matthew's blog

There has been a growing push back from within the professional design community regarding Design Thinking, a number of posts have emerged on sites like Core 77 Susan Heller and Don Norman have both recently published articles expressing their view that Design Thinking is at best a myth and worst a threat to design’s very existence.

Perhaps I am being naive? jaded? or perhaps its that I no longer own any black turtlenecks but I see Design Thinking as being the best gift the design profession has gotten since the Bauhaus.

Most of the designers I talk to have one common complaint; clients don’t get what we do, colleagues don’t value our contribution, we never get to sit at The Big Table, in short no one values design. Yet these same people are quick to jump on the bandwagon of bloggers who say Design Thinking is evil. Its evil because now clients and colleagues can use Design Thinking undermine design, to take what’s ours and make it theirs while at the same time creating designs that aren’t really “good” design. Really? They don’t get design’s value yet they are trying to steal it from you? And they are going to do it wrong? Paranoid is often the word that comes to mind when I read these posts. However to be honest a more objective response is: Your clients gets the value of design, they just don’t get your value as a team member.

In the discussion about why Design doesn’t need Design Thinking often these anti-Design Thinking people site handful of exceptional designers (Lowey, Teague, Rams, Rand, Ive, etc.) for having gained positions at The Big Table–being business leaders as much as designers. None of these giants had Design Thinking, yet they achieved great success for their clients/companies and for themselves. But too often the design community when looking at the achievements of these people never makes it past the designs they created. But if you go beyond the artifacts look at how they actually got to the board room you will see they offered more than talent.

First these designers showed a new capacity to help their clients/company’s make money than anyone around them not by talking about form or design process but about the business opportunity. Second, they lead the establishment of predictable and scalable program(s) within their companies/clients that were both responsible and accountable for the market success of the company’s products. And while they all had their failures they built that into their approach so no one was surprised and everyone felt they had ownership from the beginning eliminating finger pointing. Third, they had a CEO or influential executive sponsor who got design and was willing to invest in it. Finally, and to me most importantly, they worked with their colleagues to understand design the way they understood finance/accounting or manufacturing or distribution; not by making them each an expert in those fields but by cultivating their understanding of it role in the larger context and giving them an appreciation and respect for the discipline. (A critical factor in the successfully gaining buy in and support.) Also everyone of these designers were all also exceptionally articulate; they could move fluidly from conversations about business with business managers to design with designers. Most designers–either due to attitude or aptitude–are not willing/able to have the former and few have anything new to add to the later. To be sure their talent helped–like talent helps a sales executive close deals, or a CFO make good investments. But at that level everyone is expected to do their job well. Unlike most designers, these exceptional designers did not solely rely on their talent to climb the corporate ladder–they used their business acumen to do that.

So what does that have to do with Design Thinking? If its done right, as a facilitation process, Design Thinking provides a blueprint for doing all four of those things without having requires the genetics & luck of a genius. The main steps in Design Thinking (at lease the common ones to most people’s models of Design Thinking) will result in clarity around the business and the opportunities, clear delineation for the boundaries of accountability, alignment & shared ownership around the approach, and buy from the CEO/Executive Sponsor, while also generating an understanding and appreciation for good design. Every time. Design Thinking is not new to Designers–indeed its how we have been practicing design for decades by combining this approach with our respective talents. But what is novel about Design Thinking is that for the first time it gives the design community common ground with our our clients & colleagues. It offers a shared means for understanding the value of design to non-design. And best of all it allows those clients/colleagues to see design as something other than a black box, if not black art.

Designers who see Design Thinking as an “either/or” (it verses traditional design) or who think Design Thinking will some how make every MBA want to be a designer, are at least naive and worst demonstrating design’s nearly infinite capacity for exclusion.  Indeed in my experience it quite the opposite. Exposing business colleagues to Design Thinking ts like giving someone an appreciation for fine wine; most will not try to make their own, rather they seek out the people who do it with exception and always think of you when want recommendations. Which is why I see Design Thinking as the coolest marketing tool ever developed by any industry. Design Thinking provides the clarity needed for designers to be truly successful in the business world — but on a massive scale.  To be honest in many ways I think of Design Thinking as basically a kind of “Design for Dumbies” combined with global ad campaign paid for by the business press. The biggest risk to the success of Design Thinking is the design profession.

But to me the real opportunity presenting by Design Thinking is what comes after Design Thinking? Following the lead from groups like McKinsey, BCG, or even IDEO, once all your clients’ are using Design Thinking, the design profession can feed their competitive needs and  we can sell them the next generation of design strategy.

For the first time, as a professional, rather than selling a single product/project, we have the potential of creating recurring revenue streams by selling the clients continual innovation process improvements and all that come along with it. Let’s not screw this up.

“Design is a political act. Every time we design a product, we are making a statement about the direction the world will move in. We therefore have to continually ask ourselves: is the product we are designing relevant?”, Stefano Marzano.

I have long been a fan of Marzano and his accomplishments. And his perspective is more true today than ever–not just at the abstract level but in the day to day  as well. Everything we design has a predictive political impact, whether its in how we should recognize the environment as stakeholder or organizationally as our peers jockey for position in light of the new design solutions.

Stephen Johnson has a new book, Where Good Ideas Come From,  he outlines some of the ideas behind ideas. Three main ideas are that

• Ideas are networks
• To encourage innovation, you need to design work places to support it
• Good ideas are more likely to result from slow hunches

The second one is something I have been advocating for years; you need physical space that not only permits people to collaborate but actually encourages them to come up with new perspectives on the problem and that helps to nurture the development of the idea into a tangible artifact.

Studios. In multiple organizations I have either created or helped to create studios. Studios are spaces that foster exploration and encourage people to make things. Over the years I have discovered some basic principles of studios…

• Nothing in the space should be precious. That means if it has something spilled on it, if it gets moved, dented or tipped over it either won’t hurt it (too much) or no one is going to get upset. That include the floor, walls and any furnishings
• Everything should be on wheels. Or be on wheels or light enough for one person to carry. Whether its tables, sofas, easels or lamps, everything should be easily moved—both around the space and out of the space.
• Natural light. While it is not always possible, natural light is more energizing and balanced. More importantly windows will give the team the ability to gaze out to the horizon. They can see the passage of time organically.
• Every vertical surface should either be whiteboards, windows or a solid bright (almost to the point of being irritating) color. My rule of thumb is 60% whiteboard, 20% window and 20% bright color
• A mixture of comfy and work seating—but less places to sit than people on the team. Mix in couches, beanbags, exercise balls, and bar stools with the desk chairs. The idea to inhibit formality from creeping in. Additionally there should be fewer places to sit than people. People can perched on the edge of a table or arm of a couch but the goal is to make sure not everyone gets comfortable. You want the team to keep moving, not chill out.
• Small tables. Don’t get large conference tables rather get a set of small tables that can be pulled together to make a big surface or shoved into corners to make multiple workstations. If you are using the space for brain storming, get round tables or square tables.
• Don’t let your network cables tie you down! Invest in wireless routers.
• Remind the team how they are supposed to behave. For the studios I help build, we typically display the Rules of Brainstorming to encourage the team to apply them all the time, not during the official brainstorms. You can get fancy and get professional lettering or rub-on type to write the rules on the wall, but a simple hand written sign either on the white board or taped to the wall (or window) works just as well.
• Toys, candy and caffeine. Ok you can include healthy snacks too but make sure you keep your team hydrated, caffeinated and happy. Toys and candy are tightly associated for most people with childhood—that time in their lives when they could play and use their imagination to make anything possible. The studio space should help tap into those memories and those behaviors.
• Everything stays in the studio. While occasional trips out to see customers, check out the competition and give updates in the boardroom are to be expected, for the most part the sketches, notes, photos, mock-ups and models should all be keep in the studio. Using the walls, windows, whiteboards, floor etc. the team should over the course of the project literally be immersed in their project.
• Purge. Periodically, the project lead should have the team do purges—removing or archiving material that is either fully incorporated or completely rejected. These purges will also serve to resurface lost of forgotten ideas and insights. Often these purges will trigger new perspectives on the problem.
• Private workspaces. In addition to the group studio space most people still feel the need to have a private area that they can call their own. Given at times it will be necessary for the team to take a break from each other maintaining small persona work areas is important.
• Most importantly, don’t treat these spaces as anything special; they are working spaces. Allow your teams to customize them, abuse them, to make messes while they are making innovations.

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I often wish that when some new innovation was discussed, be it in journals,  magazines or design competitions, they would include the design principles for the solutions. To allow the readers to see the both the rationale and the constraints taken on by the design team creating the solution and to see how they defined what success would look like.

To assess if the artifact is really meeting its objectives we have to go beyond the final form–the styling and technology, to really understand the intention of the design we have to understand how the designers saw the space their eventual solution would fit into, we need to know what were their design principles? Whether explicit or implicit it is almost certain that the designers defined a set of design principles to give them rails to guide the development of the eventual solution.

Creativity requires constraints–not walls or barriers but funnels to focus their energy and increase their forward momentum. In Design Thinking, the final deliverable from Synthesis are Design Principles, and provide the team with  constraints. Design Principles summarize the key criteria for success, encompassing what the solution must and must not provide for all the stakeholders. These principles can include criteria for the long-term impact of the solution, including the financial, environmental and organizational considerations. Design Principles can outline the discovery, adoption and deployment of the solution by the users. In short Design Principles are the shared values between the team, their organization and the people who will use their solution.

Being defined before the team develops their prototypes, Design Principles align the team and the organization on the project’s success criteria—if all the Design Principles are achieved the solution is successful. Concepts achieving greater completion against the Design Principles are better solutions.

Multidisciplinary teams often face the challenge of agreeing upon what success means—often deferring to their individual professions for the criteria. Design Thinking defines success based on user needs, business opportunities and the practicality of the proposed solution. Design Principles are especially valuable for distributed teams. A shared set of Design Principles enables the entire team stay focused on the Design Challenge ensuring they select and develop those ideas that best solve the problem.

The granularity of the Design Principles depends on the Design Challenge. However these principles should never define the solution or be allowed to validate an existing solution as the right answer. Design Principles should inspire, direct and help the team explore potential innovations. Design Principles provide the team with structure, establishing boundaries and success metrics for the team’s innovations. In effect putting rails on their efforts.

Companies approach me looking for ways to drive innovation. They are surprised when I ask them if their organization is really ready to innovate or if their staff is just going along with idea. The tacit cultural norms, not the explicit operational or business models, are often the real inhibitors to innovation. While everyone knows innovation drives growth, it also drives change. And change equals risk. In larger organizations this risk is not limited to investment but also includes the political risk to the stakeholders. Successful innovations delivered to market reset expectations for everyone; MBO’s, budget, power, authority, influence as well as career paths and reporting lines all shake out in the aftershock of innovation. The goal within these organizations is to make sure everyone innovates in lock-step; no one out pacing their peers and all taking turns sharing the recognition and rewards.

Consultants have long been used to mitigate these risks, either to help champion innovations or to help shut them down before they create too many ripples. Design consultant have the added capacity to increase the creativity-cache of the leaders who engage them. Design consultants need to change their approach from delivering design solutions to enabling organizations to sustainably develop design solutions on their own. While they might still needing help in regard to the final design specifications; the aesthetics and fit and finish, the goal should be transform their corporate culture to embrace innovation.

Businesses have long valued the capacity to measure and mark improvements in a predictable and controlled manner, however innovation is neither. Innovation can come from anyone at anytime. The real secret to successful innovation is creating an ecology of innovation; making sure to remove any inhibitors to the growth of ideas. Design Thinking is a great approach to sustainable innovations.

Its important to understand that Design thinking is not a step-by-step process; rather it is a set of problem solving tools. Unlike traditional waterfall models, teams practicing Design Thinking can move fluidly back and forth between the analysis, ideation and prototyping without jeopardizing their project’s timeline.

Tim Brown, in Change by Design, explains, “many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right development and experiences can unlock.” Brown lists the characteristics of a design thinker as:

Empathy – They can put themselves in other’s shoes and are focused on end-user goals rather than business, technology or aesthetic ones.

Integrative thinking – “They not only rely on analytical processes (those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient – and sometimes contradictory – aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.”

Optimism – They are convinced there’s a solution to be found for every problem.

Experimentalism – Design thinkers pose questions to find new directions and open up unseen areas.

Collaboration – Design thinking is a collaborative effort that brings people together with a wide range of disciplines, skills and knowledge. Marketers, psychologists, industrial designers, anthropologists and engineers all might be recruited to work alongside each other.

Design thinking is not design. Thinking like a designer doesn’t make you a designer. While all of these will certainly make you a better problem solver, and with practice will even allow you think like a designer, these alone will not make you a designer.

Thinking like a designer can help you solve wicked business or societal or organizational problems. Being a designer means you not only think but also you can create those desirable artifacts we all covet. Likewise design requires apprenticeship. and design thinking, like any thinking, also requires apprenticeship. Be it parents with a infant, teachers with children, professors with students or mentors with adults, we have to experience the act of thinking to think. In lieu of a real mentor for those flying solo on their journey into design thinking, I think that Rams commandments can provide a framework for their development in thinking like a designer.