posted by Anna Fleet on September 27th, 2010
If you’re looking for the secret to business success, forget everything you know!
The Globe and Mail urges us to Harness the Power of Design Thinking by asking us to try approaching problems like a design thinker—and that means without preconceived ideas of solutions and old ways of thinking.
I think they’re onto something here. “It’s about the way designers look at opportunities and problems…they approach [them] more holistically [and] with more intuition and a human dimension. They’re willing to take risks and be more exploratory…It’s about the act of creating something new and original,” says Heather Fraser, Business Design Professor and Director of DesignWorks, at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.
I know letting go of those traditional ways of doing things isn’t always so easy, but “If you trust your intuition,” says Fraser, “…and be willing to explore the unknown… regardless of discipline…you can think through things faster and more effectively.”
To read the full Globe and Mail article and to learn about some great examples of Canadian Design Thinking at it’s best in companies such as Umbra, Loblaws, Blockbuster, Indigo click the link…
Tags: design thinking for business, design thinking for business success, design thinking strategy, globe and mail design thinking, stages of design thinking
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posted by Anna Fleet on September 8th, 2010
An oldie but goldie from ABC Nightline, this video features the renowned design team at IDEO, perhaps world’s most influential product development agency, as it takes on the challenge of redesigning a shopping cart in just five days. Those not familiar with IDEO, will know them from their design of Apples first computer mouse to the 25-foot mechanical whale featured in the movie, Free Willie and …hundreds of products that we probably take for granted like Nike sunglasses, high-tech medical equipment and so on. My point is, at the core, you’ll see why the IDEO design thinking process works.
David Kelley, IDEO founder and Stanford Professor explains it this way, “The point is that we’re not experts at any given area. We’re experts on the process of how you design stuff. So we don’t care if you give us a toothpaste tube, a tractor, a space shuttle or a chair it’s all the same to us…we want to innovate by using our process applying it.”
The IDEO group is made up of an eclectic mix of people, including—a Stanford Engineer, a Harvard MBA, a linguist, a marketing expert, a psychologist, and a biology major that’s put off medical school 3 times because, well, he’s having too much fun at IDEO!
Kelley further explains the group dynamics, “In a very innovative culture you can’t have a hierarchy of “here’s the boss”…and the next person down and the next person down…because it’s impossible that the boss is the one that’s had the insightful experience with shopping carts [or whatever]…it’s just not possible.”
Watch the full video to see how IDEO applies their design thinking process and you’ll see how chaos and failure help them discover creativity success!
Tags: david kelley IDEO, david kelley stanford university, design thinking process, ideo design process, ideo shopping cart, stages of design thinking
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posted by Anna Fleet on August 19th, 2010
An article in the Harvard Business Review by author Robert I. Sutton claims that,“there is no learning without failure.”
Sutton should know. He’s the co-author of five books on managerial audiences (including The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Firms Turn Knowledge Into Action) and he says that failure is widespread before innovation occurs. “The reality is that the typical successful innovator experiences the agony of defeat far more often than the thrill of victory.”
It’s true that failure happens to the best of us. But instead of giving up, Sutton says that we should embrace failure, learn from it, and put those lessons toward our future ideas. “The ability to capitalize on hard-won experience is a hallmark of the greatest organizations,” he says.
“The [people] who are most adept at turning knowledge into action…and those that are the most successful when it comes to developing and implementing creative ideas…[fail and often].”
Read the full article to find out why the most successful creators tend to be those with the most failures.
Tags: design thinking for small business, design thinking process, design thinking strategy, harvard business review, learning from our failures, stages of design thinking
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posted by Anna Fleet on August 9th, 2010
Have you ever looked at an album cover or a logo and declared, “Phffffff, I could have done that!”?
I find that we often do this even though we’re unaware of what occurred behind the scenes and without knowledge that a design process that only focuses on the final creative product (be it a logo, cover art or whatever) is purely process driven and not at all very effective.
Jaid Hulsbosch, Director at Hulsbosch – Communication By Design says that good design and branding is more about “managing the highly complex process of brand design and redesign within large national and global businesses” in his interview with austrailiancreative.com.au. Hulsbosch suggests that companies today are not only paying for the process alone (in other words the design alone); they are also looking for an agency that can balance the management of the design process and deliver a truly iconic brand.
Hulsbosch claims that the following skills are vital in a design and branding agency:
1. Create brands that focus/embody the company’s values, emotions and promise
2. Design of brands that engage the customer
3. Ability to navigate complex business landscapes (i.e., various egos, expectations)
4. Ability to overcome market constraints
5. Act as diplomats—get a diverse people with competing agendas to agree
6. Organize and ensure sub-brands are well represented
7. Ask, “What is your design culture?” instead of, “What is your design process?”
Tags: design thinking for small business, design thinking process, design thinking strategy, graphic design thinking, stages of design thinking
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posted by Anna Fleet on August 4th, 2010
Recently, we’ve been taking a look at a different way of solving the world’s problems. Design thinking harmoniously blends practically with creativity in a way that drives success. But as with any problem-solving method, there is a process. The design thinking process has 7 distinct stages:
1. Define
2. Research
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Choose
6. Implement
7. Learn
For a little added entertainment I’d like to share this great animated short, created by six Ontario College of Art and Design 2010 industrial design thesis students. The video depicts how a cave man might have used design thinking to carry out the first ever design project. And as you can imagine, as design thinking is applied to solve any problem, stages within the process are bound to be repeated until an ideal solution is found.
The greater message, and what I truly admire about the design thinking process, is that there are no stupid ideas. This way, criticism and judgement are left out of the early stages of the equation, which creates an environment free of fear. Wouldn’t you agree that when the fear of failure is taken out of the thinking process, ideas flourish and solutions are often found much faster?
Remember, in real life your buddy or boss won’t bonk you over the head with a bat if you don’t come up with the perfect solution straight away 
Tags: design in progress, design thinking for small business, design thinking process, industrial design students, ontario college of art and design, stages of design thinking, youtube for viral marketing
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One Calendar with Social Networking Powers
