OK, for starters, we didn’t say it. Bruce Nussbaum was the one to provoke the discussion and highlight the necessary shift from “designing for” to “designing with” users in a speech at Parson’s. We share his belief that everyone, including designers, will benefit by design thinking. He takes no prisoners, challenging design management, business, Apple, Al Gore and even himself in the process.

Read the speech

via problogger …

Recently while working with a department within the college, we identified some behaviors and skills that would be necessary for graduating students to succeed and help future organisations compete in the future. One of these traits was curiousity. Can curiosity be taught? Some folks may be inherently more curious (in many ways!!) and like design thinkers, these behaviors (or techniques) can be consciously applied.

I came across this article about curiosity applied to writing blogs, but the 12 starting points are applicable to being curious about anything.

At Texas A&M, Professor Rodney Hill is teaching his class critical thinking as part of his Design Process course.

Creativity is the currency of the new millennium. While all the University curriculums are providing our students with knowledge they need to operate in their chosen domain, not all of them are preparing students for a world that is in accelerating change,” Hill said. “The students’ ability to create and generate new knowledge is essential to survive in the 21st Century.”

Read the article

We have struggled for ages with the problem of Christmas dinner. How do you align the wants of adults (long meal, copious amounts of wine and extended chatter) with the needs of small children (small amounts of food, fast intake and quick turnaround)?

My eldest (4) came up with a brilliant, user-centred, design solution the other day. She suggested that we stretch one meal over the entire day. So, our starter will be at breakfast, main course at lunch and pudding in the evening. In theory everyone gets what they want. Meals are short, less stress and easier on the digestion. I like it

I will let you know how the prototyping phase goes.

via Creative Generalist …

An interview with Jane Fulton Suri, Chief Creative Officer at IDEO. Jane discusses a number of things related to design innovation and expands the definition of user-centered design to the idea of the “empathic economy”.

This is no longer a very new idea; at least in progressive companies, it’s a fairly widely accepted and well-established approach to innovation. When I refer to “the empathic economy” I’m talking about a future possibility – about a huge opportunity for innovation in which a similar level of empathy and imagination might be applied to the many different kinds of people who populate the business ecology of a particular industry, not just customers/end-users/consumers. In an empathic economy the provider/supplier of goods and services would be keen to reach an empathic understanding not just of consumers, but also of many other people within the business network upon whom business success depends…

Read the interview

One of the pet peeves of the former SAP chief executive officer (Hasso Plattner) is that software engineers often pack products with far too many functions that no one needs, often because they’re too focused on engineering. His aim with the new program is to help students take a more creative, interdisciplinary and user-oriented approach to new product design.

Read the press release
Hasso Plattner Institut
Related: SAP founder gives $35 million for Stanford D-School

Ralf Beuker suggests the motto, “help design manager help themselves” in relation to design thinking. Apparently this is a modification of Maria Montessori’s approach to childhood education of “help me in order to help myself.”

When working at Crayola and attempting to come up with a definition of “Play,” we finally decided that play is what children do. It is how they learn about the world around them. As children we have much more tolerance of risk, comfortably use trial and error and have an endless supply of enthusiasm. These are several traits that make for great design thinkers.

How do we re-awaken the child in us as profesionals, and within those students that will become the next generation of innovative thinkers attempting to solve ‘wicked problems?’ Montessori’s educational approach appears to be even more relevant in our changing world. “Education should no longer be mostly imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.”

via Metroplis Magazine …

Mary Foyder/courtesy IDEO

IDEO’s Smart Spaces group takes on ‘urban planning’ by applying it’s user-focused methods on capturing the spirit of a Kansas City neighborhood.

IDEO immersed themselves in “the Vine,” applying the multidisciplinary method they bring to nearly all their projects, whether bathroom cleaners or hotel rooms. They hosted “whine and dines” (focus-group dinners), walked the streets, ate in the restaurants, did historical research, took photographs, and interviewed dozens of people about the neighborhood, sometimes on videotape. Part anthropology (with IDEO’s trained anthropologists), part site exploration (with IDEO’s trained architects), part documentary filmmaking (with IDEO’s trained media artists), their approach is to seek the qualitative essence of the community from the perspective of the community.

Read the article

When I forwarded this post from Diego Rodriguez’s blog, Toby responded by saying “that is about as good an exposition as I have ever heard about what we do.”

I believe that good design thinking can lead to a higher success rate when innovating, and that’s the link to good business outcomes. And that’s where employing metrics to gauge and guide the innovation process comes into play — they’re a way to inform and improve the context in which our design thinking occurs. It’s about measuring and aiding the process of value creation via design thinking, not proving that design can create value.