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Design thinking

Design in the era of the algorithm

Perfect text for those involved in circle three of Maeda: Computational Design.

“The design and presentation of data is just as important as the underlying algorithm. Algorithmic interfaces are a huge part of our future, and getting their design right is critical—and very, very hard to do. My work has begun to turn to the responsible and humane presentation of data-driven interfaces. And I suspect that yours will, too, in very short order. While constructing these machine learning models is indeed heavy-duty data science, using them is not. Tons of these machine learning models are available to all of us here to build upon right now.”

Josh Clark a.k.a. /joshclark | @bigmediumjosh ~ big medium courtesy of @gnat

How using Design Thinking will fix Design Thinking

Nested concept, design thinking.

“Design Thinking continues to be a hot topic (this article is one of many talking about it). Design Thinking has been hyped and even fetishized but there are also voices questioning its value, impact, and relevance. Design Thinking faces criticism for its lacking integration with business and compatibility with market reality. There are organizations that see Design Thinking as unnecessary rather than essential to driving organizational change and innovation. Does Design Thinking have to be reinvented or even replaced?”

Bert Bräutigam a.k.a. /bertbraeutigam | @bertbrautigam ~ The Next Web

Want to scale design thinking? Eight tips for embracing digital design collaboration

Scalability of design thoughts.

“Design is a top priority for companies that want to innovate and continue to improve the customer experiences. While many are investing in design thinking education, the distributed nature of teams makes it difficult for teams to practice, especially together. Ultimately, big initiatives to roll out design thinking as a core competence for all ‘knowledge and imagination workers’ have seen friction for both newly minted design thinkers and experts.”

Mariano Suarez-Battan a.k.a. /batmelon | @batmelon ~ O’Reilly Radar #Design

Design thinking origin story plus some of the people who made it all happen

Allways know where you’re coming from.

“Design thinking has an amalgamation of approaches, this is still quite unique — which is why sometimes — design thinking is applied as more of an umbrella term that catches multi-disciplinary, human-centered projects that involve research and rapid ideation. Most recently it has begun to monitor and measure itself in a quantified way, a trick its leant from the business and economics sectors.”

Jo Szczepanska a.k.a. /joszczepanska | @szczpanks

What is design thinking? Human-centered design and the challenges of complex problem-solving

Design thinking, the scientific method of the 21st century.

“What is it that we’re talking about, when we’re talking about design? We may first encounter design as aesthetic treatment and styling – certainly important, but not, of course, the entire story. Stylistic design is often seen in contrast with design as a process for tackling tough problems. Design thinking is an abductive approach to complex problem solving that leverages the designer’s empathetic mindset in order to understand people’s unarticulated needs and identify opportunities for solutions. This is a human-centered innovation process that can be applied to a wide range of challenges: design thinking can be used to create everything from products and services to business models and processes.”

Jonathan Follett a.k.a. /jonfollett | @jonfollett ~ O’Reilly Radar

It’s not just decoration: Design is a competitive advantage

All the rational arguments to convince C-level. Still no gut feeling.

“This is one reason why many in the field now downplay the D-word in favour of “User Experience,” or UX. Born out of software design, UX has become a useful lens for understanding everything from watches to wheelbarrows. The total experience of the customer is what counts. That includes the product’s fit and finish, its ergonomics and safety features, and how intuitive it is to use.”

Graham F. Scott ~ Canadian Business

Thinking about Design Thinking: Is it important?

All thinking is important.

“Design thinking is just another way to talk about problem-solving. Every design project you take on aims to solve some sort of problem for the client, whether it is helping more people learn about their company through a website, getting people into a store with a coupon or enticing people to buy something with an amazing package design. But design thinking is more than just problem solving. It is a hands-on approach to developing solutions.”

Carrie Cousins a.k.a. @carriecousins ~ Design Shack

Time to re-think Design Thinking

It’s no silver bullet but through critique the concept will only get stronger.

“Faced by growing competition and nimbler start-ups, many organizations are struggling. They suffer from a crisis of innovation. Unable to differentiate their brands, their products and their services in a digitally disruptive world, organizations’ future success depends on better managing and responding to change. Their very existence hinges on their ability to continuously and rapidly innovate. In order to do so successfully, they must place people at the heart of everything they do. They must harness the power of design. Business leaders once distinguished business strategy from customer experience but, today, that mindset is changing: business strategy has become experience strategy.”

Olof Schybergson and Shelley Evenson ~ Huffington Post courtesy of @marcovanhout

IBM is gearing up to become the world’s largest and most sophisticated design company

After Apple with its focus on the design of artifacts, the next posterchild of design will be IBM with its focus on design in business contexts.

“IBM’s aggressive and zealous design-minded approach can help promote a more nuanced definition of design’s purview. Just by the scale of its presence in 170 countries, IBM can re-contextualize roles and careers for the design profession around the world. Expanding design’s influence beyond finessing shapes, beautifying screen interfaces, and tidying up presentations, IBM’s trained employees can demonstrate how design thinking can improve and humanize solutions for the world’s most urgent matters, from detecting cancer and fighting the Zika virus to providing drone operators with real-time weather data.”

Anne Quito /anne-quito | @annequito ~ Quartz

IDEO’s secret recipe for an innovative design team

Design as a team sport. Getting rid of the genius designer myth.

“Hire for the right roles. Some people believe that founders are the only ones who can create company culture. It’s true that founders are usually responsible for creating the original values. Consider how Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google defined the way they wanted their first dozen employees to feel at work. In fact many of the best-loved parts of the culture started before Google had 50 employees. But as a company grows, there are still opportunities for cultural recalibration. Here are seven roles of people who help define, harness, reflect, and embody culture at IDEO. Think of them as the new faces of organizational culture.”

Mollie West ~ AIGA

Paradigm Shift: Report on the New Role of Design in Business and Society

Thomas Kuhn and design in business and society.

“Corporate cultures’ prevailing attitudes towards design have begun to shift. Financial companies and management consultancies now have design teams, and include “design” in their service portfolios. Large corporations are bolstering their in-house design capabilities, and appointing designers to executive roles. Venture capitalist firms and startups increasingly recognize the value of including designers in the early stages of business development. Even global organizations and international foundations now list design on their agendas. A paradigm shift is taking place in the field of design. This study examines some of the latest corporate investments in design, and reflects on what this phenomenon means for the wider field of design. The focus of this study is on the key trend indicators that are defining the current landscape of design, and its changing role in business and society.”

Gjoko Muratovski a.k.a. /gjokomuratovski ~ She Ji

Design ideal: Performing a dialogue between theorizing and designing

Let’s re-frame the relation between theory and practice. It’s not at all anymore about mind and hands.

“Increasingly, researchers engage with design as a means of inquiry to understand and theorize about real-world situations in a nuanced and generative manner. Doing so involves negotiating a tension between two opposing objectives. On the one hand, design is inherently concerned with addressing the problem through shaping a unique and particular solution. On the other, theorizing is increasingly desired as an outcome of a design inquiry. Or, in other words, a design inquiry needs to formulate findings that are transferable across various situations and are generative of new designs. How do design researchers negotiate the dialectic between theorizing and designing in practice?”

Naveen Bagalkot and Tomas Sokoler ~ ACM Interactions Mar/Apr 2016

Leading change through adaptive design

Design thinking, the scientific method of our century. Design doing?

“Change is fun. Change is hard. Between those truths, there yawns a large gap that poses a challenge for would-be change makers. Yet by integrating two widely influential practices – design thinking and adaptive leadership – social innovators can manage transformative projects in a way that’s both creatively confident and relentlessly realistic.”

Maya Bernstein and Marty Linsky ~ Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter 2016 (courtesy of @jimkalbach)

Design leadership: What’s next?

The big boys from the 20th century have many ideas about Design.

“It’s the greatest time to be a designer. Learn to talk the language of business and the language of technology, but lets not forget where we come from. Convergence is happening faster than we can imagine right now, and there is no better time to be a designer.”

Thomas Lockwood a.k.a. /thomaslockwood | @ThomsLockwood ~ FastCo.design