My previous blogs in this series outlined how Design Thinking creates effective solutions for the most complex business and design-related issues (click here for the first post).
They further outlined how design thinkers are the best team leaders, effortlessly combining input from analytical thinkers and other design thinkers to create consensus of direction, focusing efforts on both pragmatic and inspirational solutions
(click here for the second).
They further outlined how design thinkers are the best team leaders, effortlessly combining input from analytical thinkers and other design thinkers to create consensus of direction, focusing efforts on both pragmatic and inspirational solutions
(click here for the second).
However, design thinkers shouldn’t be relegated just to the ideation or strategic phase of a project. In the execution or “doing” phase, Design Thinking can play an integral part in bringing a great idea to life.
Currently, Design Thinking is most readily embraced in the initial problem-solving phases, the innovation brainstorms, or what Marty Neumayer so eloquently refers to as “the fuzzy front end” of ideation. All too often, design thinkers are welcomed into the process of initiating the vision but then are shunned when it’s time to get things done. Why do the insights of these folks, who helped craft the idea, get overlooked when it comes to implementing those ideas? Can Design Thinking help drive the transformation from brainstorm to boardroom?
The answer is a resounding “You bet!” Having been part of the ideation process beforehand, great design thinkers are also great implementation leaders, because they have already built a foundation under their ideas of how to best get them done.
Design thinkers are different than dreamers. Dreamers see an ideal solution but often have difficulty moving beyond ideation into the actualization phase; simply put, dreamers dream, not do. They leave the “hard part” up to the implementation team. Dreamers’ somewhat unrealistic solutions and the way they express these solutions actually do the greatest disservice to design thinkers, allowing analytical thinkers to lump everyone together as “fluffy creative types”. Dreamy thinking denigrates Design Thinking.
Like designers, design thinkers don’t get paid for their ideas; they get paid on their ability to actualize their ideas. It’s not the concept, but the real, functioning item or process resulting from that concept which adds the real value. An integral part of the designed thought is the designed solution. To a design thinker, an idea is not a solution until a pathway can be built to implement it. An idea about a possible solution immediately inspires another idea about how to implement it. (Ex. Cool concept. How do we get there from here?) An actualized pathway inspires further ideal possibilities (So now that we know how to get it done, what else can this same process create?). The design thinker’s ability to move from ideas to implementation and back is so rapid and fluid that one rarely evolves without the other.
Why are design thinkers also the best implementers? Because designers can articulate their ideas visually and communicate exactly how these concepts would function. Designers rapidly prototype their concepts. Even in its earliest phase of development, design thinkers can develop a testable prototype and then analyze it against other prototypes to determine which is the most viable. This testing often results in borrowing the best elements of each concept until the one most eloquent solution emerges.
As organizations embrace Design Thinking as a problem solving process, they quickly discover that Design Thinking fails without design minded people driving the process. Bruce Nussbaum, one of the forefathers of Design Thinking, wrote the leading work on Design Thinking in March 2005, and just this month he writes about its demise (http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/beyond-design-thinking). In fact, this dialogue has compelled me to write an “epilogue” to this series- stay tuned as I explore Design Thinking’s transformation.
The shift in terminology does not mean that the essence of Design Thinking has become outmoded or obsolete. No matter what buzzword is used to “redefine” them, the basic tenets of Design Thinking outlined in this series still hold strong. My message to those of you who still disbelieve the value of the creative problem solving: embrace Design Thinking in the ideation, team-building and implementation processes. Embrace designers’ active involvement throughout this process. Make Design Thinking your core competency. Make it your company’s core competency, and Design Thinking will prove its value.