For some of us if we think of design it brings to mind images of interesting objects, on display in a gallery, spectacular statement architecture or meaningful artwork. For others,  it might be iconic product design-for example, Apple’s iPod (which has sold more than 220 million units) as well as re-defining the music industry, has impacted forever the field of product design; consumers expect good design as  standard  and companies realise the value that effective design can create. Design thinking, however, is different again. Tim Brown, author of Change by Design-How design thinking transforms organisations and inspires innovation defines it as the shift from old-school design: where before designers were involved only at the end of the process in creating a beautiful looking end product  now designers work alongside businesses and organisations to tackle intangible strategic and behavioural challenges.

As CEO of IDEO (the global innovation and design consultancy) Brown and his colleagues have worked on numerous client assignments where design thinking skills have been instrumental in breakthrough outcomes. Tools and skills typically employed by the design thinker include visual tools like sketches, mind maps and prototypes. Brainstorming, building on the ideas of others and encouraging creativity by having permission to fail, experiment and take risks.The first part of the book details, through case studies, anecdotes and insights gleaned, Brown’s recommendations for using design thinking to infuse a more creative problem-solving approach into all facets of business, products and services.

A great example is Shimano; a leading Japanese manufacturer of bicycle parts they were experiencing flattening growth in their traditional high end racing and mountain bike segment. The company’s gut instinct was they should consider other market segments. Rather than developing a high-tech new bicycle as old-school designers would have done an inter-disciplinary team of designers, engineers, behavioural scientists worked on this project-one of the major insights was that 90% of Americans no longer ride bikes whereas 90% of them did as children!What they found was that for many cycling is now an intimidating experience, dangerous roads, high tech bikes and equipment and even the retail experience of being served by lycra-clad athletes was off-putting. This led the team to create a whole new type of low-tech weekend bicycle named “coasting” — to encourage the adult Americans outside Shimano’s core customer base who had loved riding their bikes as kids to take up cycling again.

As design thinkers the group also created a different in-store retail experience for independent bike dealers better suited to the weekend cyclist; they also worked with local governments and cycling organisations and created a PR campaign with a web site that included safe places to cycle. Within a year of the bike’s successful launch ten bike manufacturers had signed up to produce coasting bikes. What would previously have been an exercise in design with IDEO designers being given a set of technical specifications to design bike parts became an exercise in design thinking.

Brown breaks this case study of design thinking in action into three key overlapping innovation phases: 1. Inspiration: The problem/opportunity that begins the search for solutions 2. Ideation: The process of generating, developing, and testing ideas 3. Implementation: The path from the project room to the market

He goes on to say that innovation through design thinking must have two key elements: Firstly, it must occur within a set of constraints, such as economic viability, with the more traditional business-minded rational/analytic approach being maintained as well as the design thinking approach.Secondly, good design and the resulting innovative outcomes needs to be human-centred. What this means is really understanding what users want and need even when they can’t actually articulate their concerns themselves.

Brown argues that Henry Ford’s famous remark “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted they’d have said a faster horse” was absolutely right. Traditional market-research tools such as focus groups and surveys are unlikely to produce breakthrough findings; he suggests that this is only done by close observation of users in their natural habitats. Methods employed by IDEO and others include following users around, making videos of them in their routine, recording conversations with them—to really gain an understanding of what is need. An IDEO employee, working on a hospital project feigned a foot injury and checked himself into an emergency room with a hidden video camera to really appreciate the patient experience.

An additional case study which reinforced the value of really understanding users’ often unarticulated needs included analyzing people’s spending habits to create a new Bank of America service that helped them to save. An insight gleaned by observing the very common behaviour people have of putting loose change in a jar resulted in the “Keep the Change” account. When customers paid with their bank cards they had the option of having each  purchase rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference depositing in a savings account just like throwing spare coins into a jar.

Brown also recommends “thinking with your hands” or building quick and easy prototypes to test ideas as this shows how a concept will meet real-world needs.

In the second part of the book Brown moves beyond offering advice on how to become more innovative as a business; and in chapters entitled The New Social Contract, Design Activism-or Inspiring solutions with global potential and Designing tomorrow-today he talks  about the necessity of  a new ethos in how we operate as a society and the use of design thinking to help achieve that.

“What we need are new choices – new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that results in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them.”

Brown gives some very impactful examples of IDEO’s design thinkers using their skills to help the lives of people in extreme need. Working on projects for nonprofit organizations, like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and U.S. government campaign they set about creating accessible design for social impact and this resulted in  the Human-Centred Design Toolkit.This toolkit, designed with developing countries in mind, involved IDEO going into the field in Cambodia and Ethiopia to research fully projects such as irrigation technology and market information for farmers. The initial applications for the toolkit were agricultural projects; since then it has been used on a medical project and a water transport and sanitation project in India. IDEO has also received reports of designers using the toolkit in Africa, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

What I particularly liked about this book was that design thinking isn’t held up as the panacea to solve all challenges; rather it’s envisaged that, partnered with the more conventional management thinking of logic, rationality and analysis, badly-needed new ideas and fresh thinking can be achieved. Secondly, many of the tools, insights are immediately applicable (even if you don’t work in a creative organisation or even (shock, horror!) use an imac!)

And, although design thinking may be perceived as the management phrase du jour, the concept itself of expanding our capacity to understand the world and our relationship to it, taking a human-centered approach to create sustainable change is a good thing. Combining it with more conventional management thinking could create great things.

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