design studies forum › Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I This article originally appeared in Design and Culture, Volume 3, Number 3, November 2011 Abstract The term design thinking has gained considerable attention over the past decade in a wide range of organizations and contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. Introduction Professional design is now operating within an expanded and increasingly complex field. For design firms working for global clients in relentless pursuit of new markets, new offerings and new kinds of value creation, design itself is being remade (Tonkinwise 2010). While much of this critical discussion is beginning to take shape outside design circles, this article will examine design thinking from within. Asking What If: The Designer as Cultural Interpreter In just the last five years, the term is more and more ubiquitous. Design and Its Problems
DavidSibbet.com Qu'est-ce la facilitation graphique? - Roberta Faulhaber, facilitation graphique La facilitation graphique, qu'est-que c'est? Il s'agit d'utiliser la pensée visuelle et le dessin pour animer, coacher, organiser, et faciliter la création de sens au niveau individuel et collectif. C'est utilisation de différentes techniques telles que: la carte heuristique (mind-mapping), collages et concept-boards, logiciels de cartographie heuristique, et le dessin. Ces grands "dessins" peuvent être réalisés sur papier ou sur ordinateur (tablette graphique) pendant un réunion de travail pour développer à fur et à mesure une tracée visuelle du travail de groupe, ce qui favorise l'adhésion, la créativité, l'esprit équipe, l'émergence de problématiques sous-jacentes, la mémorisation. La facilitation graphique peut être interactive à des degrés différents, allant de la co-création à l'incorporation des images des participants au "graphic recording" pur ou le facilitateur graphique créé un "tableau" du processus du travail en commun en temps réel. Je propose: 3. 4.
Tagxedo Quick Turnaround Usability Testing - Boxes and Arrows: The desig It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You are trying to incorporate usability testing into an Agile development process. Or maybe you simply want to pare down your process to make it shorter and less expensive. Completing usability testing quickly is a challenge anywhere but especially in consultancies, which have to overcome additional challenges, such as learning a new application. To assure success on these projects, I’ve developed a quick turnaround usability testing methodology (QTUT) that minimizes the time needed to complete testing. In Part I of this article, I discuss how to make the first three steps of QTUT—Sales & Kickoff, Recruitment, and Preparation—as short and efficient as possible. Steps in the QTUT Process Step 1: Sales & KickoffStep 2: RecruitmentStep 3: PreparationStep 4: TestingStep 5: Analysis & Reporting Sales & Kickoff
Remote collaborative sketching, brainstorming and design studio techniques I’ve been facilitating design studios with collocated teams for years. Many, including me, have covered the benefits of collaboratively sketching new ideas and concepts with a cross-functional team. Recently though, I was tasked with bringing this exercise to a distributed team. We gave the teams a brief heads up of what was going to happen and asked everyone to come to their individual conference rooms with their own laptops. We prepared a very brief (~10 slides) setup presentation that explained the problem statement we were going to try and solve, customer testimonials and data illustrating that this problem was indeed real, the constraints of the solution space and a very brief recap of our customers’ needs. Priming the pump with affinity mapping Since this was their first collaborative sketching session, we didn’t want to jump right into drawing. Local Affinity Mapping In this case we used a shared Google Doc spreadsheet to conduct the exercise. Blank brainstorming spreadsheet [Jeff]
Graphic Facilitation, Visual Recording Mind Mapping, Mindjet MindManager, MMD améliorent productivité des projets, informations et réunions Personas are NOT a Document Joshua Porter (formerly of UIE, but now doing great work on his own at Bokardo Design) recently described much of the latest online debate about the need to develop personas when designing. Josh got a lot of things right, but he got one thing very, very wrong. And, unfortunately, he bases a lot of his argument on that one thing. Josh said this: Definition, please? Personas are not a document. Here’s the way to think of it: Personas are to Persona Descriptions as Vacations are to Souvenir Picture Albums. While people who didn’t go on the vacation can look through the album and think, “Boy, that must’ve been fun,” they’ll never get the full experience of what the actual vacation experience was. In the UX community, many folks are now saying, “I’ve looked at these documents and they just don’t do anything for me. To be fair, I think there could be a lot of improvement in the ways people document their personas. Todd Zaki Warfel’s persona description with his Persona DNA chart
What does an innovation strategist do? The opportunity to become an “Innovation Strategist” catches people’s attention. Since our initial posting for the role in Toronto, we’ve received over 120 resumes from dynamic, brilliant young individuals all interested in joining the Idea Couture team. From the outside looking in, innovation strategy sounds incredibly sexy (and it certainly looks good on a business card). None of those are good answers. There’s nothing worse than expecting one thing and getting another. So here are a few of the tasks, activities, and responsibilities of your typical innovation strategist. Project DesignInnovation strategist as the planner Work with the client to articulate project outcomesHelp design the structure of what innovation projects look likeSet up the project’s research activities, and collaborate to select methodsBuild a multidisciplinary team based on available resources Business Strategy Innovation strategist as the box builder Design Research Innovation strategist as design researcher Workshop
Graphic Facilitators As part of her wider research into the tools and methodologies used by the next generation of global leaders, Heidi Forbes Oste has started down the path of researching the value of “visual practice” (visual facilitation, graphic recording, mindmapping, sketch-noting, etc.) As a piece of her dissertation, Heidi’s research on the visual practice, although still in the early stages, focuses on how it supports leadership and global teams using social technologies. In this one-hour webinar with Alphachimp's Peter Durand, Heidi answered questions and gave insight into the broader trends at the intersection of social systems, collaborative technology, visual learning, innovation and global leadership. Video & Digital Sketchnotes at
Bringing Holistic Awareness to Your Design - Boxes and Arrows: T Gone, thankfully, are the days when the user experience and the user interface were an afterthought in the website design process, to be added on when programming was nearing completion. As our profession has increasingly gained importance, it also become increasingly specialized: information design, user experience design, interaction design, user research, persona development, ethnographic user research, usability testing—the list goes on and on. Increased specialization, however, doesn’t always translate to increased user satisfaction. My company conducted a best practice study to examine the development practices of in-house teams designing web applications—across multiple industries, in companies large and small. We did not find any correlation with user satisfaction and those teams with the most specialized team members, one way or the other: some teams with the most specialization did well, and some teams did poorly. Five Key Ways to Promote Shared, Holistic Understanding 1. 2.
MISC Magazine | The Future of Design Education Design schools have built up an expectation that they can equip students to tackle complex problems through the power of creativity alone. They can’t. They don’t. And they continue to fool themselves with four big myths about creativity. Myth 1: Creativity and design are inseparable. Myth 2: Analytical people are generally not creative people. Myth 3: is that, when it comes to design, creativity must be unbound from the laws, structures and processes of the day-to-day world. Myth 4: is that which surrounds the recent and very popular theme of ‘design for social change’. This article appears in MISC Winter 2014, The Balance Issue Strategic Design MBA Course Descriptions Download the course schedule forJanuary 2013 - June 2015Cohort 1, Cohort 2, and Cohort 3 Course 1: Innovative Leadership Compare to traditional MBA courses: Leadership, Organizational Behavior This course addresses the skills, concepts, and mind-set that support leadership in complex, innovative organizations. Course 2: Design Research for Business Compare to traditional MBA courses: Market Research, Statistics This course provides students with the qualitative and quantitative tools they need to find and frame opportunities, construct successful project briefs, and apply the design research method to products, services and experiences by exploring and documenting new research techniques. Course 3: Business Model Development PROJECT COURSE Compare to traditional MBA courses: Strategy, Organizational Structure, Business Planning, Marketing, IT Management In this course students explore a customer-centric approach to business models. Course 4: Metrics I: Financial Reporting and Analysis