design thinking

after a fantastic happy hour with social media savvy colleagues last week, two of which gave a brief intro to design thinking, i decided it was finally time to include the concept here.

i've been following design thinking ever since a friend of mine that i took architecture classes with told me that she was a) not going back to architecture grad school b) working at a design research firm instead and c) was thinking about earning...her mba?! certainly she had gone mad.

in fact, my friend was under the spell of design thinking. design thinking, as fast company describes it, is "a proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results". there are four, seemingly obvious, key steps involved: defining the problem, brainstorm all options, refine results, and pick the best. while these steps seem obvious in the problem-solving process, the details in each are a bit different from your everyday problem solving.

design thinking emphasizes being an active agent in the problem solving process; to think so far outside of the box that at first, people may think you've gone a little crazy. when defining the issue, design thinking focuses on identifying the true challenges at hand rather than what others (namely, clients) perceive to be the problem. this defining step is heavy on the observation (hence, active problem-solving) and also stresses the importance of constructing an accurate problem statement. fast company's mark dziersk describes the goal of the definition stage: "to target the right problem to solve, and then to frame the problem in a way that invites creative solutions." crucial for moving onto step 2.

next comes the brainstorming. many companies are routinely stuck in tunnel vision and fall into the trap of solving challenges the same way, every time. design thinking curbs this habit and encourages new and creative ideas. collaboration is key in this step to identify the most promising opportunities.

step 3 is developing those promising opportunities. in this stage, it's essential that participants keep an open mind and forget historical precedents. mistakes are encouraged (with of course, the hopes that an extraordinary answer is found as a result). ideas that seemed absolutely impossible yesterday can suddenly become feasible after a few hours of discussion and detail.

next of course, is stage 4: pick the favorite, and implement it!

so there you have it, design thinking in a nutshell. i recommend googling design thinking...there are some awesome articles out there that outline concepts and give great examples. ideo is a well-known firm headquartered in palo alto, california that is an enthusiastic advocate of design thinking, and napkin labs just created an app that helps clients manage their social marketing venues using ideo's design thinking. tim brown, ceo and president of ideo, gives a great talk on design thinking, on TED here. not surprisingly, this method of problem solving is used commonly in the design world--and it could definitely be applied to branding challenges.


have you used design thinking? how? do you find it realistic and practical?

photo courtesy of red hat

photo courtesy of ideo

photo courtesy of ideo

photo courtesy of napkin labs

photo courtesy of napkin labs