The document discusses how design thinking and futures thinking methodologies can be combined to create more future-proof products and services. While design thinking focuses on solving current problems, futures thinking involves envisioning potential future scenarios to better prepare for uncertainties. The author proposes integrating some futures thinking exercises, like looking at past trends and signals of change, into the design thinking process to generate ideas that will remain relevant as user needs evolve over time. This blended approach could result in designing offerings with longer-lasting relationships with users.
Innovation and Futures Thinking - Are you Leading or Following? Jane Vita
How can foresight and Futures Thinking Methodologies help on the Design of a successful and future-proof product or service? What are trends, scenarios or Black Swans? This presentation was given at Interaction South America as part of a workshop about the usage of trends and Lean Service Creation for service innovation and creation.
The workshop is on its fourth edition and this time Ricardo Brito and Paul Houghton, my colleagues from Futurice, conducted the workshop and improved the material. I hope you enjoy!!
A co-creation with Ricardo Brito, at Futurice.
The document provides an overview of artificial intelligence (AI) including its history, approaches, tools, and applications. It discusses early concepts of artificial beings in myths and how AI has been explored through cybernetics, brain simulation, symbolic approaches, statistical methods, and intelligent agent paradigms. Key problems in AI like search, heuristics, logic, and uncertainty are summarized. The document also reviews successes in games, robotics, and question answering systems to demonstrate progress in AI.
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from design methods to meet user needs and business goals. It emphasizes starting with the user, generating many ideas through divergence and convergence, and iteratively testing prototypes to learn quickly what to build. The goal is to translate observations into insights that improve lives. Design thinking changes how design is used by focusing on understanding people and culture rather than making products attractive. It is a process that includes empathizing with users, defining their needs, ideating many solutions, and prototyping and testing ideas.
Talk on the importance of Service Design Thinking, how Design and business have evolved to embrace Service Design Thinking, as well as an overview of Service Design Thinking process and key artifacts.
From insight to idea, to implementation.
Design Thinking helps us create value-driven innovation.
Lean UX secures success through testing and iterations.
These key ingredients make up a winning combination.
Lillian Ayla Ersoy, BEKK
Design sprints at Google are used to develop innovative solutions and products in 5 days or less. They involve brainstorming, prototyping, user research and other activities. The outputs vary but can include designs, prototypes, requirements and preliminary products. Anyone can participate in a sprint including designers, researchers, managers and more. A mock sprint was demonstrated covering key aspects like defining goals, generating ideas, selecting the best concepts, prototyping, and communicating outcomes.
Innovation and Futures Thinking - Are you Leading or Following? Jane Vita
How can foresight and Futures Thinking Methodologies help on the Design of a successful and future-proof product or service? What are trends, scenarios or Black Swans? This presentation was given at Interaction South America as part of a workshop about the usage of trends and Lean Service Creation for service innovation and creation.
The workshop is on its fourth edition and this time Ricardo Brito and Paul Houghton, my colleagues from Futurice, conducted the workshop and improved the material. I hope you enjoy!!
A co-creation with Ricardo Brito, at Futurice.
The document provides an overview of artificial intelligence (AI) including its history, approaches, tools, and applications. It discusses early concepts of artificial beings in myths and how AI has been explored through cybernetics, brain simulation, symbolic approaches, statistical methods, and intelligent agent paradigms. Key problems in AI like search, heuristics, logic, and uncertainty are summarized. The document also reviews successes in games, robotics, and question answering systems to demonstrate progress in AI.
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from design methods to meet user needs and business goals. It emphasizes starting with the user, generating many ideas through divergence and convergence, and iteratively testing prototypes to learn quickly what to build. The goal is to translate observations into insights that improve lives. Design thinking changes how design is used by focusing on understanding people and culture rather than making products attractive. It is a process that includes empathizing with users, defining their needs, ideating many solutions, and prototyping and testing ideas.
Talk on the importance of Service Design Thinking, how Design and business have evolved to embrace Service Design Thinking, as well as an overview of Service Design Thinking process and key artifacts.
From insight to idea, to implementation.
Design Thinking helps us create value-driven innovation.
Lean UX secures success through testing and iterations.
These key ingredients make up a winning combination.
Lillian Ayla Ersoy, BEKK
Design sprints at Google are used to develop innovative solutions and products in 5 days or less. They involve brainstorming, prototyping, user research and other activities. The outputs vary but can include designs, prototypes, requirements and preliminary products. Anyone can participate in a sprint including designers, researchers, managers and more. A mock sprint was demonstrated covering key aspects like defining goals, generating ideas, selecting the best concepts, prototyping, and communicating outcomes.
Design thinking is a process that uses four foundational practices: empathy, ethnography, abductive thinking, and iterative user testing. It involves comprehending user needs through observation and testing prototypes with users to iteratively design solutions that are user-centered. The stages of design thinking are comprehension, definition, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation.
Don't focus on technology and features. Heck, don't focus on the "product." Focus on the experience you want to create, and build a system that gets you there.
The audio is from my talk at http://2007.dconstruct.org/.
Jake Truemper and Morgan Noel from XperienceLab discuss Human-Centered Design. What is it? How is it applied? and what are some tools and methods that the audience can take away and apply in their own businesses?
This document provides an excerpt from slides for a 2-3 day professional training on design thinking and innovation management. The slides cover the basics of design thinking, including its origins and nature, how it is portrayed in the media, and how it relates to strategic thinking. Design thinking is presented as a way to take an outside-in perspective focused on customer needs and experiences to drive value creation and innovation. The training is intended to help participants better understand design thinking and apply it to innovating without unrealistic expectations. The facilitator also provides strategy advisory and training on other topics beyond design thinking.
This document discusses various aspects of user experience (UX) design including visual design, system design, branding, customer service, packaging, product unboxing, and how human emotion determines UX. It provides techniques for UX design such as using humor, recognizing patterns, engagement, communication, and building relationships. It also covers ergonomics guidelines for UX like consistency, simplicity, feedback, attention, and modality. The document examines the influence of design on UX and discusses simplifying interactions through minimalism and asking questions about users. Finally, it discusses gamifying interactions and experience to influence human habits.
A summary of the basic principles of design thinking, human centered innovation and its application to strategy. Created by Natalie Nixon of Figure 8 Thinking.
Design Thinking - 101 Building EmpathySara Fortier
This document outlines an agenda for a design thinking masterclass on building empathy. It includes introductions, an overview of design thinking concepts, and exercises for building empathy through ecosystem mapping, interviews, break-up letters, and finding insights. The goal is for students to practice empathy building techniques to better understand problems from a human perspective in order to ideate solutions. Students will work through scenarios and discuss needs and pain points to develop insights that can be used to innovate in future classes. Resources on design thinking and human-centered design are provided.
[Agile Trends 2019] UX Research & Dual TrackFlavio Nazario
O documento discute a abordagem dual track para times de pesquisa UX, onde há duas vias paralelas de descoberta e entrega. Apresenta técnicas de pesquisa qualitativas e quantitativas, além de exemplos de pesquisas contínuas que funcionam bem no modelo dual track, como entrevistas, diários de uso e testes de usabilidade.
PDF, audio, and voiceover are now available on designintechreport.wordpress.com
Today’s most beloved technology products and services balance design and engineering in a way that perfectly blends form and function. Businesses started by designers have created billions of dollars of value, are raising billions in capital, and VC firms increasingly see the importance of design. The third annual Design in Tech Report examines how design trends are revolutionizing the entrepreneurial and corporate ecosystems in tech. This report covers related M&A activity, new patterns in creativity × business, and the rise of computational design.
GenerativeAI and Automation - IEEE ACSOS 2023.pptxAllen Chan
Generative AI has been rapidly evolving, enabling different and more sophisticated interactions with Large Language Models (LLMs) like those available in IBM watsonx.ai or Meta Llama2. In this session, we will take a use case based approach to look at how we can leverage LLMs together with existing automation technologies like Workflow, Content Management, and Decisions to enable new solutions.
Game changing AI Startups need great AI system. Learn the basic concepts and importance of AI to change the way you build a Startup. Its time to identify and develop skill sets to make better decisions.
Accelerate #AI workloads with Tesla V100 on #E2ECloud : http://bit.ly/E2EGPU
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that relies on three main principles: empathy, collaboration, and experimentation. It involves understanding user needs through discovery, developing ideas through interpretation and ideation, and making ideas a reality through prototyping and experimentation. The process is non-linear and involves divergent and convergent thinking. Key tools used in design thinking include observation, interviews, storyboarding, paper prototyping, and other methods of understanding user needs and testing potential solutions.
Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving that involves empathizing with users, defining the problem from their perspective, ideating potential solutions, prototyping ideas, and testing them with users. The process helped Airbnb transform by having employees experience being travelers and capture quality photos for hosts. They experimented with small, non-scalable changes like switching from stars to hearts for ratings, which increased engagement by over 30%.
The document discusses how generative AI can be used to scale content operations by reducing the time it takes to generate content. It explains that generative AI learns from natural language models and can generate new text or ideas based on prompts provided by users. While generative AI has benefits like speeding up content creation and ideation, it also has limitations such as not being able to conduct original research or ensure quality. The document provides examples of how generative AI can be used for tasks like generating ideas, simplifying complex text, creating visuals, and more. It also discusses challenges like bias in AI models and the low risk of plagiarism.
Today, I will be presenting on the topic of
"Generative AI, responsible innovation, and the law."
Artificial Intelligence has been making rapid strides in recent years,
and its applications are becoming increasingly diverse.
Generative AI, in particular, has emerged as a promising area of innovation, the potential to create highly realistic and compelling outputs.
Personas Bootcamp - Where Product Meets User NeedsMauricio Perez
The document outlines a 1.5 hour bootcamp on personas. It will cover what personas are, why they are used, how to create them, analyzing research data, and using personas effectively. Attendees will learn about creating personas through field research interviews and exercises in affinity mapping, persona creation, and scenario illustration. The goal is to help participants develop empathy for target users by representing them as personas in order to design with the user's needs and goals in mind.
Track 09 - New publishing and scientific communication ways:
Electronic edition, digital educational resources
Authors: Ana Catarina Silva and Maria Manuel Borges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdQkqUYROo&list=PLboNOuyyzZ86iI_x9SRTfV1KlSRX9DcEc&index=5
Design thinking is a process that uses four foundational practices: empathy, ethnography, abductive thinking, and iterative user testing. It involves comprehending user needs through observation and testing prototypes with users to iteratively design solutions that are user-centered. The stages of design thinking are comprehension, definition, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation.
Don't focus on technology and features. Heck, don't focus on the "product." Focus on the experience you want to create, and build a system that gets you there.
The audio is from my talk at http://2007.dconstruct.org/.
Jake Truemper and Morgan Noel from XperienceLab discuss Human-Centered Design. What is it? How is it applied? and what are some tools and methods that the audience can take away and apply in their own businesses?
This document provides an excerpt from slides for a 2-3 day professional training on design thinking and innovation management. The slides cover the basics of design thinking, including its origins and nature, how it is portrayed in the media, and how it relates to strategic thinking. Design thinking is presented as a way to take an outside-in perspective focused on customer needs and experiences to drive value creation and innovation. The training is intended to help participants better understand design thinking and apply it to innovating without unrealistic expectations. The facilitator also provides strategy advisory and training on other topics beyond design thinking.
This document discusses various aspects of user experience (UX) design including visual design, system design, branding, customer service, packaging, product unboxing, and how human emotion determines UX. It provides techniques for UX design such as using humor, recognizing patterns, engagement, communication, and building relationships. It also covers ergonomics guidelines for UX like consistency, simplicity, feedback, attention, and modality. The document examines the influence of design on UX and discusses simplifying interactions through minimalism and asking questions about users. Finally, it discusses gamifying interactions and experience to influence human habits.
A summary of the basic principles of design thinking, human centered innovation and its application to strategy. Created by Natalie Nixon of Figure 8 Thinking.
Design Thinking - 101 Building EmpathySara Fortier
This document outlines an agenda for a design thinking masterclass on building empathy. It includes introductions, an overview of design thinking concepts, and exercises for building empathy through ecosystem mapping, interviews, break-up letters, and finding insights. The goal is for students to practice empathy building techniques to better understand problems from a human perspective in order to ideate solutions. Students will work through scenarios and discuss needs and pain points to develop insights that can be used to innovate in future classes. Resources on design thinking and human-centered design are provided.
[Agile Trends 2019] UX Research & Dual TrackFlavio Nazario
O documento discute a abordagem dual track para times de pesquisa UX, onde há duas vias paralelas de descoberta e entrega. Apresenta técnicas de pesquisa qualitativas e quantitativas, além de exemplos de pesquisas contínuas que funcionam bem no modelo dual track, como entrevistas, diários de uso e testes de usabilidade.
PDF, audio, and voiceover are now available on designintechreport.wordpress.com
Today’s most beloved technology products and services balance design and engineering in a way that perfectly blends form and function. Businesses started by designers have created billions of dollars of value, are raising billions in capital, and VC firms increasingly see the importance of design. The third annual Design in Tech Report examines how design trends are revolutionizing the entrepreneurial and corporate ecosystems in tech. This report covers related M&A activity, new patterns in creativity × business, and the rise of computational design.
GenerativeAI and Automation - IEEE ACSOS 2023.pptxAllen Chan
Generative AI has been rapidly evolving, enabling different and more sophisticated interactions with Large Language Models (LLMs) like those available in IBM watsonx.ai or Meta Llama2. In this session, we will take a use case based approach to look at how we can leverage LLMs together with existing automation technologies like Workflow, Content Management, and Decisions to enable new solutions.
Game changing AI Startups need great AI system. Learn the basic concepts and importance of AI to change the way you build a Startup. Its time to identify and develop skill sets to make better decisions.
Accelerate #AI workloads with Tesla V100 on #E2ECloud : http://bit.ly/E2EGPU
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that relies on three main principles: empathy, collaboration, and experimentation. It involves understanding user needs through discovery, developing ideas through interpretation and ideation, and making ideas a reality through prototyping and experimentation. The process is non-linear and involves divergent and convergent thinking. Key tools used in design thinking include observation, interviews, storyboarding, paper prototyping, and other methods of understanding user needs and testing potential solutions.
Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving that involves empathizing with users, defining the problem from their perspective, ideating potential solutions, prototyping ideas, and testing them with users. The process helped Airbnb transform by having employees experience being travelers and capture quality photos for hosts. They experimented with small, non-scalable changes like switching from stars to hearts for ratings, which increased engagement by over 30%.
The document discusses how generative AI can be used to scale content operations by reducing the time it takes to generate content. It explains that generative AI learns from natural language models and can generate new text or ideas based on prompts provided by users. While generative AI has benefits like speeding up content creation and ideation, it also has limitations such as not being able to conduct original research or ensure quality. The document provides examples of how generative AI can be used for tasks like generating ideas, simplifying complex text, creating visuals, and more. It also discusses challenges like bias in AI models and the low risk of plagiarism.
Today, I will be presenting on the topic of
"Generative AI, responsible innovation, and the law."
Artificial Intelligence has been making rapid strides in recent years,
and its applications are becoming increasingly diverse.
Generative AI, in particular, has emerged as a promising area of innovation, the potential to create highly realistic and compelling outputs.
Personas Bootcamp - Where Product Meets User NeedsMauricio Perez
The document outlines a 1.5 hour bootcamp on personas. It will cover what personas are, why they are used, how to create them, analyzing research data, and using personas effectively. Attendees will learn about creating personas through field research interviews and exercises in affinity mapping, persona creation, and scenario illustration. The goal is to help participants develop empathy for target users by representing them as personas in order to design with the user's needs and goals in mind.
Track 09 - New publishing and scientific communication ways:
Electronic edition, digital educational resources
Authors: Ana Catarina Silva and Maria Manuel Borges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdQkqUYROo&list=PLboNOuyyzZ86iI_x9SRTfV1KlSRX9DcEc&index=5
Richard Marsh, Enterprising User Experience - Flex and the cityRichard Marsh
This document summarizes Richard Marsh's presentation on improving software design through user experience. The presentation defines user experience and discusses it as a practice. It notes that understanding user behaviors, needs, and goals is important for defining problems before designing solutions. The presentation also addresses challenges of enterprise user experience projects and emphasizes collaboration between teams. It provides rules for an effective user experience approach and recommends links for further information.
Malini is a PhD student researching plant genomics who joined a research institute 6 years ago. While she has taken longer than usual to complete her PhD due to her tenacity and passion for her work, she is hopeful to finish this year or next. She feels constrained by insensitive university standards but knows she must persist. After graduating, she hopes to find stable employment as a scientist but her real passion is to be an entrepreneur. The problem presented is how to help Malini build appropriate connections for a successful career as an entrepreneur.
What if we had a method we could use with clients to better understand their stakeholder landscape and that would help us do more effective UX work? What if it was more like a consulting method instead of a design deliverable? Could that help us choose research, design and evaluation methods more effectively so we could have more impact on our projects?
Design Thinking for Managers - Presentationranganayaki10
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving that involves understanding user needs through methods like empathy and observation. It defines problems from the user's perspective then generates creative solutions. Key aspects include empathizing with users through interviews and observation to define problems, ideating multiple solutions, and prototyping and testing ideas with users in an iterative process. This document outlines the design thinking process and common methods used at each stage to develop solutions that meet user needs.
Requirements Engineering for the HumanitiesShawn Day
This workshop explores how requirements engineering can be employed by digital and non-digital humanities scholars (and others) to conceptualise and communicate a research project.
requirementsEngineeringAs the field of digital humanities has evolved, one of the biggest challenges has been getting the marrying technical expertise with humanities scholarly practice to successfully deliver sustainable and sound digital projects. At its core this is a communications exercise. However, to communicate effectively demands an ability to effectively translate, define and find clarity in your own mind.
The document discusses a case study of promoting a new idea within a large organization. Specifically, it describes how the author advocated for introducing faceted search to Comcast's video browsing experience. The key steps taken were to first informally discuss the idea, then document the concept, seek executive sponsorship for further exploration, conduct user research through iterative testing, and communicate results. This gradual process helped the idea gain traction and led to Comcast eventually implementing faceted search capabilities on their websites.
Design thinking is a process that focuses on empathy, collaboration, and experimentation to solve problems in a human-centered way. It begins with deep understanding of users' needs through observation and engagement to gain insights. Teams then work together to synthesize learnings and define the key issues to address. The process is iterative, testing ideas and getting feedback to develop better solutions. Design thinking provides optimism that positive change is possible through a creative approach.
Bootstrapping the Information Architecture (Italian IA Summit)Peter Boersma
When I design, it is in the early stages of an interactive system’s life. There are no widgets to place on screens, or menus to collapse or expand. No wireframes, no screen flows, no accessibility or SEO issues. No search, no controlled vocabulary, no settings screens or personalisation options to design. In short: the project needs to be bootstrapped.
I am involved when a lot of things need to be explored and modelled; the scope and environment of the system, the core concepts that make up its parts, their relationships and their names. So what do we produce in that stage? Mostly so-called concept diagrams.
In this talk, I explain what concept diagrams are, referencing other people’s experiences as well as my own, and how they are useful when a design needs to be bootstrapped. I show how I have used variations of them in recent assignments for KLM and the City of Amsterdam, among others. I will try to convince you that you should create one for each and every situation that needs bootstrapping.
Prototyping Images of the Future _ Austin Design Week '18Adam Zeiner
This is the presentation deck used during Prototyping Images of the Future, an introduction to the nascent discipline of Speculative Design, explored in the context of an informal, participatory workshop employing the Ethnographic Experiential Futures approach to Foresight.
This document provides an overview of an innovation strategies magazine. It includes interviews on topics like UX design, learning and development innovation, and futurist thinking. The editor's letter discusses common mistakes in innovating and how the magazine will address some of the top challenges people face. The magazine also features articles on content marketing, hackathons, perception and differentiation. It aims to help readers become more innovative through insights from experts and analyzing current issues in the field.
Critical Hit! The importance of critique and how to effectively integrate it ...jpmcardle
- Critique is an important part of the design process that allows teams to observe problems, orient perspectives, decide on solutions, and act quickly through feedback, similar to the OODA loop framework.
- Early and frequent critique improves ideas through iteration and helps teams adapt faster than competitors. It should involve diverse viewpoints from inside and outside the design team.
- Benefits of critique include quicker reaction to challenges, competitive advantage by identifying problems faster, and avoiding failed projects by continually improving the design process and craft.
The Right Research Method For Any Problem (And Budget)Leah Buley
The mighty user research toolkit is packed with techniques. It can do everything from blue sky innovation research, to need-finding and requirements gathering, to product validation and testing. But many teams don't exploit the full toolkit, sticking instead to one side or the other of the quant versus qual divide, or returning again and again to that tired old workhorse—usability testing. This presentation is a primer on the range of research methods available, and a guide for determining which is the best technique for what you’re trying to learn now (and for your budget).
The document summarizes a workshop that used design thinking methods to brainstorm new ideas for education systems. In 70 minutes, participants worked in teams to identify challenges in education and developed prototypes for potential solutions. While many ideas were generated, the document notes that the group did not fully consider disruptive possibilities or recognize potential "black swan" events that could transform education. Next steps proposed include further developing the most promising ideas and exploring truly disruptive concepts like peer-to-peer learning without traditional schools.
121203CREATION & CO: USER PARTICIPATION IN DESIGNYuichi Hirose
The document discusses changes in the roles of designers, users, and clients in the design process. Traditionally, these roles were separated but they are now blending together through practices like co-creation and co-design. Users are becoming more involved in the design process by providing input, feedback, and even generating their own solutions. Designers are taking on more collaborative roles as facilitators. The relationships between all parties are opening up through methods like context mapping, where users share their experiences to inform the design process. While many industries recognize the need for changed roles, implementing user participation remains a challenge, particularly for larger companies.
The document provides an overview of Design Thinking and how it can be applied in an Agile/Lean environment. It discusses how Design Thinking focuses on understanding user needs and solving problems through a continuous cycle of observing users, reflecting on insights, and making prototypes to derive new ideas. The document outlines how managers can focus on user outcomes and how team members can build empathy with users. It emphasizes that making prototypes early allows teams to validate ideas quickly and that reflecting regularly helps teams stay aligned on their goals of solving user problems.
Where to focus event innovation? - An audience led approachLive Union
Presented by Live Union at Tech Fest in July 2013. In the face of so much new event technology and format deign, this presentation is designed to help event professionals identify where to focus their innovation.
Design Thinking for Aviation Safety by Dr. Benjamin GoodheartRodrigo Narcizo
Article by Dr. Benjamin Goodheart for Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2016
Original link: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59023408197aea7f140106fe/t/5944289a725e25b9d8ec6cd8/1497639069346/Design+thinking+for+aviation+safety.pdf
Similar to The fourth way: design thinking meets futures thinking | anna roumiantseva | pulse | linked in (20)
Rethinking Kållered │ From Big Box to a Reuse Hub: A Transformation Journey ...SirmaDuztepeliler
"Rethinking Kållered │ From Big Box to a Reuse Hub: A Transformation Journey Toward Sustainability"
The booklet of my master’s thesis at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology. (Gothenburg, Sweden)
This thesis explores the transformation of the vacated (2023) IKEA store in Kållered, Sweden, into a "Reuse Hub" addressing various user types. The project aims to create a model for circular and sustainable economic practices that promote resource efficiency, waste reduction, and a shift in societal overconsumption patterns.
Reuse, though crucial in the circular economy, is one of the least studied areas. Most materials with reuse potential, especially in the construction sector, are recycled (downcycled), causing a greater loss of resources and energy. My project addresses barriers to reuse, such as difficult access to materials, storage, and logistics issues.
Aims:
• Enhancing Access to Reclaimed Materials: Creating a hub for reclaimed construction materials for both institutional and individual needs.
• Promoting Circular Economy: Showcasing the potential and variety of reusable materials and how they can drive a circular economy.
• Fostering Community Engagement: Developing spaces for social interaction around reuse-focused stores and workshops.
• Raising Awareness: Transforming a former consumerist symbol into a center for circular practices.
Highlights:
• The project emphasizes cross-sector collaboration with producers and wholesalers to repurpose surplus materials before they enter the recycling phase.
• This project can serve as a prototype for reusing many idle commercial buildings in different scales and sizes.
• The findings indicate that transforming large vacant properties can support sustainable practices and present an economically attractive business model with high social returns at the same time.
• It highlights the potential of how sustainable practices in the construction sector can drive societal change.
RPWORLD offers custom injection molding service to help customers develop products ramping up from prototypeing to end-use production. We can deliver your on-demand parts in as fast as 7 days.
The fourth way: design thinking meets futures thinking | anna roumiantseva | pulse | linked in
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The Fourth Way: Design Thinking Meets
Futures Thinking
Published on October 19, 2016
(in collaboration with Dave Weissburg at Fidelity Labs)
They say “hindsight is 20/20”. If only you knew then what you know now, you would
have sold that stock, ended that relationship, or taken that job offer in a snap. Of course
the tricky part is being able to make those decisions in the present, but how do you do
that without knowing what’s lurking around the corner? I want to argue that by making
Futures Thinking a standard part of your thought process – both in your business and
personal lives – you’ll be able to make better decisions in the face of uncertainty.
As a design strategist, I have helped design dozens of products and services. The
process is always pretty similar – we invest a lot of time upfront to understand our
users, generate insights about their needs, create and test a wide range of solutions to
satisfy those needs, and then build a business model to bring the winning one(s) to
market. It’s a process that is extremely well-suited to do what it was intended to do –
creatively solve problems that our audience is facing today in a user-centric way.
However, it doesn’t take into account that our users are evolving every day – much like
you and I. I never thought twice about this until I did a project in partnership with the
Institute for the Future this past summer and learned their Futures Thinking
methodology. Rather than trying to predict the future, their methods help you create
multiple possible scenarios for what the future might look like. They call it forecasting.
As a result, like a weather forecast, you are able to prepare for a broad range of likely
things on the horizon and take advantage of impactful opportunities while minimizing
surprises. So how do Futures Thinking and Design Thinking compare and perhaps
complement each other? And how can we use the two in tandem to get to better
outcomes?
The two processes have some stark differences:
1.) The mix of diverging and converging: While both processes require a series of
diverging and converging steps, Design Thinking ultimately converges to a
Anna Roumiantseva
Design Strategist & MBA Candidate at UC Berkeley Haas
Following
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concrete concept that is tested, finalized, and brought to market. Futures Thinking,
on the other hand, yields a series of scenarios, which are meant to illustrate
multiple options for what the future might be without defining an exact prediction.
We can then design product concepts for any one of these future scenarios,
meaning that the end-point of the Futures Thinking process can be seen as the
starting point for the Design Thinking process – one can feed into the other.
2.) The goals and mindsets, which lead to very different outputs: Design Thinking
aims to inspire us to create. The goals are products, services, and experiences for
today’s world. It helps get to this goal and deal with its inherent ambiguity by
relying on a mindset of optimistic confidence that we will ultimately get to the
desired outcome. Futures Thinking, on the other hand, aims to inspire. The goal is
to think bigger about opportunities we may (or may not) have in the coming
years. It aims to inform organizational strategy for tomorrow and make it more
robust for the uncertainty that lies ahead. At its core, the process embraces the
inherent uncertainty that comes with this, fostering a mindset of pragmatic
humility.
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3.) The timeline: Design Thinking focuses on creating for today’s world and the
immediate future. As a result, the inspiration stage is usually focused on
investigating the present and the immediate past only (a few years back). Futures
Thinking aims to illuminate possibilities 10-15 years down the road. As a result, it
requires us to look 10-15 years back in time to understand history in order to be
able to trace the trajectory of what the implications of the past might be on the
future.
4.) The system: Design Thinking, given its more immediate nature, generally only
focuses on the more immediate factors relevant to the organization today – the
people we’re designing for, our technological constraints, and our business needs.
Given its more long-term nature, Futures Thinking embraces a much more
systemic approach. On top of looking at the factors immediately relevant to
today’s organizational context, it takes into account greater macro factors that
may shape the organizational context in the coming years.
However, Futures Thinking also has some undeniable similarities to the Design
Thinking.
1.) Inspirational Edges: Both processes look to the fringes as a source of
inspiration. In Design Thinking this is done by looking at lead and lag users to
expose user needs and analogous systems to show opportunity areas. In Futures
Thinking this is done by looking at weak signals of change observed in today’s
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world and extrapolating what they might become in ten to fifteen years.
2.) People and Experiences: Both processes rely on personas and prototypes to
bring abstract concepts to life. In Design Thinking this helps make user needs and
product ideas tangible – this helps potential users react to concepts and provide
useful feedback. In Futures Thinking this helps make abstract scenarios for what
life might be like in the future tangible by putting real items from those worlds in
front of business stakeholders.
We could discuss these (and other) similarities and differences for days, but the point is
that both processes are valuable in their own right. One of my favorite quotes by Daniel
Egger states, “The present creates value so that the future can exist... and the future
offers a strategic north and new possible opportunities.” We need to be looking at both
to optimize for success and find the alignment between the present and the future.
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Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-believe-ina-differentinnovation-lab-
daniel-egger
The greater question for us as design practitioners, then, is: what do we do about all of
this? Can using Future Thinking in our design process benefit us? What will it help us
accomplish?
I think that the ultimate benefit of blending the two methodologies is to design products
that are more future-proof. Rather than designing something that today’s user will buy
today, it helps us better understand what that user might want and need in the future and
evolve with him/her. It’s kind of like starting a college savings plan for your newborn. It
helps design for longer-lasting relationships with our users – a relationship based on our
products and services rather than merely on our brand.
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So how do we do it? One option is to commit to Future Thinking and engage in it
regularly in parallel with our Design Thinking process – to always have an up-to-date
set of possible scenarios for what our future will be 10-15 years from now and align our
design initiatives with these visions. This is great, but we’re not all ready to take that
leap yet. So in the meantime we can borrow some exercises from the Futures Thinking
process and integrate them into our Design Thinking initiatives so start getting steeped
in the methodology.
o Looking Back to Look Forward: In Design Thinking we are guided heavily by
stories from our users – these are data points about the past. This Futures
Thinking exercise can help connect the data points to uncover trajectories. It can
help us understand users on a deeper level by seeing how their realities and
behaviors have evolved (and how they might continue to evolve). It prompts us to
ask questions like: What have been some of the most important trends in the
domain/industry we’re designing in and which of them have most affected our
user groups? How did these trends change user behaviors/preferences and what
were the drivers behind these trends? What might be the next step for these trends
if we were to extrapolate them into the future?
o Collecting and Clustering Signals: In Design Thinking look to “tail” users and
analogous systems for insights and inspiration. This Futures Thinking exercise can
help see how else we might look at what is happening at the “fringes” of our
organizational context (in areas that might seem irrelevant at first) to better
understand potential opportunity areas. It prompts us to ask questions like: What
are some of the most creative, exciting, unusual things happening in the world at
large today? What is driving these things to develop? Why are these interesting
and what implications might they have in the future? How might they apply to the
domain we’re designing in?
o Forecasting Two Curves: In Design Thinking we think about how insights from
extreme users can translate to more mainstream user groups. This Futures
Thinking exercise provides a structured approach to envision how seeds of change
from today’s fringes might make their way into the mainstream and how,
conversely, the elements from today’s mainstream might fall to obsolescence. It
prompts us to ask questions like: What innovations might stem from today’s
signals of change if/when they become mainstream? What needs to happen for the
shift to occur and what might the transition look like? What elements of the
domain we’re designing for & our user lives will be most transformed as a result?
Which parts of today’s mainstream will still be around and which will go away?
o Revealing Unexpected Possibilities: In Design Thinking we generate a lot of
observations, insights, and ideas throughout the divergent stages of the process.
This Futures Thinking exercise provides a new “mash-up” framework to help make
sense of these diverse elements and uncover new opportunity areas. It requires us
to generate a lot (at least 50-100) signals of change that you’re seeing in today’s
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Report this
world. These can be news stories, emerging startups, or anything else concrete
that you think might have implications for the future. It then prompts us to think
about what interesting opportunities could exist at the intersection of various
combinations of 2-3 of these signals. It prompts us to ask questions like: Which
insights do we find the most intriguing (even if they appear completely unrelated)?
What kinds of user needs could exist at the intersection of these insights if you
combined them? Which user needs seem to be the most critical? What kinds of new
products and experiences could exist to fill the intersection of these needs?
Futures Thinking can often seem nebulous and uncomfortable – much like Design
Thinking did back when you were less familiar with it. I hope that this overview peaked
your interest and made you see the value behind it. I also hope that it made you want to
explore how Future Thinking might make you a better designer and strategist. Finally, I
hope that this is just the beginning of a movement to bring the two disciplines closer
together over the coming years and the start of a conversation around how we do so.
Anna Roumiantseva
Design Strategist & MBA Candidate at UC Berkeley Haas
1 post
Leave your thoughts here…
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Jeff Champagne
Immersed Emerging Technologies Development Adviser
Brilliant and concise. Thank you for sharing this refreshing perspective on innovation and de-
sign strategy.
1d
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Jacques Barcia
Futurist at Dream Machine Futures Studio / Tech Trends Consultant at Porto Digital
Very cool, Anna. My own research goes the same direction. I beg to disagree with the futures
thinking diagram. Futures thinking and design thinking run parallel to each other. In a futures
project you diverge as much as in a design project looking first for signals (ok, the first step real-
ly is to frame the question, just as in design). A collection of signals can converge… See more
22h
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