This past week I was lucky enough to participate in a design thinking workshop. I had exposed to the methodologies before of empathizing, defining, exploring, and iterative prototyping but it was nonetheless still an engaging, fun activity.
Especially the fun part. Personally, that’s where I think design thinking really succeeds and shines. Aside from being a great process and tool for physical products design thinking really adds a much-needed jolt from routine processes in other fields. Take business for example, too often we’re buried underneath financial reports, cost analysis, and worn-down frameworks to even consider the end user. Design thinking, however, pushes us to step away from the sheets and just write down what we’re thinking regardless of the cost.
Reading the article by HBS about design thinking, it covers the famous design firm IDEO. I think the article it puts it well about how with design thinking IDEO is able to really get into the customer mindset and although it doesn’t mention this explicitly, design thinking also gives way to acceptable failures.
There’s a very famous example of this from IDEO where the firm had a tight deadline to reinvent the shopping cart. Within a short amount of time the firm came up with a novel but effective way to solve the issue – but if you look around shopping carts are still the same around in the US. The funny thing is, though, IDEO still comes out on top. IDEO’s employees pushed themselves to solve a problem that most of us would never think of and came up with a great idea. It just didn’t take off like sliced bread and that’s ok.
Too often, I think business majors are scared to break out of the mold and be bold. To try and risk failure. Perhaps it is because we are so cost minded, maybe it’s our economic base for classes that teach us everything has a price and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Whatever it is I do believe that design thinking brings back the creativity in problem-solving for many disciplines, not just business, and pushes us to be ok with failures because without failures no organization or person would ever grow.
In conclusion, I push those who want to learn more to start exploring what’s out there. Non University students have resources like the d.School’s online catalog of how to use their methods. For those at a school like Illinois, plenty of classes exist and even Lynda has great content for learning everything from design thinking to more specific subsets like UX/UI design. I do truly believe design thinking pushes the boundaries of other disciplines to be more creative, more bold, and more willing to learn from failures.
Hi Ian,
That was a great recap of what we covered in class for the week. I especially liked the notion that we shouldn’t constrain ourselves to what we have been taught, but to venture out into the unknown and embrace failure. That stood out to me because as students we are so accustomed to doing what we are told and only accepting success, but as we all know, we all learn from our mistakes and I think that’s what design thinking is. Considering how there are so many resources out there to teach this new topic, I think you mentioned a few good resources that I may have to check out soon.
Cheers!
Hi Ian,
Great post this week. I like how you mentioned you still found the workshop engaging despite already being familiar with many of the concepts we covered. I think that is what is so important about Design Thinking, it should never be “old” or “tired.” Designers constantly need to rethink their processes and ideas to be sure they are always on the right track. Another important takeaway from both the readings and the workshop was that failure is ok. Students especially are often too afraid to fail and will avoid taking risks, but with Design Thinking, failure just adds to your knowledge base and directs you in the right direction. With Design Thinking, failure does not have to be expensive. Prototypes and mockups can be crude and still serve their purpose. I also agree with your comment about business majors focusing too much on the bottom line and approach problems from only one direction. What do you think can be changed in the curriculum to promote a design thinking mindset?
Hey Ian,
I understand were you are coming from because often times as engineers we fail to understand the feelings,emotions and needs of the end user and engage ourselves in building a product without addressing the root cause. Design thinking is so much more then just numbers and figures, its about fulfilling the societies needs and bringing about a meaningful change. Overall its a great post Ian, I particularly liked how you emphasized on moving out of your comfort zone,being more creative and bold and not worrying too much about failure.