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Archives For September 2008

Design Thinking at Summer Davos

September 23, 2008 — 12 Comments

I am just heading over to Tianjin for the Summer Davos conference where there are several sessions touching on design and design thinking as well as interesting sessions on clean energy and innovation for aging. The focus of the summer version of the famous gathering in Davos, Switzerland, is on what the WEF calls the Global Growth Companies. These are the next generation of fast growing companies, many of them hailing from China, India, South America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It is these corporations that are likely to become the global 100 of the future. Given all the furor in the financial markets this week it remains to be seen how much attention design gets but there is no doubt that the GGC companies realize the need to build world class design and innovation capabilities.

I met with the Chairman of one of the fastest growing companies in China yesterday and he made it clear that their highest priority is to build internal design and design thinking talent and that he is looking for help in doing this. Almost certainly the biggest obstacle will be the supply of raw talent. Big investments are being made in Singapore and China around design education but it will likely take a lot more to supply just the demand in China. I am interested in trying to identify where  the interesting experiments are in design education in Asia? Are there equivalents to the Standford D-school or the IIT design program?

In design for education, design thinking , ,
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Designing the dining experience

September 14, 2008 — 13 Comments

I suppose eating is an experience we get quite attuned to and with the proliferation of great restaurants around it can be easy to become blasé. This week I had a couple of great dining experiences that felt quite unique and make me think that there is still plenty of room for innovation in the restaraunt industry.

I  was traveling with colleagues to Grand Rapids, Michigan where we were staying at a just opened JW Marriott hotel. We arrived from California in the early evening expecting to have a simple meal somewhere in town before meeting with our partners at Steelcase the following day. Instead, as we walked into the lobby we were met by one of the members of the Steelcase team and informed that an arrangement had been made for us to eat in the hotel’s stateroom. Images of a grand private room with overbearing waiters flashed through my head and I began to consider ways that we may get out of the invitation. We were escorted into the restaurant and then through the serving doors into the kitchen. We began to feel like Presidential candidates arriving for a speech and the interest and anticipation began to grow. We were greeted with enthusiasm by sous chefs, pastry chefs and waiters. Already this was beginning to feel special. We were finally taken into the chef’s office where a table had been laid for us to eat dinner. Instead of a stuffy stateroom we were deep in the private domain of the chef surrounded by his cookbooks, favorite wines, favorite music and the clutter of a large-scale culinary operation. What followed was a perfectly delivered meal where we chatted with the chef about the locally sourced food and how he cooked it as well as having great conversations amongst ourselves. Every piece of the experience felt like the chef and his staff designed it personally for us.

The second meal gave us a chance to see how a great architect planned our dining experience even though he died many years ago. When the famous twentieth-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed his houses he gave great thought to every aspect of the owners experience. If you visit the Meyer May house in Grand Rapids and take a tour with one of the docents you will hear how this relatively modest house in a suburban neighborhood was designed to protect the privacy of owners and guests through the overall layout of the building. Once inside you will also hear how detail after detail supports his overall objectives for the design of the house. We were fortunate to be invited for a meal at the house and when you sit at the dining table you see how carefully Wright considered the experience of eating with family and friends. The table is situated so that every person gets a view to the outside. The lighting is removed from the ceiling and placed on columns at each corner of the table so as to soften the quality of light on each persons face. The chairs (which along with the table were specifically designed by Wright) are very high backed to create an intimate feel to the gathering. He demanded that no high centerpieces were placed on the table to obscure the view between diners. Just as he did throughout the house, he engineered the dining experience to be as optimal as possible.

In design thinking, experience design ,
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Definitions of design thinking

September 7, 2008 — 51 Comments

In my HBR article I gave a ‘definition’ of design thinking. It was:

Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

On reflection this is a narrow description that focuses on design thinking’s role within business. The next sentence that I wrote.“….design thinking converts need into demand” , which I borrowed from Peter Drucker, broadens things out a bit but still assumes an economic motivation.

I am grappling with two questions as I think about this.

1. Is there a general definition of design thinking?

2. Is it useful to have one?

In design thinking ,
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What does design thinking feel like?

September 7, 2008 — 10 Comments

John Maeda (President of RISD) would likely answer that question by saying “a banana”. He often talks about how hard it is to describe design and I agree with him.

On the other hand I think one of the biggest obstacles to using design thinking as an effective problem solving approach is anticipating what it feels like. We are not used to wondering about how processes feel. I think we assume they all feel the same and in conventional business that is probably true. They are mostly analytical, rational, formal and convergent. Analytical in that we break problems up to study them. Rational in that we take an ordered approach. Formal in that we can describe the approach and replicate it easily and convergent in that we start with available choices and work toward a single best solution. We have been experiencing processes like this ever since studying math or science at school.

Design thinking is different and therefore it feels different.

Firstly it is not only convergent. It is a series of divergent and convergent steps. During divergence we are creating choices and during convergence we are making choices. For people who are looking to have a good sense of the answer, or at least a previous example of one, before they start divergence is frustrating. It almost feels like you are going backwards and getting further away from the answer but this is the essence of creativity. Divergence needs to feel optimistic, exploratory and experimental but it often feels foggy to people who are more used to operating on a plan. Divergence has to be supported by the culture.

The second difference is that design thinking relies on an interplay between analysis and synthesis, breaking problems apart and putting ideas together. Synthesis is hard because we are trying to put things together which are often in tension. Less expensive, higher quality for instance. This is where Roger Martin’s idea of integrative thinking is important. Check out his book The Opposable Mind if you haven’t already seen it.

Designers have evolved visual ways to synthesize ideas and this is another one of the obstacles for those new to design thinking; a discomfort with visual thinking. A sketch of a new product is a piece of synthesis. So is a scenario that tells a story about an experience. A framework is a tool for synthesis and design thinkers create visual frameworks that in themselves describe spaces for further creative thinking.

I have always felt that the uncertainty of divergence and the integrative head-hurting complexity of synthesis are the unique characteristics of design thinking and they are also the things that make it really challenging.

The pay-off  is that feeling of flow that comes when ideas come together and take form. Is this when convergence is happening?

In design thinking, divergence and convergence , , , ,
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