How To Do Design Thinking — What I Learned Building… David Kelley: The first step in the Design Thinking process is what we call the Understand phase: if you’re going to work in a certain area you really need to talk to experts. We’re generalists, we’re expert at process but if you really want to do something, if you’re going to design a new medical device, you have to really immerse yourself in it. So in the first step you end up studying the state of the art, going and talking to experts, doing research to bring yourself up to speed. Then there’s the Observation phase. If we’re going to design a new gas station we’ll go and see how they pump gas in Japan. If you see somebody having trouble using something, or that they grimace or they’re unhappy or they’re scared, that’s a place that we could really do innovation because we can fix that. At some point by observing these people and building empathy for them you start to have insights about them. Because this thing’s a team sport you have all these different eyes watching.
Design thinking Design thinking stands for design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing.[1] Overview[edit] Design thinking has come to be defined as combining empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality in analyzing and fitting various solutions to the problem context.[2] According to Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, the goal of Design Thinking is "matching people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and viable as a business strategy" [3] The premise of teaching Design Thinking is that by knowing about how designers approach problems and the methods which they use to ideate, select and execute solutions, individuals and businesses will be better able to improve their own problem solving processes and take innovation to a higher level. Origins of the term[edit] (For a detailed evolution, see History, below.) Solution-based thinking[edit] Bryan Lawson Architects vs. Lawson found that:
The State of Information Visualization, 2013 Well, the world hasn’t ended, so here’s a look back at what happened in visualization in 2012, and a look ahead in case the world is still around a year from now. 2012: What Was Last year was an exciting one, at least for me. First I started my sabbatical year at Tableau, then I decided to stay there. I went to SxSW and Malofiej. 2012 was the year visualization in the news took off. And you know who called it a year ago? If you don’t believe that data journalism will be big in 2012, I have one word for you: U.S. The New York Times, which used to hide its interactive pieces online, has posted a collection of the amazing work they did in 2012, including such pieces as 512 Paths to the White House. This marks a sea change not only in terms of interactivity on the web, but in how newspapers are starting to approach the issue of browser support. 2013: What Will Be My predictions have at times been self-serving. In less self-centric future developments, Many Eyes is coming back! Beyond 2013
Creativity Processes, Creative Thinking and Lateral Thinking from MindTools © iStockphoto/pavlen The tools in this section can help you to become more creative. They are designed to help you devise creative and imaginative solutions to problems, and help you to spot opportunities that you might otherwise miss. Before you continue, it is important to understand what we mean by creativity, as there are two completely different types. The first is technical creativity, where people create new theories, technologies or ideas. This is the type of creativity we discuss here. Many of the techniques in this chapter have been used by great thinkers to drive their creativity. Approaches to Creativity There are two main strands to technical creativity: programmed thinking and lateral thinking. The other main strand uses 'Lateral Thinking'. Programmed Thinking and Lateral Thinking Lateral thinking recognizes that our brains are pattern recognition systems, and that they do not function like computers. Unfortunately, we get stuck in our patterns. Taking the Best of Each...
Use design thinking for the fuzzy front end of organizational change | Designing Change [Design thinking] is the ability to create new options and build new products, services and experiences that gives design so much power. It is the ability to understand deeply cultures from digital social media networks to small villages in southern India that gives design its power. – Bruce Nussbaum I first came across the term design thinking a several years ago, through the writing of Tim Brown and Bruce Nussbaum, two early champions of the approach. A designer by background, a former boss nudged me towards buyer personas, which started me on an exploration of the world of sales and marketing. This broadened my view into one that didn’t just focus on “user” but on the messy organizational context in which that person worked, the business problems faced by those organizations, and the challenges of balancing the needs of an organization, its customers, and its employees. Empathy, as Bruna Martinuzzi argues, is missing: Source: The Process of Design Squiggle, Damien Newman
Top trends in Data Visualization 2013: Visually Meetup With 2012 behind us — and having discussed our favorite infographics, interactive visualizations and motion graphics of the year — it was only natural that the topic of our first meetup for 2013 would be Top Trends in Data Visualization. Nearly 100 people came to the Trulia offices in SOMA, San Francisco (many thanks for being our host!) and we kicked off the evening with beer, pizza (and even some ping pong). Of course, we weren’t there just to have fun, but also hear two very smart and talented people talk about what they think are the top trends in interactive visualizations and motion graphics. Scott Murray, a code artist, and Assistant Professor of Design at University of San Francisco, gave a presentation on the top trends in interactive visualization. You can watch his talk (and presentation) here: Technical Director of a reputed Indian software Company Syspen, shared his ideas about Data Visualization. The importance of storytelling The importance of sharing
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. 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. Chirag works for SAP, driving business development and early adoption of new applications built on SAP's in-memory computing platform. Thank you to Chirag Mehta for writing this guest post. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Patrick Whitney on Reframing Design Thinking -- and Beyond By Reena Jana - April 11, 2013 Patrick Whitney is dean of Chicago’s Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology a graduate school focusing on researching and teaching design methods. He is a luminary in the ever-growing field of design strategy. RJ: "Reframing" seems to be a theme at the conference and also in the innovation landscape in general. Patrick Whitney: The conference is a strategy conference. They seek to produce new things that are acceptable and reframing the conventional view of their current offering seems to be one of the key ways to do that. So businesses are turning to designers when they want to find something new. At the conference we’ll hear from Carl Bass, the CEO of Autodesk, about learning from crafts to reframe software. RJ: There is so much pressure to be a "visionary" and a "game changer" in the business and design fields. PW: Most projects should not need visionaries or game changers. On the other end are real breakthrough products. PW: Yes!
Infographic: The 550,000 Miles Of Undersea Cabling That Powers The Internet They seem so brittle. Cables that are a little more than two inches thick line our ocean floors, culminating in over half a million miles in length, transmitting terabytes of data across the globe every second. What about satellites? Click to enlarge. The Submarine Cable Map, by telecom research firm TeleGeography, is a vintage rendition of the worldwide network that drives our communications infrastructure today. "The beautiful hand-drawn details found on old maps have always fascinated me and are sorely missing from contemporary cartography,” designer Markus Krisetya explains. The result is gorgeous, like some combination of classic cartography and a modern tube map, or maybe a circuit board diagram. Interestingly enough, the map hides some other big pieces of data near the bottom of the print. If you’d like a map of your own, 36-by-50-inch prints are available now for $250. Buy one here.
What Aspiring Designers Need to Know About Strategy By David Sherwin - April 4, 2013 This is an exclusive excerpt from my new book, Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers, which was recently released by HOW. As I read through his resume, the designer stared at me expectantly. He had a wealth of great design projects under his belt. Not brand strategy, content strategy, interactive strategy, media strategy, or the MBA-land of business strategy. This has been happening more and more frequently, for a few reasons. But in our haste to be strategic partners, I’ve discovered that many designers don’t fully grasp how strategic services fit into their client offerings. If you’re going to run a design-led business, it’s inevitable that you will need to talk strategy with your clients. What exactly is strategy? The dictionary says: a strategy is a “plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” But don’t get too excited about the word “design” appearing in this definition of strategy.