ReadingDesign – Trying to Be Responsible and Cutting-Edge, Too – NYTimes.com designthinking http://ping.fm/ztIvv

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Strategy by Design By: Tim BrownWed Dec 19, 2007 at 7:54 AM

In order to do a better job of developing, communicating, and pursuing a strategy, the head of Ideo says, you need to learn to think like a designer. Heres his five-point plan for how to make the leap.

via Strategy by Design | Fast Company.

The future of University or self education is in Co-Creation and Collaboration.

A lot of what we do today in terms of educational material is found on the web. There are excellent articles on most subjects written by experts in the field. For those willing to tap these tools there is an opportunity to design our own courses and even award ourselves an experience worthy of a bachelors, masters or even a doctorate degree.

I do agree that Google Wave is in its infancy and has quite a way to go. But we can see its potential and look at the future.

Forward looking persons from academia are surely exploring the opportunities for the students in the Wave.

Just imagine, students can play business, engineering or design games, run a virtual company, look at the work done by peers and collaborate in a healthy competitive atmosphere.

Gone will be the days of tests, exams or cramming at the last moment. We will have continuous interaction with written, voice, photographic and video content. Online Wave sessions will closely follow what we do in the business world. That is defining problems, researching methods, base lining conditions, analyzing solutions, choosing the most appropriate for implementation and continuing the process from improvement and innovation.

I invite readers to comment on the pros and cons of this approach.

My continuing efforts will be to explore tools and methods for Wave educational models

It is a new world and let us follow new methods.

Clients usually turn to freelancers because they prefer a more ‘personal’ approach than agencies or larger organizations can offer. The relationships and sometimes even friendships that come from working closely with clients to bring their vision to life are always a satisfying element of my business. Unfortunately, the expectations that accompany the client’s desire for personal service can grow to nightmarish proportions if not managed correctly.

View source article…

Berg é uma empresa londrina de design do caralho! Lá no blog deles tem uma apresentação que os caras fizeram em Sidney.

Escalante opened Web Directions South in Sydney, October 2009, and hikes through fanufacture, science fiction, social capital, cybernetics, and Neptune.

Ô apresentaçãozinha foda. Sente o começo:

Within the first three pages of Geoff Ryman’s 1989 science fiction novel, the Child Garden, which I thoroughly recommend, within the first three pages they cure cancer. Using an artificial retrovirus based on herpes, they invade the human cell and lock every strand of DNA inside an impenetrable crystal box, permanently guarding against genetic damage.

There’s a side-effect. It turns out this also prevents ageing and without ageing, everyone dies on or around their 35th birthday.

I’ve got four years left.

What do you do in a society where the life span is 35? Like, how do you have productive industry in a world where there simply aren’t enough years growing up to develop the required expertise and wisdom?

One of the things they do is they squirt knowledge into people’s heads so they are educated and well-conditioned for society by the age of 10, at which point they start a career.

Conditioned for society. So, for example, children don’t have to be taught not to steal. They have an overdeveloped sense of empathy squirted into their heads, along with all the book knowledge, and they can’t steal because they can always empathise with the person they’d be stealing from.

Clique aqui e veja slide por slide, vale a pena demais.

Well, I have been playing a little with Google Wave to look at its capabilities.

What is a wave? I am quoting directly from Google

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

For those who would like to check it here is the link. http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html
You can apply for the Beta version and Google will send you one. It is free.
I also have a few invitations to send to those who are interested.

Lets say for example we have started work on a new Service Design Project or for that matter any project. Lets assume our project team consists of 5 collaborators.
We start a new wave and include all the players on the wave.
In simple words the wave is like one long tape which can be replayed at any time by any of the members to go over previous plans, designs, discussions, meetings, research material, pictures etc.

Ultimately when you make the proposal you have all required research material easily accessible. On completion of the project you have a trail for reference.

Wave allows us to have real time phone and video conference calls and we can be making notes in real time for all to see if required.

I believe Wave is a natural for Design thinkers as we can
“Start Anywhere”

I believe any project may have quite a number of face to face or on site meetings. But at some point it becomes impractical to keep travelling. This is where Wave will come in handy.

For those of you who already have Wave it is an excellent opportunity to play a Design Thinking Project or even use it on a real one.

Last but not least it can be customized.

And as usual in a system like this we may find neat things to do with Wave which the original builders may not even have dreamed of. One of the suggestions I gave to a business school professor was that his students could do a course on Design Thinking on Wave.

For that matter it could be the university of the future
Well that is a subject for another blog

Go ahead, Google Google Wave

I was keeping up the momentum for a while…then I started school….and teaching….and working….and I still had Mom duties during all this.

During the break I plan on getting back at it, and keeping it up.  That’s the plan anyway!

I thought I would post about the Graduate program I am enrolled in having just completed my first semester. I am working towards a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, at Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, a 2 year program.

We are the first Cohort, a class of guinea pigs, an experiment. It’s an interesting position to be in. We are a group of extremely diverse learners - who are in a sense helping to design the program. Here is a description of the program:

“The Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation integrates knowledge and methodology from a number of disciplines: design, business, science and technology, and the social sciences. Design provides the crucial link between these areas, drawing on its essential competencies of design thinking, strategic and iterative methodology, and a deep commitment to understanding human needs, wants and behaviour. Through holistic thinking in a co-creative environment, the designer, the business person, the social scientist and the engineer will develop together the skills required for true socio-technological innovation.”

So far I love it. My brain is being stretched in ways I didn’t think was possible, the people are amazing, the classes interesting, the work challenging, and the professors inspiring.

What will I do when I finish? Not sure yet…but I do know that there are a lot of options!

Earlier this week I posted Part 1 of this conversation with book designer Julie Metz on what makes a successful cover.  Here’s the rest

View source article…

The inside scoop on what makes a successful book cover – and why it matters.

View source article…

Nancy Duarte’s book slide:ology is probably one of the best things that ever happened to presentations. I build a lot of presentations for investors and other audiences, and I cannot overstate how valuable the tools I’ve learned from her book and from seeing Nancy present live have been to me.

But what, you say, does that have to do with linking brand strategy to financial performance?

Well, there is this neat little graphic in slide:ology that illustrates how design driven companies excel against their peers in the marketplace. The graph tracks the share price of 63 “design driven” british companies against the FTSE 100, and clearly suggests that there is a “design dividend” for companies that understand design thinking and make it a priority.

Design driven companies outperform their competitors (Slide:ology, Nancy Duarte)

But the question that arises, then, is what is the link? How can you measure, or make the connection between what happens in the market, and how a company uses design?

But before we answer that, I think it is important to remind ourselves there is a continuum of design maturity. Most people think of design as how something “looks and feels”, but style is actually one of the least interesting and least sophisticated ways to use design. At the most mature end of the continuum, design thinking is involved at the very beginning of a process, to shape the way we look at a problem and help us put the pieces together differently. Design thinkingcan lead to unthought of, holistic, disruptive solutions. It is a tool for change agents. Tim Brown’s new book, Change by Design, offers a great explanation of this concept.

Sophisticated uses of design go way beyond "veneer". Design helps structure opportunities and frame relationships in order to create change.

Having said all that, it’s still easy to spot the companies that use design in sophisticated ways, and that usually shows up in their business cards, websites and presentations as well as it does in their meeting formats, processes and human resources. A company with strong design skills is almost sure to have a strong brand.

Which brings us back to the question – how does design ultimately affect financial performance.

One framework that I think is really useful in understanding this is Ken Wilber’s integral model. Wilber has often been described as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. And while branding might not be as important a field as anthropology, psychology, spirituality, ecology and the many others to which integral theory has been applied, some insights that emerge from doing so can help us intuit the relationship between branding and share price. Or, rather, perhaps, how share price is one possible perspective / aspect of a brand.

So here’s the gist:  Every phenomenon has four main components, which can be arranged in a simple 2D matrix. On the left: interior, on the right: exterior. Upper quadrants: individual, lower quadrants: collective.

Each of these four different components, or perspectives, emerges in a relationship with the other three. Each one helps to shape the other three. These relationships, obviously then, are non linear; there is not a direct line of causation between any of the quadrants, but yet they are all connected.

(PS: Integral theory goes much deeper than this, but I’m just highlighting one of the more basic aspects for our purposes here).

So how can we see brands through the integral lense?

With Wilber's Integral model, each one of the four quadrants highlights different perspectives or aspects of a brand.

Using this model, we can see many different ways that brands are viewed or understood, and we can begin to intuit relationships or make connections between the different quadrants. I think this framework is helpful to brand managers who want to better understand how they can use the brand to drive the financial performance of their company.

So, for example, in the upper left quadrant, we’re thinking about what an individual experiences when they encounter or recall a brand. To work within the upper left, you might conduct open ended one-on-one qualitative research, try to elicit metaphors, and have a consumer draw pictures of what the brand means. You could also look at different cognitive structures used by different types of people to interact with the world, and segment your brand portfolio accordingly.

In the upper right, we have the actual “stuff” of the brand: logos, swag, vehicles decked out in your pantone colours, etc. We also have consumer behavior. For example, if a quantitative survey was conducted to measure positive vs. negative impressions, it’s really measuring what people say, which belongs in the upper right quadrant, even though it is, in a way, trying to access the upper left.

The lower left is the stuff of anthropologists and ethnographers. Here you are watching how meaning is created in social groups and thinking about the relationship of a brand with cultural truths (and subcultures). You watch people interact in a branded environment, see how they use a product to say things about themselves to the group, etc.

And finally, and here’s where it (after a long, rambling post) all ties together: the lower right quadrant is about the systems that a brand is a part of or has an impact on. These systems can be studied using complexity science – you’re looking for “higher order” properties that emerge when millions of agents interact with each other. The economy, the human brain, cities, and the stock markets are all such systems. Theses systems are comprised of patterns that come into being based on the interaction of massive numbers of humans, or neurons, or what have you. And once these patterns emerge, they in turn have an influence on the actions of the agents, which makes the phenomena very complex and interesting to observe.

But if you see this fourth quadrant in relationship with the other three, and begin to understand how they are all related, it is a big-picture way of linking your brand strategy to its financial strength. I think this approach, while perhaps not as direct as an Interbrand report, perhaps, has its advantages because it helps to arrange all the important aspects in a single map.

The healthcare industry is a vast wasteland nearly void of design—a condition I’ve discussed many times here on Merge. This sector is ripe for innovative design thinking and remains one of the great areas of opportunity for the next generation of designers.

Two recent articles highlight some of the great work currently being done by designers in healthcare. First is Allison Arrief’s post on the NY Times online Opinionator section entitled “A Breath of Fresh Air for Health Care” in which she profiles the strategic shift being undertaken by health industry giant Kaiser Permanente to focus, as Arrief writes, “not how well Kaiser will care for you when you’re sick, but rather how Kaiser helps deliver wellness and can enhance the quality of your life.”

Kaiser Permanente’s rethinking of the patient room

This is a significant paradigm shift that I am seeing many of the prominent health industry leaders making (the Blue Cross Blue Shield “Do” campaign developed by Crispin Porter is one example). Allison Arrief goes on to explain how Kaiser is living into this strategy in a way that is impacting their entire organization and every point at which the patient is touched, “from

designing greener, healthier buildings to increasing the amount of time nurses spend at bedside.” The article includes an inspiring look of the Kaiser National Facilities Services group’s redesign of patient rooms.

The second article is by Helen Walters, the Business Week editor of Innovation and Design, who contributes a first-hand telling of her experience in the Mayo Clinic Rural Healthcare working group at the Aspen Design Summit last month entitled “Inside the Design Thinking Process.” Walters engages here in a thoughtful critique of the lofty goals and occasionally wandering methodology of the Summit. The Mayo working group had a brief “to design a new health-care system for Austin, Minn., a town of some 24,000 residents whose main claim to fame is being the home of Hormel Foods, the maker of Spam.” Walters rightfully questions how realistic it is to expect that 14 well-intentioned professionals in a Colorado resort are going to have the depth of insight to propose meaningful solutions to a problem with unique and deep parameters.

Walters goes on to tell how Maggie Breslin, senior designer and researcher at the Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic, talked her off this hopeless edge by explaining “I don’t necessarily think what will move forward is the specific idea laid out for Austin in Aspen, but whether it ends up as a Web site with video is less important to me than the idea that people need a way to engage in multiple places within their community. You have to get to the detail to understand the larger principle—and then throw out the detail and keep that larger principle.” I agree with Maggie Breslin—and I’ve discussed this in my previous posts about the Aspen Summit—that the most significant outcome of this exercise may not be the specific ideas generated by the working groups, but the many interpretations of design thinking methodology we employed to get there.

The Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic is an important side bar of this story. Like Kaiser Permanente, Mayo is an institution that is ahead of the curve on embedding design and design thinking in their strategic process. I had the pleasure of working with Nick LaRusso, Executive Director of the Center in my working group at Aspen, and I look forward to writing very soon about the great work they are doing.

For designers wondering where the next frontier will be for our skills, look no further than healthcare. Kaiser and Mayo are barely scratching the surface of the colossal mountain of work to be done.

You watch TED in the office, if you are me! Guessing my boss is probably not to chuffed with that but it has been an inspiring day. Its amazing the difference a day just sitting contemplating life can make to your creativity, although business may not feel my day was productive I do and here is why:

I watched David Logan’s talk about tribal leadership and although it is not directly related to design if we can move towards the We’re Great and Life’s Great attitudes he talks about then perhaps we can actually create a sustainable society that is engaged with our effects on the planet. I think the idea of working together for the greater good can achieve so much more, especially with the challenge presented by climate change.

Tim Brown’s thoughts on design thinking were interesting to hear and especially encouraging to hear he is behind a more participatory approach to design. Although he is in the third stage of leadership (if you watch the first talk you’ll understand the comment) I agree that you need to think big (just like the ladies behind Snook are doing). Personally I also liked the many references to Brunel!

Magnus Larsson-creating a permanent sand dune

Magnus Larsson-the completed dune

A great example of thinking big is Magus Larsson idea of the Green Wall across Africa. You don’t get much bigger really. The problem it aims to solve is the increased desertification of Sub-Saharan Africa which has displace I think it is a beautiful looking idea, the form and shapes you could create are gorgeous although I have my reservations about the use of an alien bacteria in an already fragile environment.

Finally, the truly inspirational Aimee Mullins almost made me jealous of the Alexander McQueen hand carved wooden prosthetics she owns. This is probably the only one I can justify from a work context as well! I found the reaction of children particularly interesting and think if you are ever in doubt of what you personally can achieve just look at her.

In total they last 57 minutes and 39 seconds but I think is probably the best hour of my time I’ve spent in a while…

Building a case for Extended Design Thinking. Clubbing Design Thinking, Six Sigma & Design for Six Sigma.
Start anywhere. Keep the model open, extensible and flexible.
Use best practices and tools.

Well almost every working person starts their morning with the news paper and a tea. Recently few days back I found EIGHT fliers of a local internet service provider in a single days news paper. Well being concerned about the environment I got a little angry at the company providing the internet service but than I realized that the process of putting a single flier to each news paper is done by the news paper agency guys.

Now being responsible to do so, those who do the act of keeping it did not care much about how many fliers in one news paper.  So some lazy bugger put eight of them in mine, don’t know if anyone received more than eight.

Now the detailed point here is that the product (a flier) made from a better quality paper than newsprint paper, printed on one side heavily with dark inks (means more chemicals) all went wasted and been dumped in the dust-bin. From there it will reach to landfills or recycling units(means more energy consumption and carbon emission), during the process there is transportation costs also (fossil fuel based transportation).

A small product like an 8 x 4 inches impact the environment, what about those huge billboards at every corner of the road junction, huge dark black print adds in newspapers, magazines and other reading materials.

If we take a look at the design and marketing process of such process who can help improve such products and process of distribution.

Of  the company which is advertising.

1 the designer who designed it could have used a green concept to design the flier.

2  Marketing executive can make sure the amount that is been used for newspaper.

The news agency

1 Being aware of amount used by the implementer.

This kind of mistakes can be avoided by designing standard laws of print ad marketing because there are no restrictions how much one can use to advertise. After all it is promoting consumerism the biggest source of production and carbon emissions. Here is an emerging concept that avails all that is used to do the right thing.

AS I set out to write down my ideas about the future of design, what it means for designers, and what it could mean for the culture at large I find myself struck be the difficulty of the problems we are facing and my own arrogance in thinking I may have something to contribute to the discourse.

People with far more impressive resumes than myself have written reams on the subject of design, on process, on the role of the designer in society, and even on the tyranny of Helvetica. However, in all those reams, something seems to have been overlooked. Too often the writing is facile, clubby, self promotion. The hard questions remain unresolved.

I’m going to try and do four basic things with the writing I do here. I will formalize my thoughts on graphic design into a teachable curriculum. I will examine the underlaying DNA that connects graphic design with industrial design and architecture. I will explore whether or not that underlaying DNA can be introduced into other human activities. Lastly, I shall attempt to put forth a new way for design and capital to interact. A way in which the designer takes on more risk and participates more fully in the fruits of their labor.

Nothing I say here will be revolutionary. In fact the time for revolutions in design is well over. What is now needed is a sober examination of what it is that we truly offer the world, how we may better offer that thing, and how we may better be rewarded by the world for it. I will attempt to stay away from manifestos, diatribes, and the baroquely styled language so often used design writing. In their place I shall attempt a simple, direct style and an honest, thorough examination of the material.

If you’re reading this, thank you. I hope we get somewhere.

It’s final paper and exam time at the university so that means one thing: procrastination.

Procrastination also yields a lot of unusual thinking so with a nod to the serious and the silly, I’ve managed to whittle down the many amazing things sent my way to just five:

1. 1000 Awesome Things. Rather than be amazing, this blog captures awesome. Although not so much the amazing like mind-blowing or novel, what this blog does is remind us of the little, everyday kind of things that happen in life that make us smile, pause, or even contemplate enough to go “wow, that’s awesome”. AWESOME!

2. The Art of the Idea: 8 ways to Light a Lightbulb Above Your Head. Fast Company’s Sheryl Sulistiawan presents a visual pictorial based on John Hunt’s insights collected in his new book. It is a creative, artistic way to imagine new ways to visualize the creative process. It’s a lot different than the usual pictogram and got me thinking.

3. Yes, Bottled Water Really is That Bad. Another gem from Fast Company and their infographics: A look at just how awful bottled water is for the world. Where I live (Canada) we have more clean, fresh water than almost anyone in the world yet we fill our buildings with bottled water when its cheaper, healthier, and sometimes tastier to drink it from the tap.

4. The New York Times Magazine 9th Annual Year in Ideas issue. I look forward to this every issue every year for a highlight of the most innovative — and sometimes also ridiculous — inventions, social trends, and novel solutions to problems big and small. I’m  quite intrigued by the growing interest in zombie attack science.

5. World Food Programme’s Fight Hunger campaign. When you think of innovators and integrated thinking, the UN isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But the UN’s WFP has shown that it can out-campaign even the slickest corporation with its multi-channel social media campaign using Facebook, Twitter, crowd-funding and micro-donations to stimulate awareness and solicit donations to affect a problem that is big and getting bigger everyday. A great ‘101′ on the program is available in this CNN International profile.

I found interesting the fact that the author constantly repeats the importance of putting HUMAN BEHAVIORS at the center of the creative process. Another highlight of the article that I liked was the idea of blending big and small projects. I think that the accumulation of small improvements to a product, experience or business model maintains the team on an exploration mood that can lead to great innovations. This is great to keep on surprising customers and always staying ahead of the competitors. Finally, I remember Tom Kelly at O-week mentioning the importance of looking at the world with the eyes of a tourist. Being able to see what’s going on next to you with fresh eyes. It is great not only to innovate, but also to understand how people take decisions, think or do things.

Over the course of the readings on Design Thinking, it struck me that one of the biggest challenges in managing the transition from ideation to implementation, ie knowing when to move towards execution of a particular idea. I think this decision is particularly difficult when balancing continual product improvements vs. economies of scale. This was one of the most frequent problems I encountered during my internship this past summer. The company I worked for made prefabricated, modular green building systems, so part of the business model relied on achieving scale efficiencies from our steel fabricators who manufactured the parts of the buildings. The tension in the model arose because of the continuous innovation of the product design team, who worked hard to come up with new ways to improve the design of the building. While these improvements contributed to some efficiency gains on the production side, the frequent changes made it difficult to generate enough of a single part to reach minimum efficient scale – each part could become obsolete before the necessary scale was realized. I think the concept of Design Thinking and the encouragement of continual innovation can be consistent with a model that relies on economies of scale, but the solution requires a move towards a “versioning” approach, where a design is frozen for a current version until the necessary volume is sold, and the next version that is released is more significantly differentiated.

Re. the article written by Don Norman “technology first, needs last” http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html here’s my response – I think the article is a little irresponsible and I disagree – it is needs and technology in parallel.

With 4 new business ventures under my belt, I’ve learnt how hard it is to be an inventor. You have to make huge sacrifices to acquire the technical AND contextual knowledge needed to invent – these two things run in a parrellel.

Leonardo di Vinci believed the most important organ he possessed was his eye, not his brain… inventors are keen observers because that’s how they can apply their knowledge of technology most effectively – to spend years of pain and financial loss to break through with an invention, you have to have a central belief that you can improve a situation.  That motivation comes from within the inventor, they have seen something you and I missed, because they possess the knowledge of a technical field and believe they can change it… I believe context and need have to co-exist for the inventor to find the reason why they believe a technology revolution is worth investing a lifetime – I think inventors realise their idea presents an opportunity to make a difference.

Inventors developed the insight that led to an invention gradually over hours of dedicated focus and hard work… that’s why you need creativity, imagination – that’s why you need designers who can facilitate the latent knowledge within organisations, because most business people aren’t very good at invention, they usually can’t see the true nature of the problems they should be solving with their knowlege.  I wonder also what was the average age of the inventors in your list?

If we want to improve people’s lives and take our responsibility as designers for helping organisations reduce environmental impact we must focus everyone in organisations on thinking harder about why they are doing something when they go to work, before they start doing it.

With design research we are shining light on the human needs normally ignored before making a business decision, now employees can apply their knowledge more effectively.  I’ve found on many projects that use ethnography/contextual study that the performance of people and the organisation goes up substantially, waste goes down, employees are happier and customers more satisfied.  Presenting knowledge in that way to a lot of eyeballs and brains increases the chances of making a leap – yes, you need the right organisational culture, but doing work this way is how you start to make a difference.

The average technologist or engineer who could use this article to make their case, will waste huge amounts failing and leave far too much to luck BECAUSE they didn’t understand the context properly – they just like tinkering but they wouldn’t risk their job/house on it.  I don’t believe inventors do that, good inventors are successful because they combine a gift for observation and technology – what motivated them? Inventors see a chance to make a difference to humanity otherwise why risk a lifetime’s work – what other reason is there?

Found at http://iplot.typepad.com/iplot/2009/11/the-customer-isnt-a-human-being.html  tnx Nick Marsh

To be continued at http://iplot.typepad.com/iplot/2009/11/the-customer-isnt-a-human-being.html

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Bookstore shelves are packed with resources that claim to inspire creative thinking and innovation.  These five stand apart from the pack.  Ranging from playful to artfully designed to more serious, each book keeps you thinking long after you’ve put it down.

1.   The Art of the Idea and How it Can Change Your Life by John Hunt

John Hunt is an award winning playwright, author and World Creative Director of TBWA.  He’s created a sharply written and well-designed book that challenges you to think about the lifecycle of ideas.  He presents simple yet profound insights about the creation of ideas in a visually engaging way.

Check out this short video about his Observation #3:  Ideas have moods.

For more information about the book, visit www.theartoftheidea.com.

2.   How to be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith

This book provides 59 novel ways to see familiar surroundings from a new perspective.  Readers are encouraged to observe, collect and document things like type (exercise #13, document lettering you find out in the world) and water (exercise #25, study and document shapes made by water).  The book has an engaging visual style mixing handwritten text, illustrations and photography.

For more information about this book and others written by the author, visit www.kerismith.com

3.   Slide:ology – The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte

If you want to master the art of visual communication, this book is for you.  It’s one thing to have a great idea. It’s quite another to engage your audience with eye-popping slides that get your ideas to stick.  Slide:ology covers the whole visual presentation process, from concept generation to delivery.  Incorporate some of the ideas to make your next presentation one to remember.

To learn more about Nancy Durarte and her company, visit www.duarte.com.

4.  Five by Dan Zadra

This inspirational book asks the simple question, “Where will you be five years from today?”  Through thought-provoking quotations, engaging graphics and simple exercises, this book gets you thinking in new ways about your future.

Learn about this book and others published by Competium Inc. at www.live-inspired.com.

5.   The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

While published in 2000, this book presents 12 time-tested practices for living a life of possibility and putting a vision into motion.  Co-authored by a husband and wife, Rosamund provides a rich psychological viewpoint while Zander injects real life examples from teaching music and conducting world renowned orchestras.

Learn more about the book at www.benjaminzander.com/book.

View Benjamin Zander’s TED Talk about The Art of Possibility:

Author:  Chris Fagan

Aiming for Innovation: Living Design in a Business World

Brynn Evans and Krista Sanders

These high energy design divas gave a good presentation. For me it was a bit of redux for me but it also serves as a good reminder to what we should be doing. I guess I found it pretty inspirational.

Creative and critical thinking aspects of design thinking make a good definition.

Here is one to test out design thinking on

58 billion paper cups are thrown away every year in the us. how would you solve this problem? who are the stakeholders? when is the problem solved? a big problem is not easy to solve.

In order to solve this problem you need to understand all the aspects or the problem and people’s behavior. really understand the problem from all from all apects and users involved.

A few aspects here:

1. Problem space – understanding all the parts of the problem

2. Solution space – using building to help us think or generative

3. Configuration – making the sales and marketing or business thinking

Debra Adler case study used to illustrate their point. If you are not familiar with this you should check it out.

If you push out from business goals then you end up with a minimal solution that may solve a part of the user problem. if you start out from user problems you end up solving the bigger problem of course while solving the business need.

In today’s online Economist there is an article titled “Analysis Catalysis – Designers think that they can teach MBA’s and philanthropists a thing or two”.

While design or systems thinkers could try to teach MBA’s and philanthropists a thing or two it is unlikely that they will learn or act on it.

Why?

Well, why do we still have so many M&A’s when research shows that more than half of them destroy value? Could it be that the incentives for both CEO’s and Investment bankers reward this sort of short term activity irrespective of its long term efficacy?

On Balance research shows that M&A destroys Value more than it creates it

We live in a world where the systems that we use to measure the performance of our economy and our institutions is short term focused and reductive. For example, GDP increases when we destroy value. We destroy between $1.5 and $5 Trillion of forestry ecosystem services every year – more than the banks lost in the GFC – but none of this is factored into the way that we measure success.

There is little to no recognition of the inverse relationship between efficiency and resilience. As a result we run down our resilience and destroy our future prospects for short term efficiency gains. And that is what people go to business school to learn how to do – how to extract short term gains out of the system given the prevailing rules. In addition an MBA provides a badge that proves that they are compliant “in-the-box” thinkers that know these rules that define the box.

Systems thinking only really works when we factor in the unmeasured relationships and linkages between things that reductive analysis can’t objectively measure or ignores because it isn’t part of the prevailing “rule system”.

Systems or design thinking is therefore not only a qualitatively more complex and integrative way of seeing the world that of the dominant reductive scientific paradigm – but it also has neural correlates – the brain is wired differently. The neurons have more connections with each other.

Using the Keirsey interpretation of Myers Briggs Type Indicators  for example, Designers are “perceptive and Intuitive” types (ENTP or INTPs) who are comfortable with uncertainty and complexity . People who do MBA’s are more likely to be “judgement and intuitive (ENTJ or INTJ) or sensory types (ENSJ)“.

Systems thinkers are relative misfits in our modern world. Their world view is too complex and integrative to be valued by our dominant reductive measurement systems. While they might be able to come up with ways to save humanity from itself, these ideas will wither until society comes up with feedback systems that include the “hidden” linkages and support that the enlightenment world view is ignoring or destroying.

The Economist wrote a great piece titled “How to Change the System – in praise of Russ Ackoff” on the 3rd November 2009.

One of Russell’s key insights is that our schooling system – with its focus on avoiding mistakes – ensures that we minimise our chances of learning and being creative. After all we can’t learn from repeating what we already know. We learn from mistakes. A person or system that avoids making mistakes avoids learning.

My personal motivation for this new “design thinking” class is to expand my “thinking box”. So far my personal experience has influenced my thinking towards a traditional approach to problems based on analytics and problem structuring. However I realize that a more “right brain” approach is required to generate new concepts and communicate them in an innovative way. I admire the recent business application at Ducati , which combined innovative product concept and  a sketching commercial.

The papers from Tim Brown (“Design Thinking”) and Sara Beckman / Michael Barry (“Innovation as a learning process- embedding design thinking”) come handy in my quest to define design thinking, identify the critical attributes and how to develop those.

Because of its integrative and collaborative nature, both papers call for associating design thinking as early as possible in the innovation process, and determine that the key success characteristics among team members are around empathy, integrative design thinking, optimism, experimentation and collaboration. Design thinking is also about trial and errors, and using work in progress prototypes to facilitate the search of a solution.

Beckman and Berry go the extra-mile in pairing the different steps of design thinking with the most desirable learning styles. This is the one of the first take-aways of the class: pick your team members according to the phase of design thinking you are in to optimize your success:

-          The observation phase can be conducted through ethnographic research, participant observation or informant diaries. The most suited learning style is the diverging style, where people show the ability to see a situation from many different point of views

-          The framework phase consists in interpreting the large amount of information gathered, which can be done through identifying stories, the identification of customer behavior dimensions or using timelines. Here a person with an assimilating learning style is more suited, where he or she can put the information into concise form and deal with abstract concepts

-          The imperatives phase is about putting together the set of value proposition that the innovation should deliver, i.e. the goal to achieve. The most suitable learning style is converging, where people deal best with conceptualization and active experimentation, not to mention that those people are goal-driven

-          In the solution phase, people most suited have an accommodating learning style which is characterized by a field and hands-on orientation