Design Thinking
Design Thinking
What is Design Thinking? Why would I do it? How is it done?
Here we’ll help you answer those questions and share digital materials for The Design Thinking Workbook: Essential Skills for Creativity and Business Growth. Below, you’ll find a link to the book, a free multimedia intro book, useful videos, links to the book’s worksheets/templates (hosted on MURAL), recommended readings, and where to go for more learning and experience. The books were published as part of the innovation & entrepreneurship book series at S P Jain School of Global Management, which also offers workshops to hone your skills and help you generate new business initiatives for growth. Just visit i2e - The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center.
Design Thinking Workbook, published by Emerald, available on Amazon (& Barnes & Noble, Kinokunia, libraries worldwide, …). Authors: Dr. CJ Meadows & Dr. Charvi Parikh.
Design Thinking Intro, a "living book" published by Gnowbe (free during 14-day trial subscription) and available on Amazon.
To talk with my digital twin about these books and articles and how you might apply the ideas in your own situation, just visit CJ2.personal.ai and have a “public chat”.
“How to Design the Future of Work and Education Now” in Forbes (monthly platform visits: 983,000+)
“Designing the MetaOffice” in APAC CIO Outlook
“Keys to Business (and Education) Success from Design Thinking” in Higher Education Digest (monthly platform visits: 436,000+)
“Engage, Retain, and Attract Employees — by Design” in HRM Asia
What are these books about and why are there three? ‘Here’s an intro to this innovative topic and innovative way to share it.
What is DT? Here’s HBR’s 2-minute explainer.
Here’s more stories of business value. ‘A special treat to get you excited to explore DT!
How is it done? Here’s a generic process we find super-useful. See the 6 videos below. We begin workshop sessions for these 6 steps with these videos to discuss. It works well.
First, although the innovator in this video worked alone, we normally gather a diverse team and design for others, not ourselves. ‘Great lessons here, though, for any innovator.
We also keep in mind the MRI story (at 6:12) & how you can make an impact with new user experience, not just new technology. Value was created for patients, parents, staff, insurance, legal, marketing, finance, shareholders — basically everyone!
Challenge
How often people craft a great solution to the wrong problem! Take time to define your challenge properly — “right-sized,” strategically important, & no deeper blocking-problem. Case: Sesame Street wanted an app. IDEO had to find people’s needs first. They did design an app (yes, sometimes that happens!), which made life better for little kids and carers. Results: Elmo Calls made more than 4 million calls the first month & became the #1 AppStore app (age 0 - 5).
observe
Get out of your office & see how your users really live and work. Don’t design out of your head or because you have a shiny new tech-toy. FYI, this is the best 8-minute overview of IDEO’s Design Thinking process I’ve ever found — an absolute classic.
understand
It’s not enough to gather facts. You need to understand your users deeply and generate insights. Not only does this video give a great overview of Daylight’s DT process, but it also shows us the value of insight & understanding. If the team had designed what they first envisioned, it would have failed. What they designed from deeper insights succeeded.
envision
To make DT really worth your while, why not envision a radical new future? But how can we be that creative? When did we stop being children dreaming of shark tales and become adults who wanted tiny tweaks to the way things are? Let’s be kids again & dream big, high-value dreams. (See also the most watched TED talk of all time — Sir Ken Robinson’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”.)
solve
Brainstorming is more than just crazy time in the conference room. It’s actually a led process with rules. Here’s a great example of the “diverge” part of a brainstorm, to be followed with “converge” techniques (e.g. dotversation, among the worksheets below) so the team can deeply understand and commit to a direction together.
prototype (& experiment)
Although it’s hard to share unfinished work, it’s often more productive to do so. Here’s the “lo-fi” prototype that got budget approval to develop the multi-miliion-dollar Elmo Calls app. ‘Just start with cardboard, design your experiment, and find out how people want to interact with your system — before coding.
(prototype &) experiment
Getting feedback is crucial! If you want to come up with something amazing, share your prototype with potential users, get feedback & ideas, rise & repeat — again & again (until you & they are satisfied).
ok - now it’s time to see those worksheets, hosted on mural!
First, the Foundational Skills (Chapter 2):
Now, Tools & Techniques (Chapter 3):
Here’s the Process (Chapter 4), Your Challenge (Chapter 5), Next Steps (Chapter 6), & The Design Thinker’s (Your) Diary (Chapter 7):
Need more? here’s some places to go for learning, practice, or consulting:
i2e - The Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center at S P Jain School of Global Management integrates consulting (for business impact today) and education (for continuing impact). If you’d like to engage with the authors, we’re here & ready to help!
Whether you have 15 minutes, 16 hours, or something in-between, we recommend ExperiencePoint’s simulations, crafted in collaboration with IDEO. ‘Check out the InnoLab for continuous innovation.
Need some experience? Join a social-impact challenge and benefit others while building skills.
Terrific cases from IDEO in a variety of industries. For more learning, check out IDEO.U. For more practice/experience, hone your skills and make an impact at OpenIDEO.
IDEO founder David Kelley also co-founded Stanford’s Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design, more commonly known as the “d.school.” You guessed it - courses are available.
IBM hosts the largest DT consultancy in the world. They offer not only client work, but certification courses, too.
Not only does Design Sojourn design for clients, but they hold educational workshops and produce the Designing Clarity podcast on Spotify, by founder Brian Ling.
finally, here’s classic (and student!) videos and recommended readings:
On creativity - heartwarming and insightful.
DT purpose & process overview.
Overview of DT as a field.
How Uber Eats designed their way out of a tough spot, by Athira Anilkumar.
Courageous role-play of DT challenge and the prof! By Ishan Niket, Lovely Verma, Nikhil Sinha, Ajinkya Umbarkar, and Duyen Thi Khanh Huynh.
Here’s some favourite articles — classic and new (1997 – 2022) — most of which are available for purchase & download from Harvard Business School Publishing - Education. They’re in reverse chronological order (newest to oldest) so you can easily grab the new ones if you wish:
Chandukala, S., Reddy, S., & Tan, Y. (2022). How Augmented Reality Can – and Can’t – Help Your Brand. HBR Digital. H06XR3-PDF-ENG.
Greenberg, S. (2022). Creative Acts for Curious People. HBR Digital. ROT461-PDF-ENG.
Orduna, N. (2022). How to Build a Career in Sustainability. HBR Digital. H06TWJ-PDF-ENG.
Bachu, D. (2021). Using Design Thinking to Improve Worker Safety in Manufacturing. HBR Digital. H06NLT-PDF-ENG.
Luca, M. & Morton, F. (2021). Do Your Digital Design Choices Take Advantage of Customers? HBR Digital. H06JFK-PDF-ENG.
Speicher, S. (2021). IDEO’s CEO, Sandy Speicher, Asis: What Is an Office Even for Now? HBR Digital. H06SBB-PDF-ENG.
Bason, C. & Austin, R. (2019). The Right Way to Lead Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review. R1902F-PDF-ENG.
IDEO (2019). The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design. Palo Alto: IDEO. https://www.designkit.org/resources/1.
Liedtka, J. (2018). Why Design Thinking Works. Harvard Business Digital. R1805D-PDF-ENG.
Kim, S., Myers, C., & Allen, L. (2017). Health Care Providers Can Use Design Thinking to Improve Patient Experiences. Harvard Business Digital. H03VGC-PDF-ENG.
Kupp, M., Anderson, J., & Reckhenrich, J. (2017). Why Design Thinking in Business Needs a Rethink. Harvard Business Digital. SMR627-PDF-ENG.
Martin, R. (2017). Use Design Thinking to Build Commitment to a New Idea. Harvard Business Digital. H03DUX-PDF-ENG.
Deighmann, D. & van der Heijde, R. (2016). How Design Thinking Turned One Hospital into a Bright and Comforting Place. Harvard Business Digital. H03AM0-PDF-ENG.
Sutton, R. & Hoyt, D. (2016). Better Service, Faster: A Design Thinking Case Study. Harvard Business Digital. H02LF1-PDF-ENG.
Kolko, J. (2015). Design Thinking Comes of Age. Harvard Business Review. R1509D-PDF-ENG.
Martin, R. & Brown, T. (2015). Design for Action. Harvard Business Review. R1509C-PDF-ENG.
Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review. R0806E-PDF-ENG.
Leonard, D. & Straus, S. (1997). Putting Your Company’s Whole Brain to Work. Harvard Business Review. 97407-PDF-ENG.
ExperiencePoint & IDEO. (undated). ExperienceInnovation™ Pre-Read (whitepaper). Toronto: ExperiencePoint.
ExperiencePoint. (undated). What's Design Thinking Really Like? (whitepaper). Toronto: ExperiencePoint.
Wikipedia. (nd). Design Thinking (great overview!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking.
That’s probably enough Design Thinking for now!
Special thanks goes to S P Jain School of Global Management for full support of this research, as well as Emerald Group Publishing, Gnowbe, and MURAL for publication and endless patience.
‘Just contact CJ or Charvi if you’d like some coaching, consulting, or educational help.