Call me late to the party, but in my web travels I just became aware of a concept called “Design Thinking”, a method of using right-brain creative thinking to design new human-centered products and services. The term is credited to IDEO’s David Kelley, who began using this approach in 1982 to design Apple Computer’s first mouse followed by such innovations as the Palm TREO, Oral-B toothbrushes, and Steelcase Leap chairs. But now Design Thinking is being heralded as the next great business innovation which can be applied to tackle complex business problems and address greater social issues like poverty, education, and healthcare.
In an effort to further understand the concept of Design Thinking, I got lost in a myriad of academic online publications and esoteric blogs that attempt to explain the methodology and applications in great detail. Here was probably the clearest description of the process from the Stanford Social Innovation review.
“The design thinking process is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. There are three spaces to keep in mind: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Think of inspiration as the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation as the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas; and implementation as the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives. The reason to call these spaces, rather than steps, is that they are not always undertaken sequentially. Projects may loop back through inspiration, ideation, and implementation more than once as the team refines its ideas and explores new directions. Not surprisingly, design thinking can feel chaotic to those doing it for the first time. But over the life of a project, participants come to see that the process makes sense and achieves results, even though its form differs from the linear, milestone-based processes that organizations typically undertake.”
Hmmm … sounds an awful lot like Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology and Eric Ries’ Lean Startup concept which both take a very similar iterative and human-centered design approach. However, what struck me as the biggest difference between Design Thinking and Customer Development is not the concepts themselves, but the packaging and presentation of them. In reading about Design Thinking, I felt intimidated and stupid – like I needed an advanced degree in industrial design, social science or futurism (had to look this one up) to understand how to interpret and apply it. On the other hand, the practical nature of Customer Development makes me feel smart, confident and provides a source of daily inspiration. Their community of practitioners are battle-scarred entrepreneurs who provide checklists, visual examples, case studies, lessons learned, and step-by-step guides to help everyday folks like me. Customer Developers are real people like the raw Dave McCLure who speaks to us in a language we can all understand, Ash Maurya whose sensible blog proclaims “Practice Trumps Theory” and Cindy Alvarez, a successful Product Manager who happens to be great at design too. I couldn’t help but imagine that Design Thinkers hang out at libraries, lecture halls, and museums while Customer Developers gather at Starbucks, dimly lit pubs, and founders’ lofts.
While I do agree with the right-brain principles of Design Thinking I have a hard time believing it will reach critical mass given the esoteric nature by which it is communicated and the lack of grass roots educational efforts. Perhaps Design Thinkers should take a page out of their own playbook and do some real user testing on the approachability of the methodology itself. I also believe that the solutions to the social challenges of education, health care, and poverty will be more quickly solved not by academics with d.school degrees, but by Lean Startup entrepreneurs skilled in the practices of Customer Development.
Nonetheless, if you’re still interested in further exploring Design Thinking check out these resources:
- Change by Design by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
- In Education: i-Design by Charles Burnette
- Business Exchange on Bloomberg.com
- What is Design Thinking, Really? by Venessa Miemis
- Design Thinking Exchange by Nicolae Halmaghi
- Design Thinking 101 by Daniel McKenzie
- In Start-ups: By UX consultant Amir Khella
This reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with an acquaintance who told me she was going to get her MBA at [forgot which] B-school “because they have a great entrepreneurship track”.
“So you want to be an entrepreneur?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then why are you going to B-school?”
Strangely, she never really talked to me again after that.
Matt, great reading.
I reckon that the key take-away from design thinking is the customer-centric, problem-solving approach. I believe that this is natural development. Value migrates from high-end innovation towards low-end innovation as technology is commoditized. Cyclic. Similar to Clay Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation.
Dave McClure, Eric Ries & Co do at the same time favor data-driven approaches. As this is formal and structured methods, how does that compare to the concept of [creative] design thinking?
Hi Tor,
Thanks for your comments and great posts about MVP on your blog (http://torgronsund.wordpress.com/)! I agree with you that Customer Development is more of a data-driven or results-oriented methodology, but I think to be successful it requires creative/design thinking to come up with the initial and subsequent hypotheses to be tested. What I love about Customer Development and Lean Startup principles is the balance between creative and analytical thinking. It is my belief that successful entrepreneurs and startups need to adopt a whole-brain philosophy as they design their products and build their organization of complimentary left and right brain people.
Regards,
Matt
Hi Matt,
Couple of quick pointers. I agree on the whole with your thoughtful remarks. Great posting.
D-schools teaches actionable methods and approaches. Activities like rapid-prototyping or iterative user centered design is only as good as the people making new discoveries and identifying new insights.
But the real reward from using d-school talent or methodologies come from having them design something useful, desirable and getting it in the hands of users.
At dare we use all manner of d-school techniques (increasing we call upon storytelling and even social media) to help us evolve product design ideas. Data-driven and results driven methodologies are very analytical and quantitative ways of looking at problems.
What about qualitative results which talk about the ‘why’ we ‘feel’ something? Remember your end users have needs and desires and ultimately wish to connect with something meaningful. We all have emotional needs and desires.
But hey, that’s a much softer and a bit lofty. We are all more sensitive to how good design, branding and narrative play into building products that people have strong connections with.
Douglas Bowman says it rather nicely:
“A confusing, poorly designed message will miss its target almost every time. In a world where data bits flow abundantly, our minds have developed filters to sift through the overflow of useless and badly designed information.
While design must appeal to our sense of aesthetic, it must not stand in the way of delivery, cause complications, or introduce stumbling blocks. Rather, the presence of design should simplify and facilitate our everyday life, enable us to accomplish our tasks more effectively, and help us enjoy them along the way. “
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. One of the things I’m realizing through this discussion is that the analytical process of Customer Development is very different from Design Thinking as it is more appropriately used to systematically iterate and test a startup’s business model. It is not a substitute for good design techniques taught by d-schools. However, it does take into account how users behave and feel, by measuring user interactions and gathering qualitative input as well.
I do see the importance of applying d-school techniques to help create a vision or hypothesis that can tested. Once you’ve determined that people aren’t behaving as expected, you can again use these techniques to redesign a solution.
For me, broadening the application of Design Thinking to be a business innovation that will solve significant and complex social issues feels like a stretch. Do you agree?
Matt
Matt,
Think about design driven innovation as shaping behavioral, emotional and intellectual engagement.
This kind of design can help solve many tough business problems but you allude to complex social issues, well, design in isolation couldn’t address complex social issues without taking a holistic view of the problem. I think it’s no longer an either or scenario.
Design is making a real difference at the beginning of any new technology discovery like the iPod, MP3, Nintendo Wii, and the MEMS technologies. These are all applications of new technologies that have created huge business because companies have been capable of applying design to these new technologies.
So, what makes the difference? Not the style of a product when the product becomes a commodity. It’s the business idea behind the product. Design is a transforming aspect of business success.
I draw an analogy with Steve Jobs. He also did not attend a business school. Sometimes business schools converge towards one model for innovation through the study of business case studies resulting in students acquiring essentially the same set of tools for solving business problems.
This means there is no innovation in the way they go about innovating when they graduate and move into the business world.
Dan