Prior to joining Stanford, Ferrell was a career journalist specialising in design and organisational change. He is the founding director of digital, mobile and new product design at The Washington Post, where he brought the first mobile designers and programmers into the traditional newsroom, and enabled multidisciplinary teams to create groundbreaking work. Also a visual storyteller, he designed the investigative series “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, as well as four other Pulitzer Prize finalists. Ferrell also serves on the board of Amplifier, a design lab that creates art and other media to amplify grassroots social movements. He is an advisor to Actual, a venture-backed digital marketplace for sustainable infrastructure investment; and Streetcode Academy, a nonprofit that equips a generation of communities of colour to address the diversity deficit in the technology industry.

1. DESIGN
THINKING
Accelerate Your Creative Potential

2. WIRED Magazine: “What innovation do you think is changing
the most lives in the developing world?”
“Human-centered design. Meeting people
where they are and really taking their needs
and feedback into account. When you let people
participate in the design process, you find that
they often have ingenious ideas about what
would really help them. And it’s not a one-time
thing; it’s an iterative process.”
Melinda Gates

3. radical collaboration
Aeronautics & Astronautics
Anthropology
Biology
Business
Civil and Enviro Engineering
Communication
Computer Science
Construction Engineering
Earth Systems
Education
Electrical Engineering
Energy & Resources
International Policy Studies
Journalism
Law
Learning, Design & Technology
Management Science
Materials Science
Mechanical Engineering
Medicine
Molecular and Cellular
Physiology
Music Science & Technology
Sociology
Sustainable Design
Symbolic Systems
INTERDISCIPLINARY

4. creative confidence

6. Rate of Disruption
Tracking “The Unicorns”

7. Rate of Disruption
Tracking “The Unicorns”

9. Example:
Problem-Framing
Discuss with a partner
and write it down.
5:00

10. creative problem-solving
=
incremental innovation

11. creative problem-finding
=
transformative innovation

12. What are some behavior changes you’re
seeing in your communities right now?
Discuss with a partner
and write it down.
5:00

13. What are some behavior changes you’re
seeing in your communities right now?
In your audiences? In your colleagues?
Discuss with a partner
and write it down.
5:00

14. CORE ADJACENT ASPIRATIONAL
DESIGNTHINKING | ENGAGINGNEWAUDIENCES
Mapping Communities
The word community means different things to different people — especially given the diverse
perspectives we each bring to this . You might focus on a specific age or socioeconomic status of
; a distinct geographic area; domains of influence; .
What are the communities your organization serves or aspires to serve?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Label your Core Community, Adjacent Community and Aspirational Community below:
WHY? WHY? WHY?
1. List the Communities You’re Currently Engaging With Below. Why are They Important to You?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Decide Which Community to Prioritize.
User Group: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Why? _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Who is Your Extreme User Within This Community?
Extreme User: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Extreme How? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4. Where Will You Find Them? When Will You Talk With Them?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DESIGNTHINKING | EMPATHYPLAN
Understanding Your Communities
What’s a challenge you’re facing with a community you serve?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Which community are you prioritizing? What do you hope to learn?

15. Takeways
Diversity is the core of creativity.

16. Takeways
The opportunity to work toward new products and
processes is not just a “nice to have” when things
are going well. It’s even more critical in times of
disruption, because the core business will erode
faster than in times of stability.
Yet often during chaotic times, our instinct is to
“stick with what we know.” Creative confidence
becomes creative leadership when you enable
self-efficacy in the people around you.

17. Takeways
Design thinking is one way of looking at an
increasingly complex future not with worry or
trepidation, but with optimism and opportunity.

18. Takeways
The way we frame the problem often determines
what we create. When working toward incremental
innovation, frame the problem around the solution.
When working toward transformational innovation,
frame the problem around the behavior you’re
trying to encourage.
Then ask yourself, whose behavior? That’s who you
engage with as you start your empathy work.

19. THANK YOU
jferrell@dschool.stanford.edu