Business schools love frameworks: STP, SWOT, porter’s five forces, ideation, the 5ps, the 5Cs, etc. Those that have memorized such frameworks realize that they have no practical use in the real world.
I have a new framework for you: Design Thinking. Two weeks ago, Fast Company declared Design Thinking the “it” concept, soon to be the topic of countless books, blogs, and speeches.
What is Design Thinking? Consider the designer’s process, their scientific method–now mirror it onto any business problem fathomable.
Design thinking takes the sexiness of design and extends it beyond aesthetics to each step of the product development cycle. By disseminating the design process, everyone can be the clever, right-brain attuned designer, but without hipster glasses and all-black attire.
What’s the Design Thinking process? Evangelists organize the process into 4 steps. If I was to design a chair, for example, here are steps:
- What kind of chair (scope)? Designers need constraints. How will I use the chair? Where will it go? These constraints set the scope of the problem and the designer can begin to get creative.
- Look at more chairs (research). Designers look for inspiration. A team of designers will venture into the field, observing new chair designs, trends, and inspiration from industries far removed from the process. At this point, the design team has many ideas.
- The drawing board (prototype). With several possible ideas for the chair, the designer will quickly sketch/model each idea. Prototyping the idea makes it tangible, facilitating new ideas, revisions, and progress.
- The perfect chair (implement)! After several rounds of prototyping and revisions (and perhaps more research!), the designer will have a few solid creations from which to choose.
Contrast this with the processes in a typical corporation (I call it the Powerpoint Methodology). Decision-making involves a committee 2-levels removed from a project, who will decide among 4 fixed options described in Powerpoint. The project team chose 4 options because they filled the Powerpoint document and time allotted for their presentation. The company will spend more effort on deciding among the options than creating them.
The Powerpoint methodology is structured and linear (i.e, choose among these fixed options). The design process, however, has endless possibilities, where one can move forward and backward between prototyping and research, never bound by corporate bureaucracy.
Is Design Thinking legit? I’m willing to give it a shot. My reasons:
- Pro: Just about the whole Internet (and every Fortune 500 CEO) is on-board the “design is important” bandwagon.
- Pro: It’s painful if you’ve watched a traditional business team choose a logo. Slow-moving decisions are based on awkward consensus or brute force. Compare this to logo design in a creative firm, which relies on rapid prototyping and produces far more innovation.
- Pro: Rather than a single vision, design thinkers work in teams using mass collaboration. 5 heads at business problem are better than one. Having finished Wikinomics, this is a philosphy I share.
- Con: IDEO loves Design Thinking because they created it. Much of the online buzz sources from IDEO employees, which leads me to believe the whole concept is masturbatory.
Learn more about Design Thinking:
- Forthcoming book proselytizing Design Thinking.
- Design Thinking Blogs: Metacool, Design Thinking
- If there was a design thinking degree, here’s the curriculum
- What does design thinking feel like?
- Harvard Business Review article on design thinking by IDEO CEO Tim Brown.
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Matt
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Phillip Maddox
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Matt
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Clive Grinyer
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Rotkapchen
