Design Thinking de Bono style

The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope and creativity all crowd in on us.

Western thinking is concerned with "what is," which is determined by analysis, judgment and argument...but there is a whole other aspect of thinking that is concerned with "what can be," which involves constructive thinking, creative thinking and "designing a way forward."

-Edward de Bono

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I am currently reading de Bono's Six Thinking Hats and today used it as a method for students to work through the various layers of problems they wanted to solve in their communities.

The great thing about this process? Because you aren't thinking in multiple directions you are less likely to get lost in the complexity of an issue. By focusing on a common way for everyone to think about a topic or concern, you can avoid frustration and enable a group of people to come to the table on equal footing.

As we worked through an issue, I asked them to all think about it by focusing on one way of thinking at a time. Here are the colors/hats and the corresponding ways of thinking:

White Hat: neutral, objective, facts, figures
Red Hat: emotional view
Black Hat: cautious, careful, points out the weakness of the idea
Yellow Hat: positive, optimistic, hopeful
Green Hat: creativity, new ideas
Blue Hat: control, organization of thinking process

It was fun to watch the groups attempt to keep focused on one particular type of thinking and not default to what may have been more familiar or comfortable. Through this experience, I was reminded how these other systems/tools of thinking can be useful in breaking down barriers with multidisciplinary teams, which is common when working in research or social impact design spaces.

I am so proud of the crew of students I've gotten to work with in this class! We have one week left, which means the process and thinking they've engaged in this short amount of time is impressive.

Tonight we discussed their prototypes and gave feedback for further development. We also covered what it means to deliver your final outcome. Here are some good questions to ask (sourced from the HCD Toolkit) in the process:

Where, when, how and why might the customer experience our solution?
What channels can assist with distributing our solution?
What are the range of ways it could be delivered?
What human, financial, manufacturing or technological elements are needed?
Who could we partner with to show the value and impact of the solution?
How will we test our idea?
How will we implement the idea?
What will be our measure of success?
How will we generate feedback?

Links:
The Ripple Effect
Dining Room Made of Pop Bottles
Karaoke and Literacy
Better World By Design Challenge
$100 Ventilator

For our last class, we're going to eat together before presenting the final projects. I'm excited to see their final outcomes! And in case you're wondering, here's what's on the menu:

Love how this reframes the process of navigating complexity: "What will we create?" instead of "What will we give up?"

Wicked problems. Also known as "the things that seem too big for us to solve." I stumbled across this old Adidas ad campaign and have adapted it to craft a contractual agreement with said problems. It isn't comprehensive but offers a helpful icon when I consider how my creative thinking process permits the "willing suspension of disbelief" in order to face something that seems too big or impossible. Thanks to Twitter feeds, I came across this 1992 article by a great writer and design thinker, Richard Buchanan:
To gain some idea of how extensively design affects contemporary life, consider the four broad areas in which design is explored throughout the world by professional designers and by many others who may not regard themselves as designers:

1) the design of symbolic and visual communications

2) the design of material objects

3) the design of activities and organized services, which includes the traditional management concern for logistics, combining physical resources, instrumentalities, and human beings in efficient sequences and schedules to reach specified objectives

4) the design of complex systems or environments for living, working, playing, and learning. This includes the traditional concerns of systems engineering, architecture, and urban planning or the functional analysis of the parts of complex wholes and their subsequent integration in hierarchies.

Reflecting on this list of the areas of design thinking, it is tempting to identify and limit specific design professions within each area - graphic designers with communication, industrial designers and engineers with material objects, designers-cum-managers with activities and services, and architects and urban planners with systems and environments. But this would not be adequate, because these areas are not simply categories of objects that reflect the results of design. Properly understood and used, they are also places of invention shared by all designers, places where one discovers the dimensions of design thinking by a reconsideration of problems and solutions.

Buchanan's work reminds me that "design thinking" isn't a buzzword. And it's exciting to see these programs emerge to create an educational outlet for developing these ideas further (as my educational experience didn't include this type of conversation):
Parsons
Austin Center for Design

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard had it right. And his quote is perfect for the start of a new year. Whether it be the past month or the past ten years, January 1st offers us a chance to consider all that we have been or could be. Like starting a journal with a crisp new notebook, we seem to get a stab at starting over.

But before we go there, a sort of purging needs to occur so as to avoid dragging unnecessary characters or plot lines into the next chapter. We find ourselves noting accomplishments and failures, asking questions about the future and likely proposing ideas about how we vow to change our wayward ways. A few blogs have offered up their accounts (I'm sure there are more):
Decade in Design
Cracking Open A Time Capsule from 1999
The Decade's 14 Biggest Design Moments

In the spirit of this, I wanted to recount some significant moments from the past year. I suppose I do this because I have been working through my own vision of what my discipline and career choice will entail. I've found myself wrestling (in the best possible way) with what I understand about design and what role I see myself playing in its vastness. I obviously can't speak for everyone else but as I mark the last 12 months I realize that I find myself in the middle of something that is both exciting and complex.

When people ask me what I do for a living, I respond, "I'm a designer," which used to mean I was a graphic designer. Translation? You make logos and websites. After this year, I now see design as a discipline that has moved beyond concept and production outcomes alone (which was how I was essentially taught). Happily, I find myself working alongside industrial designers, occupational therapists, health care professionals, educators and many others who want to make a difference by using our skill sets to shift the way things have traditionally be done. I find myself relieved to be connected to others who are seemingly content with what feels like a broader definition of design.

Below is a list of my chapter headers for this recap (or so I think so today). I'm going to spend the next week or so writing more on each topic so as to handle them in manageable chunks. I come to these ideas after spending my holiday break watching Long Way Round and Long Way Down (A BBC series where Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel the world on motorcycles). If you read my blog or know me personally, you are aware of my ongoing interest in how design can be used to impact communities with limited access to the resources we are privileged to have. I'm also keen to access their ideas so as to improve my own practice and process. The journey taken by Boorman and McGregor offers a window into the inherent complexities that surface in our attempts to make this world a little more livable. As I watched them journey, I began to reflect on these ideas:

1. Innovation is a tricky business.
2. Just because it's old, doesn't mean it's broken.
3. Just because we speak the same language, doesn't mean we understand each other.
4. Don't underestimate the ingenuity of others.
5. Poverty can't be solved by a campaign. Or a website.
6. Solving anything complex requires perseverance in everything.
7. Designers should be schooled in economics and politics. This affects everything.
8. When it gets hard, you might just need to wait.
9. Sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone.
10. Honesty is such a lonely word.
11. The mobile phone is the new computer.
12. To whom much is given, much will be required.

So as I live the beginnings of this new year, I will attempt to understand it better by looking back. Stay tuned for more!

Drawing: A Fundamental Instrument to Understand Reality

After using drawing as part of my design process in Rwanda, I have taken a great interest in its role as a means for communication in low-literacy communities (and how this might affect the way mobile systems are designed and implemented). Beyond that, I am also keen on how it can help us access other cognitive levels in the complexities of daily experience.

This short video (via BoingBoing) about Milton Glaser highlights how drawing can play a role in looking at things more carefully and encourage a consciousness about what we see. He also suggests that it need not be "accurate" in order to have benefit. To me, this becomes extremely interesting when we are seeking to understand complex issues in our world.



If "drawing is thinking" then we have a broader capacity for understanding these complexities as we move beyond a typical read of them. Statistics and texts offer one dimension of this information. And while this is valid, it is often postured as the most reliable way of understanding complexity (especially when said complexity incorporates unknown cross-cultural or demographic details). Visualizing this information seems to allow for a broader read and allows for new possibilities to interpret what we see. When we are dealing with complex issues, like those I witnessed in Rwanda, I believe that we need other ways of seeing if we are to find ways of addressing new solutions.

Could drawing help us show this information in a more accessible way? Could this activity make something like the MDGs more understandable to those who are being evaluated by their success or failure? I don't presume to have all the answers but I can see that there is room to expand:

The impact of communication can be jeopardized by not having accurate information about the needs of the counterparts and by the reliability of available tools. Experience in monitoring and evaluating the impact of communication initiatives is comparatively weak, leading to the re-use of formats and campaigns regardless of their effectiveness in improving conditions of marginalized groups. Paola Pagliani, The MDGs as a Communication Tool for Development

Map source

I came across this image in Wendy Macnaughton's work and it acts as a great visual reminder that while there are things we can't know, don't know, possibly fear or suspect, we have the chance to imagine what could be. So perhaps I'd draw a circle around it all and suggest that this is "the place where designers live everyday."

View image larger

I suppose my thoughts have been heightened by reading a few books and watching a few TED talks that are focused on the role of design and how it is shifting/has shifted. Last month, I devoured Tim Brown's book on a flight to New York and I'm about to ingest some Glimmer.

Another manifesto has surfaced and of late, I'm particularly drawn to #3, #7, #9 and #10 because they remind me I'm not crazy:

1. A designer does not have the luxury of cynicism.

2. It is easier to react than to create.

3. You must keep moving away from what you know.

4. A designer’s gotta have the guts to be truthful at all times.

5. People don’t fund problems, they fund solutions.

6. Many believe the world just is. Designers believe we can make the world be.

7. It can be helpful to think about an idea from a point of view that makes no sense.

8. Through the act of making things, we discover ideas.

9. When you’re totally unqualified for a job, that’s when you do your best work.

10. The goal is to be an expert coming out, not going in.

11. To bring about real change, you have to kiss a lot of frogs.

12. When the world isn’t working well, you have the makings of a great design project.

Processing these statements leads me to consider the idea of how this shift will be addressed in education. Equipping the next generation of designers is a concept that gets me really excited! I would love to see what could happen when a group of design students worked collaboratively with students from other disciplines on current wicked problems. I know some schools are already moving in this direction (and I look forward to hearing some ideas from Nathan Shedroff's talk at Practivism II) but I can see how there is room for more. I hope to explore some of the possibilities in a course I'm preparing to teach in the spring.

In the meantime, I'm trying to live in the space between what I may not yet understand and that which I can imagine. Here (or after September 14, 2009, according to Wendy Macnaugton), life gets interesting. View image larger