Extra thoughts on Design Thinking from my experience with d.school (Stanford)
In December 2015, I attended a course launched by Stanford University and d.school for professionals called ‘Design Thinking and the Art of Innovation’. The focus of the course was to show professionals how to use Design thinking to spark innovation within their organizations.
*Design Thinking refers to design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing.
We can date the origins of this way of thinking to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial. However, it wasn’t until the 1980s-90s that Design thinking started to be seen as a method for creative action and applied for business purposes ( Thanks to David Kelley – Founder of IDEO and d.school). Today this methodology / framework/ way of thinking can be applied to anyone, anything and any industry.
Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind while I was in the d.school program:
Yes, there are frameworks that we can follow to spur innovation or create more innovative solutions, e.g. Design Thinking, lean start up, open innovation methodologies, etc… However you don’t have to follow them to be innovative. Frameworks impose structure, but by definition Innovation brings chaos into and disrupts the structure. A point of advice: take the frameworks, play with them, and see what works best for you… Frameworks are just guides; use them to find your own way.
Everyone is creative. Yes, seriously. I had the chance to have David Kelley as one of my teachers and he told us about his book ‘ Creative Confidence’ [I highly recommend it]. This book is a guide to help you to find the inner creative you. Anyone is or can be creative. You just have to break the fear of being judged and free your mind. Once you know how powerfully creative you can be, innovation can happen without boundaries, no matter what your role is or what you do.
Everyone is or can be creative. But it doesn’t mean that that creativity is ‘innovative’. Most of us have ‘Creative Fixation’. This is different from creative confidence. We can be extremely creatively confident but become ‘fixed’. When we are ‘fixed’ we are ‘automated,’ i.e. we only explore a limited set of options that are already in our minds and not ‘outside the box.’ We play safe, and even if we are creative, we are still in a box. [I will talk more about this in my next article].
Design Thinking is a problem-solving tool to explore innovative solutions. Empathy is the first step in the Design thinking process of solving a problem or challenge. However, it is important to note that sometimes there might be no problem at all … [Are we maybe using a problem as an excuse to innovate?] If that is the case, we can still use EMPATHY to understand the consumer/ user/ costumer, see what motivates him/her, and then explore possible new opportunities. It is fine to resolve a problem or start from a challenge, but we should also consider potential problems that don’t exist yet, e.g. a digital revolution that disrupts the way people communicates with each other. In this way, we use empathy not only for reaction, but also prevention.
The second phase in Design Thinking is about Defining the problem, but sometimes, it can be difficult to define / reframe a problem that is ‘emboxed’ in a category. What if you open your mind and try different categories? As an example, Samsung went from 100% TV-focused to mobile phones [now their main offering]… The problem of losing market share was not related to their TVs but to the fact that they were not focusing on one of the most important [emerging] consumer electronic devices. People needed phones not more TVs… So why not change? What stops you from moving from TV to mobile devices? Just open your mind and explore outside of your [revenue] comfort zone. Explore new categories, industries and re-define the problem that you can solve.
We use Brainstorming for Idea Generation [Ideation-third- phase in Design Thinking], but, we could potentially use brainstorming not only to explore solutions but also to reframe the problem, sometimes, the main issue is that we are looking at the wrong problem. Collective minds can help to define the real ‘issue’. Especially when you are looking for new opportunities.
Brainstorming can be helpful not only in how to think differently but also in how to behave differently. A change in your behavior can change the culture in your organization and give you more ability to question the outcomes.
And remember, those are just guidelines. Find your own way.
Keep innovating!
Adela V.
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