Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

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Environmentalism entered the cultural mainstream with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, but it would take another forty years—after two oil crises and a broad scientific consensus—for a general awareness of the crisis to sink in. A major stimulus was the release of Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, in 2006, It is helping people to articulate the latent needs they may not even know they have, and this is the challenge of design thinkers. How should we approach it? What tools do we have that can lead us from modest incremental changes to the leaps of insight that will redraw the map? In this chapter I’d like to focus upon three mutually reinforcing elements of any successful design program. I’ll call them insight, observation, and empathy. Tim Brown is the CEO and president of IDEO. Ranked independently among the ten most innovative companies in the world, IDEO is the global consultancy that contributed to such standard-setting innovations as the first mouse for Apple and the Palm V. The best ideas emerge when the whole organizational ecosystem—not just its designers and engineers and certainly not just management—has room to experiment. Of course, hiring a design-thinking expert is not a cure-all for organizations facing changes to their industry. Organizations that do not tolerate experimentation or even resistance to an organization’s conventions inevitably see their change efforts whither.

Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking

While living in San Francisco almost a decade ago, I have always heard about the work of IDEO, Tim Brown and his process of rigorous examination through which great ideas were identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. IDEO designers decided to develop a two-piece program called “Scenography,” intended to equip general managers with the tools to anticipate the needs and meet the expectations of their guests. It's almost an easy to read course book for all change management professionals. Where it misses out is the blueprint - the sequence of activities. The storytelling is to the exact point but it does not give the full picture. For example Nokia did a breakthrough in early 2000s to diversify into mobile phones, but the book doesn't talk of the same traits leading to the downturn. It talks about wikipedia's business model but does not talk about how or why other similar companies fail. The initial parts were a tough read compared to the latter half.

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Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation txt Create options. At every stage of the process, but especially the early stages, design thinkers should be brainstorming, asking probing questions, and creating multiple possible ways of solving the problem. Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation full book

Change by Design by Tim Brown Summary - Briefer

So much has happened since the book was written, that all of the advantages of being at the cutting edge in 2009 disappear and a lot of the examples are stale. A better strategy, I think (and Brown does this a little bit) would have been to stay away from the tech industry as much as possible and talk about breakfast cereal and Carnation milk, and instant coffee and all sorts of other things that illustrate the same points in a less time-bound fashion.

The Changing Role of Designers

Met Tim Brown at IDEO for the book launch party of this title, and was inspired to read it after listening to his talk about the subject. Some good high level frameworks and ideas, and it makes me wish that I could experience this process in action as part of an IDEO project team sometime! Over the course of their century-long history of creative problem solving, designers have acquired a set of tools to help them move through what I have called the “three spaces of innovation”: inspiration, ideation, and implementation.

Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Think… Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Think…

Create with people vs create for them -- collaboration between creators and consumers vs pure UGC (IDEO uses "unfocus group" of extremists). Make consumers part of the design experience base premises on observations, not assumptions! The a-ha moment may not be where you think it is (ex: "the exhale moment" of finally getting into your hotel room)Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation ebook

Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking Change by Design, Revised and Updated: How Design Thinking

In each of the preceding chapters I have tried to identify techniques that originated in the design community—field observations, prototyping, visual storytelling—that lie at the center of a human-centered design process. Brown makes a potent case for employing this creative collaboration in a variety of settings.” — Miami HeraldThis book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and a viable business strategy. In short‚ design thinking converts need into demand. It′s a human−centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.