What is Design

 

Design involves purposeful behaviour that is targeted toward certain goals and the creation of solutions. The goal of design may be to solve a problem that affects one or many people. The design process includes formulating, moving, representing, evaluating, and reflecting. (Byran Lawson [1])

 

design attitude

A design attitude, as distinct from a decision attitude, means designing or bringing about alternatives.

“A design attitude views each project as an opportunity for invention that includes, a questioning of basic assumption and a resolve to leave the world a better place than people found it. Designers relish the lack of predetermined outcomes.” (Richard J. Boland Jr. and Fred Collopy [2])

Boland and Collopy also said: “[W]hy do we continue to create a mediocre world for ourselves? One often hears the argument that it is ‘economics’ or ‘costs’ or ‘limited budgets’ that are to blame. If only we had more money, more time, more staff, more of something, we would be able to do things better. It is time we rejected such defeatist, shortsighted views. It is time we faced up to the fact that the decision attitude toward problem solving that dominates management education, practice, and research favors default alternatives and locks us into a self-perpetuating cycle of mediocrity.”

design thinking

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which IDEO calls design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.

[Source: The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, by IDEO.org. http://www.designkit.org/resources/1]

[Source: https://designthinking.ideo.com/?page_id=1542]

The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Think of inspiration as the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation as the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas; and implementation as the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives. (Tim Brown [3])

phases of design thinking

IDEO founder David Kelley identifies five phases of design thinking. But he stresses in practice it is an iterative approach that unfolds back and forth across phases. (David Kelley [4])

Five phases:

Frame a question:  identify a driving question that inspires others to search for creative solution

Gather inspiration:  inspire new thinking by discovering what people really need

Generate ideas:   push past obvious solutions to get to breakthrough ideas

Make ideas tangible:  build rough prototypes to learn how to make ideas better

Test to learn:  refine ideas by gathering feedback and experimenting forward

Share the story:  craft a human story to inspire others toward action

 

 

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Reference:

[1] Lawson, B. (2006) How Designers Think. / Byran Lawson is the Emeritus Professor of the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield. He is best known for his major books including How Designers Think, What Designers Know, Design in Mind and Design Expertise with Kees Dorst (Professor of Design at Sydney University of Technology).

[2] Boland, R., & Collopy, F. (2004). Design Matters for Management. ]

[3] https://designthinking.ideo.com/?page_id=1542

[4] https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking