Notes on ‘Design Thinking’ from ‘Change by Design’

Just as I wrote the other post on various kinds of thinking did it strike me that I had a note in Evernote with ‘notes’ from Change by Design.

Like I wrote in that post, I did not even complete the book and a lot of things in it seemed to be PR for hiring. So you will actually find the notes here not really some grand insight about design thinking but some personal development stuff.

1. To operate within an interdisciplinary environment, an individual needs to have strength in 2 dimensions. He should be a T Shaped person — Depth in one domain (vertical line) and Breadth across many domains (horizontal line)
2. A cautiously worded memo asking for ‘permission’ is viewed with suspicion and the approver becomes unnecessarily cautious ← I have indeed been a victim of this, ha!
3. Why should you “draw” an idea (instead of writing)? — To draw an idea accurately, ‘decisions’ have to be made that can be avoided while writing, even in the most precise language ← I am sort of having both opinions on this. I have noticed it happen in both ways: Sometimes, it is easy to fool around when making an illustration than having to put in words. In other times, it indeed is easy to write down things in a fuzzy way but cannot do it while illustrating. So I would say it is about one’s intellectual honesty — Try to do both and you will have ensured that the idea has been thought through enough
4. Prototyping by children is very important. “Like every other kid, I was thinking with hands — using physical props are a springboard for my imagination”. This shift from physical to abstract and back again is one of the most fundamental process by which we explore the universe, unlock out imagination and open our minds to new possibilities. ←Okay, my daughter gets another of those Lego toys
5. One of the measures of an innovative organization is its average time to first prototype!