DESIGN THINKING SERIES || Part 1 of 4: Busting the myths on Design Thinking
Author — R George Panakal
The buzzword of the third millennium so far has been ‘Design Thinking.’ So, what is it?
The definition of design thinking will depend on whom you are asking the question. So, it is also one of the most debated topics today, with advocates of most methodologies trying to prove their superiority over the next. While some people swear by the Stanford D-School method, others will accept nothing but the Ideo design philosophy. As a discipline, design thinking is not a complicated practice. And like any simple practise, can help you solve complex challenges. Let’s understand design thinking by first understanding what it is NOT. We will look at the three most widespread (mis)conceptions on design thinking.
1. Design thinking is NOT a silver bullet to solve all your problems. Immediately.
I once worked with a VP of a banking major who wanted a program on design thinking to help his sales team meet their monthly targets. “Oh sure,” I said. “Give me a couple of weeks to speak with your team and draw up a program design.”
“That’s too much time,” he said. “I need a four-hour workshop to help them come up with closure techniques they can use, to show me results by the end of this month!”
Unfortunately, that seems to be the approach to design thinking as well. The popular sentiment being that you can call a group into a classroom, show them a few sides for an hour and miraculously transform their outlook to solving problems.
I am confident that design thinking can be used to arrive at effective closure techniques. However, my experiences tell me that I cannot be as assured with the efficiency of the solution I design, given the time constraints, to see visible results. As a learning designer and practitioner of design thinking, I will need to follow a design philosophy (thinking) to even begin to understand if I am solving the right problem. This is followed by a series of steps that assure me of arriving at the appropriate and relevant solution. And while it can be applied to most situations, one must be sensitive of tight deadlines and defined boundaries. For example, I cannot create a rich media design thinking online multiplayer game in a month, programming only using Delphi.
This is also a sneak peek into one of the important steps of design thinking which we shall cover in part three of this series — choosing the right problem to solve.
2. Design thinking is NOT only for creative people.
I can’t think of a statement that is farther from the truth than this one. Creativity helps when you have to come up with solutions. No debate there. However, that’s not the ONLY skill to help you come up with innovative solutions. There are multiple tools and techniques one may use if they find themselves creatively handicapped. As a design thinker, you can harness tools like empathy map to figure out what people want, you can use rapid prototyping tools or Lego blocks to create designs, and so forth. And if you are able to harness the power of a collective on top of that, there’s nothing that stops you from creating stellar solutions!
In my experience, I have found that people with discipline have the most success with the design thinking process. I refer to discipline here are a practice of consciously following set guidelines. Like the Six Sigma process, which requires one to be guided by the DMAIC process and follow the principles laid therein.
As Scott Barry Kaufman writes in this blog, anyone can cultivate creativity by exploring both inner and outer experience. And that, mind you, is a mindful process that needs discipline.
So the next time someone tells you that they are not creative, tell them, “Good. You can be like Steve Jobs then, and cultivate your creativity!”.
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#Designthinking #Innovation
