Welcome to the Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking. Welcome to the d.school’s Virtual Crash Course resource page! We know not everyone can make a trip to the d.school to experience how we teach design thinking. So, we created this online version of one of our most frequently sought after learning tools. Using the video, handouts, and facilitation tips below, we will take you step by step through the process of hosting or participating in a 90 minute design challenge. If you choose to participate, in 90 minutes you will be taken through a full design cycle by participating in The Gift-Giving Project.
This is a fast-paced project where participants pair up to interview each other, identify real needs, and develop a solution to “redesign the gift-giving experience” for their partner. NO PREVIOUS DESIGN EXPERIENCE REQUIRED. We’ll provide all the information you need to be successful, whether you are just pairing up with one other person or you are gathering a large group (great for organizations, schools, or companies). Gear Up! Browse Our Reading List.
The best way to learn about design thinking is to do it, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out some of the books that help contextualize what we do. If you want to deepen your understanding of design thinking process and application, here’s a book list to get you started. We’re being selective, not exhaustive, here – think of it as the “staff favorites” section in your local bookstore. Coming Soon! Creative Confidence, by Tom & David Kelley Innovation Process The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley Change by Design, Tim Brown Design Thinking, by Nigel Cross Design In Your Company The Designful Company, by Marty Neumeier The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, by Roger Martin Managing Innovation Weird Ideas That Work, by Robert Sutton Empathy Wired to Care, by Dev Patnaik Synthesis Exposing the Magic of Design, by Jon Kolko Sketching Rapid Viz, by Kurt Hanks and Larry Belliston Space Design in Education.
How should I start? What’s a good first project for design thinking? Design thinking can be used for diverse work, but it most easily adopted for the discovery phase of a project: when you are still seeking the meaningful problem to work on, or the right solution to pursue. So choose a project in its early stages or one you really want to shake up. Second, choose a challenge that has a human element to it. Design thinking helps you excel in understanding people, gaining insights that you can leverage, and experimenting your way to a solution. So pick something in which people matter. That said, it doesn’t have to be a consumer project. One way to frame your project around people, is to (re)state the challenge using this format: “Redesign the [ topic ] experience for [ user ].”
Some examples: Which mixtape should I choose? You can think of the design process as an oscillation between engaging with people and experimenting with prototypes. Then ask yourself how to best engage your team. Design-Thinking-Ablauf.png (893×224) Announcements | Design Thinking for Business Innovation. Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. So What's Next? The decade of Design Thinking is ending and I, for one, am moving on to another conceptual framework: Creative Intelligence, or CQ. I am writing a book about Creative Intelligence, due out from HarperCollins in fall 2012, and I hope to have a conversation with the Fast Company audience on this blog about how we should teach, measure, and use CQ.
Why am I, who at Business Week was one of Design Thinking's major advocates, moving on to a new conceptual framework? Simple. Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm. Helen Walters, my wonderful colleague at Business Week, lays out many of the pros and cons of Design Thinking in her post on her blog. Design consultancies hoped that a process trick would produce change. I would add that the construction and framing of Design Thinking itself has become a key issue. There were many successes, but far too many more failures in this endeavor. Design thinking: A new approach to fight complexity and failure. The endless succession of failed projects forces one to question why success is elusive, with an extraordinary number of projects tangling themselves in knots.
These projects are like a child's string game run amok: a large, tangled mess that becomes more convoluted and complex by the minute. In my view, the core problem lies in mismatched expectations, poor communication, and a host of other non-technical causes. During the last few years, the practice of "design thinking" has become popular among some enterprise practitioners and observers. Design thinking helps structure team interactions to cultivate greater inclusiveness, foster creativity, and align participants around specific goals and results. I first learned about design thinking during conversations with people like Chirag Metha, an enterprise software strategist and design thinking expert; Chirag is one of the most thoughtful folks I know and writes a great blog on enterprise software.
IT projects fail all the time. 1. 2. 3. Welcome to the Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking. Books.ideo.com.