#Things to consider

  • Design thinking is more than just style. Most designers live in a design execution world, which is not the same as design thinking.
  • The three spaces of innovation—inspiration, ideation and implementation.
  • Behaviors are never right or wrong, but always meaningful.
  • You need to have space for experimentation and be allowed to fail.
  • Build on the ideas of others.
  • Prototyping is thinking with your hands.
  • Don’t get over invested in your early ideas.
  • Prototyping slow us down to speed us up.
  • The meaning of the experience economy is not primarily entertainment, think of your 3 year old daughter singing along to the little mermaid. That experience is not entertainment in itself but it definitely is meaningful.
  • The traditional approach is to sell a product rather than creating an experience that engages someone over time.
  • Most people don’t want more options, they just want what they want.
  • Invention is not the same as innovation.
  • Design thinking may be one of the most profitable practices during a recession. It’s easier to spot new needs in a down term rather than in a boom.
  • Ask “How might we improve the airport security process?”
  • It’s in the interstitial spaces where most opportunities lie.
  • Design thinking is asking “is this even the right problem to solve?” Is it an automobile we want or transportation?

#Reading log

2022-04-07: Picked this book as an Audible because I’m really in “design mode” right now. I know that IDEO is the forerunner in the design thinking space. They may even have coined the term. It was a nice listen, about 7 hours, and took me a little over a week to get through, over morning– and lunch walks.

Design thinking is about shifting design from just the “doing“, the visual and implementation, to a more strategic approach. It’s about asking if our problem is really the right one to solve. How about taking a step back to see if there’s something we’re missing? Instead of only the incremental improvement we want innovative solutions. You only get to that by immersing deeply and getting in the “headspace” of a problem. Then you can start questioning the nature of it — not just doing the obvious.