‘The ABCs of Design Thinking’: It's a PlayBook
Every design is a story…
You cannot spend a year at the Stanford Design School and not be a fully fleshed design thinker. A Five-day design sprint will send you right into using words such as, “Ideate”, “Iterate”, “Investigate”… And ‘I’ tell you, the experience is life-changing!
The minute I walked into one of the d.Schools' design studios, the first thing I noticed was the open space, an indication of complete liberation. Two red couches that make a statement in the studios. The color that stimulates action and confidence and sets a bold, bright tone. Red is also directly related to energy. I felt my fire suddenly ignited for me to take action. A complete change of mindset. This is the feeling I get when I work within creative teams.
In every project that we engage in, there’s a need to find clarity in order to avoid unnecessary risks. Design thinking (a word that has been overused), all begins with empathy. A year ago when I curated my design thinking manifesto, I took the latter into consideration. Immersing myself in the shoes of my users.
I bet when you hear the word ‘design’ you think about sketching, colors, shapes, and something tangible that you can touch. You are on the right track because with design thinking tools of design like post-its and whiteboards are used to make it simple and ubiquitous. To differentiate ‘design’ from ‘design thinking’ we need to understand that the talent that design thinking is trying to harness is not rooted in either natural gifts or studio training- it lies in the creative process of problem-solving. What would be different if you thought like a designer? In the design thinking ‘PlayBook’, I recently designed, we have five steps for you- empathize, ideate, prototype, test, and share.
‘This ‘PlayBook’ was influenced by the Stanford Design School concepts. As a problem-solving approach that has been tried and tested with socially ambiguous problem settings, it deals with everyday-life-problems, which are nonetheless difficult to solve — “wicked problems”, as Horst Rittel (1972) termed it.
If thinking like a designer means being curious, challenging assumptions, getting lost in dreams, getting into a question-framing mindset, and collaborating. So what does Design Thinking mean really? It’s simple creative steps that can be followed to solve problems.
This is a creative process that engages a person in opportunities to empathize and understand user needs, identify/re-define problems, brainstorm ideas, and finally test these ideas using prototypes to learn and iterate towards the best solution.
This ‘PlayBook’ is meant to give you insights into the important steps of design thinking and to support you in your journey as you learn how to facilitate design thinking with tested methods, toolkits, and ethos that FutureLab Initiative™ has adopted in their project design.
It is not the ultimate-object manuscript for design thinking facilitation and it is not a cure-all for embracing ambiguity in your space. But we hope that it will help bring clarity to your expectations vs. reality.
Get all from this ‘PlayBook’ by subscribing for more content here: www.perekofoundation.org
