Design thinking

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DESIGN THINKING - 101
the emergence of the design economy
COLLEEN DAVIDSON SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

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Design Thinking 101 – Introduction
• This is a post-conference presentation – for two “Design
Thinkers” conferences that I attended in 2005-6. The
conferences were hosted by the Registered Graphic
Designers of Ontario Association.
• After attending these conferences (intended for graphic
designers), I discovered that the business world is also taking
a great interest in “design thinking”.
• Some top business schools are going so far as to make
radical and fundamental changes to their curriculum to
encompass “design thinking”
• Thus I wanted to learn more about “design thinking” for
business

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Design Thinking 101 – Overview
This presentation will look at three areas:
1. What is design thinking?
A graphic designers perspective
Bruce Mau Design: Massive Change Exhibition
According to Daniel H. Pink, a business advisor,
and author of two influential business books
According to Roger Martin,
Dean of the U of T Rotman School of Management

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Design Thinking 101
What is design? Definition from wikipedia.com:
Design is usually considered in the context of the applied arts,
engineering, architecture, and other such creative endeavors. It is
used both as a noun and a verb. As a verb, "to design" refers to
the process of originating and developing a plan for a product,
structure, or component. As a noun, "a design" is used for both
the final (solution) plan (e.g. proposal, drawing, model,
description) or the result of implementing that plan (e.g. object
produced, result of the process). More recently, processes (in
general) have also been treated as products of design, giving new
meaning to the term "process design".
Designing normally requires a designer considering aesthetic,
functional, and many other aspects of an object or process, which
usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling,
interactive adjustment, and re-design.

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Part 1:

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• About Bruce Mau:
– Bruce Mau is considered one of Canada's leading public
intellectuals, an internationally recognized expert on innovation
and creativity, and, according to The Globe and Mail, "arguably
our greatest designer." He willfully ignores all professional
boundaries, expanding the concept of design into intellectual
territory it rarely dares to tread. Someone who is applauded for
his ambition, humour and optimism, Mau has designed almost
everything that can be designed: from books to bookstores; from
office textiles and library signage to a museum of biodiversity
with Frank Gehry.
– Bruce Mau grew up in Sudbury, ON, and studied at the Ontario
College of Art & Design in Toronto

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• About Bruce Mau Design:
– Bruce Mau founded his studio in Toronto in 1985 and
serves as the creative director
– His company has now grown to a staff of forty and has
gained international recognition for its expertise and
innovation across a wide range of projects achieved in
collaboration with some of the world’s leading architects
and institutions, artists and entrepreneurs, writers,
curators, academics and businesses

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• Bruce Mau’s “Massive Change Exhibition” (2003-2005) was
commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery, and curated by
Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries. The
exhibition travelled to the AGO and the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Chicago.
• The exhibition invited viewers to consider the dynamic future
of design culture and the crucial real-life choices we must
make.
• The exhibition immersed visitors in a series of powerful
encounters with the latest innovations in the fields of urban
design, transportation, information design, revolutionary
material and more.

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• What is Massive Change? According to Bruce Mau “It's
not about the world of design. It's about the design of the
world.”
• Design has emerged as one of the world’s most powerful
forces. It has placed us at the beginning of a new,
unprecedented period of human possibility, where all
economies and ecologies are becoming global,
relational, and interconnected.

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• In order to understand and harness these emerging
forces, there is an urgent need to articulate precisely
what we are doing to ourselves and to our world. This
was the ambition of the exhibition.
• The exhibition was a celebration of our global capacities
but also a cautious look at our limitations. It
encompassed the utopian and dystopian possibilities of
this emerging world, in which even nature is no longer
outside the reach of our manipulation.

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• The exhibition explored paradigm-shifting events, ideas,
and people, investigating the capacities and ethical
dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation,
urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets,
materials, the image and information.
• We need to evolve a global society that has the capacity
to direct and control the emerging forces in order to
achieve the most positive outcome.
• We must ask ourselves: Now that we can do anything
what will we do?"

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• For many of us, design is invisible. We live in a world
that is so thoroughly configured by human effort that
design has become second nature, ever-present,
inevitable, taken for granted.
• And yet, the power of design to transform and affect
every aspect of daily life is gaining widespread public
awareness.

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• No longer associated simply with objects and
appearances, design is increasingly understood in a
much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and
produce desired outcomes.
• The exhibition mapped the new capacity, power and
promise of design.

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• The exhibition unfolded in a series of eleven general
themes, or economies, that addressed the fundamental role
of design in all aspects of human life, from manufacturing and
transportation to health and the military:
– urban, information, transportation, energy, images,
markets, materials, manufacturing, military, health, wealth
and politics
• Each area was filled with objects, images and displays
designed to educate, enlighten or even provoke debate
among visitors.
LINK TO QTVR >>

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Part 2:

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• Who is Dan Pink?
– Dan Pink is an independent business consultant, he's
advised start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies on
recruiting, business trends, and work practices.
– Dan served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to
Vice President Al Gore.
– He's also worked as: an aide to U.S. Secretary of Labor
Robert B. Reich, an economic policy staffer in the U.S.
Senate, a legal researcher in India

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• Who is Dan Pink?
– Dan Pink graduated from Northwestern University and
Yale Law School
– He has written on business and technology for The New
York Times, The New Republic, George, Washington
Monthly, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and
Wired magazine.
– In addition, he frequently contributes commentary and
book reviews to Public Radio International's "Marketplace"
program

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• Dan's first book, Free Agent Nation, about the growing ranks
of people who work for themselves, was a Washington Post
nonfiction bestseller and business bestseller in the U.S. and
Canada.
• Publishers Weekly says the book "has become a cornerstone
of employee-management relations."

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• Dan Pink is the author of two influential business books.
• His latest book, “A Whole New Mind”, charts the rise of right-
brain thinking in modern economies and explains the six
abilities individuals and organizations must master in an
outsourced and automated world.
• Several publications named it one of the best business books
of the year. A Whole New Mind has sold more than 100,000
copies in the U.S. and has been translated into 12 languages.

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• In this section, I will focus on his new book: “A Whole New
Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future - Moving from
the Information Age to the Conceptual Age”
• The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age
that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which
"right brain" qualities - inventiveness, empathy, meaning -
predominate.
• That's the argument at the center of his new book, which uses
the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding
the contours of our times.

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• Logical and precise, left-brain thinking
gave us the Information Age
• Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled
by artistry, empathy, and emotion

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• Dan Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes to excel.
• A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on
which professional success and personal fulfillment now
depend, and includes a series of hands-on exercises culled
from experts around the world to help readers sharpen the
necessary abilities.
• This book will change not only how we see the world but how
we experience it as well.

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• Dan Pink argues:
“Design is a high-concept aptitude that is difficult to outsource
or automate - and that increasingly confers a competitive
advantage in business.”
• This may explain why corporate recruiters from companies like
General Motors or McKinsey & Co. are heading to top arts grad
schools in search of talent.
“The MFA is the new MBA,” writes Pink.
• Thus business schools are changing the way they do business.

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Part 3:

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• “In a global economy, elegant design is becoming a critical
competitive advantage. The trouble is, most business people don't
think like designers.”
• The Rotman School sees great value in the designer's approach to
solving problems – the integrative way of thinking and problem-
solving that can be applied to all components of business.
• Dean Roger Martin has said that “we are on the cusp of a design
revolution in business,” and as a result, “today's business people
don't need to understand designers better, they need to become
designers.”

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• Design is one of the hottest topics in the business arena in
recent years, dubbed “the new driver of innovation and the
new competitive weapon”.
• In 2006, the World Economic Forum featured a roster of
programs on the value of design as a means of unlocking
breakthrough ideas (including three sessions led by Rotman
Dean Roger Martin.)

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• If everyone could get in on what the world’s leading
innovators are discovering, we’d see more value and less
waste – of energy, time and money.
• But before design can impact human and economic value to
its fullest potential, it must be translated into an accessible,
‘do-able’ program.
• Those who are intrigued by design need to be able to grasp
its core notions and begin to put its principles and practices
into play, with a long-term conviction to shifting their culture by
driving the philosophy throughout the entire organization.

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• Whether your goal is to develop new products or services, a
new way of marketing to your customer, or to reinvent your
entire business model, ‘design thinking’ holds valuable clues
as to how to get to bigger ideas, faster and more efficiently.
• And while there are many methods for fueling innovation, the
principles and practices behind design are so intuitive and
have such a pedigree of success, their value is undeniable.
 Design's powerful impact on business strategy will require a
whole new way of thinking.

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• Martin asserts that traditional companies "reward two types of
logic: inductive (proving that something actually operates) and
deductive (proving that something must be).”
• Designers combine inductive and deductive reasoning to
create a fresh approach -- abductive thinking -- which Martin
defines as "suggesting that something may be and reaching
out to explore it.“
• Instead of acting on what's certain, designers bet on what's
probable. Companies such as Apple act like design shops by
saying, "If everything must be proven, we'll never make the
likes of an iPod."

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• Martin believes that business schools are also out of position
for the emerging design-based economy. In his view, even the
degree -- a master's of business administration -- is
problematic.
"We're telling students that the big bucks are made by
administering linear improvements -- getting better and
better at doing essentially the same thing," he says. "But
the real challenge lies in getting better and better at a
different thing: devising clever solutions to wickedly difficult
problems."

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• That view has led Martin and a handful of other pioneers to
lead a groundbreaking effort to redesign business education
itself:
– In a first step, Rotman has allied with the
Ontario College of Art & Design to launch
a series of joint courses.
– The Illinois Institute of Technology's
Institute of Design recently launched
a nine-month-long executive master's
degree program in design methods.

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• Stanford University has committed $35 million to launch its “d.school”, where
people from large companies and startups alike will come to learn design thinking.
“We want to produce T-shaped thinkers,” says David Kelley, the chairman of Ideo
and founder of the d.school. “That means combining analytical thinking -- the
vertical leg of the T -- with horizontal thinking: intuitive, experimental, and
empathetic.”
Design Thinking at Stanford University

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Summary
Jeffrey Huang on Design Thinking
and Business
• Jeffrey Huang is the Director of the Media and Design Laboratory
and a Professor at the Faculty of Computer and Communications
Sciences, and at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil and
Environmental Engineering at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de
Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. The EPFL is in the heart of Europe
and is considered to be one of Europe's leading institutions of
science and technology.
• His research focuses on the intersection of architecture and
information systems.
• He is a Swiss citizen of Chinese origins, and received a doctoral
degree in design from Harvard

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Summary
Jeffrey Huang on Design Thinking
and Business – video

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Sources
• Jeffrey Huang The Swisshouse : An Inhabitable Interface for Connecting Nations, Huang, J., and Waldvogel, M., In Proceedings of Designing
Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques, Cambridge, MA, USA, August 1-4, 2004; ACM 2004; 195-204.
• Future Space: A New Blueprint for Business Architecture, Huang, J., Harvard Business Review (April 2001); Volume 7, Number 4, 2001; pp. 149-161.
• How Do Distributed Design Organizations Act Together To Create A Meaningful Design?, Huang, J., In Computers in Buildings: Proceedings of CAAD
Futures '99, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, Netherlands.
• Bruce Mau – Massive Change Exhibition:
http://www.massivechange.com
• When MBA Meets Designer - A GE manager learns to think creatively: INSEAD graduate Sameer Agrawal shares his story:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_41/b4004407.htm
• Business Week - The Empathy Economy
"Design thinking" can create rewarding experiences for consumers -- the key to earnings growth and an edge that outsourcing can't beat:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2005/nf2005037_4086.htm
• Business Week - The Talent Hunt - Desperate to innovate, companies are turning to design schools for nimble, creative thinkers:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_41/b4004401.htm
• MIT World - Innovation Through Design Thinking:
http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/357/
• Stanford D School:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/
• Fast Company:
The Business of Design - In an economy where style is king, we all need to start thinking and acting more like design:
http://fastcompany.com/magazine/93/design.html
• iDesign - Seven Ways of Design Thinking - by Dr. Charles Burnette:
http://www.idesignthinking.com/main.html
• Red Hat Magazine - Intro. To Design Thinking:
Intro to design thinking
• Engineering Design Thinking Teaching and Learning (from departments of mechanical engineering at some of the top universities in the US)
http://www.asee.org/publications/jee/upload/SamplePages_103-120.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design

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Sources
• Canadian Business
Dean of Design (November 6-19, 2006)
• Fast Company
Tough Love: Business Wants to Love Design, But It's an Awkward Romance
by Roger Martin (October 2006)
The Business of Design (March 2005)
Masters of Design (June 2004)
• BusinessWeek Special Report: Get Creative!
Meet the Innovation Gurus: The Academic: Roger Martin (August 1, 2005)
BusinessWeek Online's Innovation and Design Channel
Is Reality the Enemy of Innovation? (December 4, 2006)
At the Crossroads of Design and Business (July 31, 2006)
Designing in Hostile Territory by Roger Martin (Nov.17, 2005)
Reliability vs. Validity by Roger Martin (Sept.29, 2005)
Why Decisions Need Design, Part 1 by Roger Martin (Aug.30, 2005)
Why Decisions Need Design, Part 2 by Roger Martin (Sept.1, 2005)
Creativity That Goes Deep by Roger Martin (August 3, 2005)
• Globe and Mail
Ad firms tout ‘design thinking (October 18, 2006)
• Illinois Institute of Design Journal
Designing Decisions: An Interview with Roger Martin (May 2006)
• The Toronto Star
Designing Original Business Thinkers (Sept.21, 2006)
• National Post
Designers’ point of view applied to business (October 19, 2006)
• Contract Magazine
Trends: Design Business (February 1, 2007)
• Rotman Magazine
Designing in Hostile Territory by Roger Martin (Spring 2006)
Design Thinking vs. Design Doing by Heather Fraser (Spring 2006)
Embedding Design Into Business by Roger Martin (Fall 2005)
The Design of Business by Roger Martin(Winter 2004)
• Azure Magazine
Q&A: Roger Martin (Nov./Dec. 2005)

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