiently.

And while there are many methods for fueling innovation, the principles and practices behind design are so intuitive and have such a pedigree of success, their value is undeniable.

Design's powerful impact on business strategy will require a whole new way of thinking.

Martin asserts that traditional companies "reward two types of logic: inductive (proving that something actually operates) and deductive (proving that something must be).”

Designers combine inductive and deductive reasoning to create a fresh approach -- abductive thinking -- which Martin defines as "suggesting that something may be and reaching out to explore it.“

Instead of acting on what's certain, designers bet on what's probable. Companies such as Apple act like design shops by saying, "If everything must be proven, we'll never make the likes of an iPod."

Martin believes that business schools are also out of position for the emerging design-based economy. In his view, even the degree -- a master's of business administration -- is problematic.

"We're telling students that the big bucks are made by administering linear improvements -- getting better and better at doing essentially the same thing," he says. "But the real challenge lies in getting better and better at a different thing: devising clever solutions to wickedly difficult problems."

That view has led Martin and a handful of other pioneers to lead a groundbreaking effort to redesign business education itself:

In a first step, Rotman has allied with the Ontario College of Art & Design to launch a series of joint courses.

The Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design recently launched a nine-month-long executive master's degree program in design methods.

Stanford University has committed $35 million to launch its “d.school”, where people from large companies and startups alike will come to learn design thinking.

“ We want to produce T-shaped thinkers,” says David Kelley, the chairman of Ideo and founder of the d.school. “That means combining analytical thinking -- the vertical leg of the T -- with horizontal thinking: intuitive, experimental, and empathetic.”

Design Thinking at Stanford University

Summary Jeffrey Huang on Design Thinking and Business

Jeffrey Huang is the Director of the Media and Design Laboratory and a Professor at the Faculty of Computer and Communications Sciences, and at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The EPFL is in the heart of Europe and is considered to be one of Europe's leading institutions of science and technology.

His research focuses on the intersection of architecture and information systems.

He is a Swiss citizen of Chinese origins, and received a doctoral degree in design from Harvard

Summary Jeffrey Huang on Design Thinking and Business – video

Sources

Jeffrey Huang The Swisshouse : An Inhabitable Interface for Connecting Nations, Huang, J., and Waldvogel, M., In Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques, Cambridge, MA, USA, August 1-4, 2004; ACM 2004; 195-204.

Future Space: A New Blueprint for Business Architecture, Huang, J., Harvard Business Review (April 2001); Volume 7, Number 4, 2001; pp. 149-161.

How Do Distributed Design Organizations Act Together To Create A Meaningful Design?, Huang, J., In Computers in Buildings: Proceedings of CAAD Futures '99, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, Netherlands.

Bruce Mau – Massive Change Exhibition: http://www.massivechange.com

When MBA Meets Designer - A GE manager learns to think creatively: INSEAD graduate Sameer Agrawal shares his story: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_41/b4004407.htm

Business Week - The Empathy Economy "Design thinking" can create rewarding experiences for consumers -- the key to earnings growth and an edge that outsourcing can't beat: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2005/nf2005037_4086.htm

Business Week - The Talent Hunt - Desperate to innovate, companies are turning to design schools for nimble, creative thinkers: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_41/b4004401.htm

MIT World - Innovation Through Design Thinking: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/357/

Stanford D School: http:// www.stanford.edu/group/dschool /

Fast Company: The Business of Design - In an economy where style is king, we all need to start thinking and acting more like design: http://fastcompany.com/magazine/93/design.html

iDesign - Seven Ways of Design Thinking - by Dr. Charles Burnette: http:// www.idesignthinking.com/main.html

Red Hat Magazine - Intro. To Design Thinking: Intro to design thinking

Engineering Design Thinking Teaching and Learning (from departments of mechanical engineering at some of the top universities in the US) http://www.asee.org/publications/jee/upload/SamplePages_103-120.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design

Sources

Canadian Business Dean of Design (November 6-19, 2006)

Fast Company Tough Love: Business Wants to Love Design, But It's an Awkward Romance by Roger Martin (October 2006) The Business of Design (March 2005) Masters of Design (June 2004)

BusinessWeek Special Report: Get Creative! Meet the Innovation Gurus: The Academic: Roger Martin (August 1, 2005) BusinessWeek Online's Innovation and Design Channel Is Reality the Enemy of Innovation? (December 4, 2006) At the Crossroads of Design and Business (July 31, 2006) Designing in Hostile Territory by Roger Martin (Nov.17, 2005) Reliability vs. Validity by Roger Martin (Sept.29, 2005) Why Decisions Need Design, Part 1 by Roger Martin (Aug.30, 2005) Why Decisions Need Design, Part 2 by Roger Martin (Sept.1, 2005) Creativity That Goes Deep by Roger Martin (August 3, 2005)

Globe and Mail Ad firms tout ‘design thinking (October 18, 2006)

Illinois Institute of Design Journal Designing Decisions: An Interview with Roger Martin (May 2006)

The Toronto Star Designing Original Business Thinkers (Sept.21, 2006)

National Post Designers’ point of view applied to business (October 19, 2006)

Contract Magazine Trends: Design Business (February 1, 2007)

Rotman Magazine Designing in Hostile Territory by Roger Martin (Spring 2006) Design Thinking vs. Design Doing by Heather Fraser (Spring 2006) Embedding Design Into Business by Roger Martin (Fall 2005) The Design of Business by Roger Martin(Winter 2004)