I don’t believe this is the first time we have referenced the excellent blog, Designing Better Libraries. In this article (PDF, 1.13MB), Steven J. Bell pulls together a nice primer on the design thinking process and explores how it can be applied to designing better libraries. How do libraries help users accomplish their work? How do we understand the problem before jumping to solutions? Design thinking helps librarians focus on facilitating research and creating passionate users instead of concentrating on the commodity of information.

At the Carnegie Public Library, “librarians and library staff devote more of their time to more high-value, high-reward efforts. Changed perceptions have attracted new customers who would have otherwise avoided the library. Existing customers find it easier to accomplish their goals and, along the way, discover new things that they might have otherwise missed.”

Additional reading and watching:

MAYA Design: Carnegie Public Library
TED Talk: Joshua Prince-Ramus: Designing the Seattle Central Library

We’ve posted on a number of occasions regarding design thinking in education. I see via the d.school news blog that they have developed a new course on the use of design thinking for K-12 education. Bravo. The last time I checked we all have two hemispheres in our brains and appreciate the “whole-brain” approach to education.

Taking an “outside in” approach that starts with your user mitigates risk. Period. Why would you want to do anything that didn’t meet the needs of your user? Why would you want to waste any of your valuable business resources on untested ideas? All new business launches come with a degree of risk and design thinking improves on those ideas by better meeting user needs and then testing those ideas through prototyping before launch.

This idea is echoed in the idea sirkus post, “To seek out ‘zero risk’ is to commit to doing nothing.“

Dale Fahnstrom, IIT Institute of Design. Photo: Jordan Fischervia Core77

I would have liked to have been there to judge for myself, but Nico McDonald penned this review of the Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2007. The topics and level of presentation sound marvelous. Nico correctly calls out several questions that went unaddressed.

Which skill sets or approaches, if any, were working or being applied in the areas which design is now claiming? If the case for design is so strong, why isn’t it being adopted more by corporations, organizations and governments? And to the extent it is being adopted, are other motives driving this adoption, and might their impact derail delivery?

I’ll also note the list of usual suspects from Steelcase to Phillips to Roger Martin to Hasso Plattner. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with their approach and you’ll find their quotes and case studies sprinkled throughout this site, but where are the representatives from smaller organisations that resonate with the SMEs we primarily work with?

Though Kevin McCullough’s article on Core77 is pitched to designers, there are several lessons to be learned by anyone looking to create design innovation. Globalisation has all but ended competition on price, and commoditised design services require designers to add more value to their own portfolio of skills.

Not only does he illustrate hidden assets beyond traditional design skills, he suggests four game changing habits than anyone can use: Adopt an agile perspective; spot gaps; make new connections; and teach yourself. Design thinking anyone?

Bruce Nussbaum is at it again with a compelling speech naming the two greatest barriers to innovation as ignorant CEOs and ignorant designers.

Cost and quality are commoditized today, merely the price of entry to the competitive game. Design and design thinking—or innovation if you like–are the fresh, new variables that can bring advantage and fat profit margins to global corporations. In today’s global marketplace, being able to understand the consumer, prototype possible new products, services and experiences, quickly filter the good, the bad and the ugly and deliver them to people who want them—well, that is an attractive management methodology. Beats the heck out of squeezing yet one more penny out of your Chinese supply-chain, doesn’t it? Let me emphasize this. I think managers have to BECOME designers, not just hire them. I think CEOs have to embrace design thinking, not just hire someone who gets it. I think many business schools have to merge with design schools, not just play poke and tickle with them.

Jitterbug, a newcomer to the mobile phone industry realised that their products, handsets, were only one part of the overall mobile phone experience. They applied liberal doses of design thinking, coming up with usable features and simplicity to suit extreme users, like technophobes and aging consumers.

Providing familiar touchstones to ease the mobile-phone experience became a major part of Jitterbug’s design after early research showed that older users found conventions like signal strength meters unfamiliar and confusing. Instead, when you open a Jitterbug phone it emits—get this—a dial tone. “If there’s no dial tone, you can’t make a call,” Harris says. To reach a Jitterbug operator, who can place calls or answer questions for you, dial 0.

Read the whole article

Even we blogged about the Bruce Nussbaum speech where he declared that “designers suck”. There was plenty of diverse reaction to the speech that did exactly what it was meant to do: stimulate thinking. The folks over at NextD actually published a special issue of their magazine (PDF, 3.5MB) created entirely of 50 responses from the design community to the speech. Good stuff.

I was reading John Maeda’s Simplicity blog and struck by a post he did on diverge vs. converge. Though he appears to be speaking more about management issues, his thought speaks to an underlying benefit to collaborative work around innovation.

The successful soloist is likely to realize the more creative outcome, whereas the successful team is likely to realize the more meaningful outcome.

I may be reading too much into this, but one of the tenets of design thinking is around collaboration. Although an insanely creative solution has benefits, it is worthless without meaning to the end user. Solo creativity begins to become more about art, whereas successful design innovation is about the user.

via Design Directory …

There a great review of a presentation from the Shimano marketing team at the National Bike Summit, where they detailed the background of their Coasting program. Shimano worked with IDEO to develop a strategy to get more of the 161 million Americans who don’t ride back onto bikes. This research led to a revisiting of cruiser bikes, and subsequently to a series of new bikes from Trek (the Lime is shown above), Raleigh and Giant.The original post goes over some of the findings that IDEO uncovered, and the resulting product strategy. But the comments, from bike mechanics, enthusiasts, lawyers and others, are the best part. The only thing missing from the conversation are the designers and product strategists. A great product design conversation, from a group of ‘non-designers’.