Book of the Week: Change By Design

26 Sep 2014

Change By Design Change by Design is written by TIm Brown, the CEO of IDEO, a famous design firm. I previously read Creative Confidence by the founders of IDEO, Tom and David Kelley. I’m a fan of design thinking and this book explains what design thinking is in the first part. The second part of the book reflects on designing thinking and impacting societal change. This book was a refresher, because I heard or read many of the stories before. If I were to get a person interested in design thinking, this book would be okay, but I think watching one of the videos of David talking or the ABC Nightline segment about IDEO designing a shopping cart is an easier introduction. Design thinking is better conveyed by seeing someone do it rather than reading stories of people doing it. The book is still a good introduction to design thinking. I’m not going to go into what design thinking is. You can read the book. Three Spaces of Innovation: inspiration, ideation, and implementation Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that needs a solution. Ideation is when you generate, develop and test new ideas. Implementation is taking the solution it to mark. Going between these three spaces is not a linear path. As you learn more things, you may have to go back to see if you are indeed working on the right problem. Culture and Environment You can’t just walk into the office and tell everyone to do design thinking. People must know they can experiment and take risks. You need to give people permission to fail. Rules for Brainstorming

To have a good idea, you must first have a lot of ideas - Linus Pauling

Rules are need to make the brainstorming session productive. Prototypes

The greater the complexity and expense, the more “finished” it is likely to seem and the less likely its creator will be to profit from constructive feedback-or even listen to it.

It is important to get feedback early on. If you are close to “finished” then people are more reluctant to give you meaningful feedback and you are less willing to listen to it. Sometimes the crappier the better. The prototype gives you something to focus on. People can show you, rather than tell you about it.

They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to prototype our ideas, we avoid costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a weak idea for too long.

Prototypes save time and money in the long run. They also let you iterate faster. The more you can iterate, the more you can improve your solution.

Extreme users are often the key to inspirational insights

Who do you get feedback from? Extreme users. They help with the divergent part in generating ideas. Things often trickle down from extreme users to the normal users. Goods to Services Instead of designing a product, you need to think about designing the whole experience. That means, all the iterations between the customer. Samsung will sell you a phone with a list of features. Apple will sell you an experience. Walking into an Apple store and buying an iPhone is a different experience. The packaging is also part of the experience. With designing thinking you need to think about whole picture of how people interact with your product or service. Things are shifting from goods to services. Software is a service now. Not something you buy in a box at Office Depot (ODP). design thinking, people need to do more of it.