Design Thinking - Tim Brown

Design Thinking  - Tim Brown

‘Design Thinking’ by Tim Brown is an article about the development of design thinking in the ideation stage of a project and how it has led to new ideas that have flourished due to the consideration of the human element.

It’s always interesting to discover a new facet of the design process and while I believe that Design Thinking is something that we have been integrating into our learning for the past couple years, it’s nice to take a more in-depth look at it and this article is an easy introduction.

Here are my key takeaways:

Innovation = design thinking. One follows the other, you can invent on your own but it won’t ever get far without other’s input and without thinking of the human element.

The design process has been reimagined in the sense that designers no longer come in late to the project but are involved from the beginning and are often even asked to help with the design of the actual product/program.

Design Thinking is only growing as a ‘trade’ as economies shift from physical products to knowledge-based outcomes.

Succesful design thinkers are empathetic, integrative thinkers, optimistic, experimental and collaborative.

I found this case study for a portable incubator called Embrace. Embrace was developed with the idea of keeping premature babies alive by offering a portable incubator to families that live far from the hospital. What I like about this piece is the objective behind it, and a key message in the article.

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

This project really focuses in on the people using it and went through a couple iterations before being finalized. It took feedback from users in the areas it was wanting to help seriously and that’s what made it successful. If they’d only designed something and sent it out to people without consideration, the project would have failed. This article does a good job of showing that.

Day Seven - Blog Post #8

Today we had our prototypes ready for other students to look at and discover. I got some really cool information and feedback about my package just by watching my students pick my package up and open it. The reaction I received from the students who looked at my package was exactly what I’d hoped for. It helped though that the class that came in was made up of international students, many of those being from Japan.  I had two Japanese students and a student from China who had been to Japan many times look at my package.

They were delighted with it and told me that the package was really similar to what you would actually see on the shelf in Japan to hold a good knife. They told me that the packaging style felt expensive and luxurious. I also got many good tips on how to make it even more authentic, such as possibly carving a pattern, making sure to give it a smooth finish and adding the Sun from the Japanese flag to directly behind the brand name on the paper slip.

Watching students interact and open my package made me really excited to work on my package further. It was great to see people’s reaction as they opened the box. No one had trouble opening it and they also told me that they liked how simple it was. They also told me that they would definitely keep the box and use it to hold other items or even just display it in their home.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am excited to keep going.

DAY TEN - BLOG POST #12

The aim for this stretch of the project was to create thumbs, mapped layouts and sketch model mockups. It’s hard however to get the appropriate size when you don’t really know how much space 250 grams of Good Life Granola is going to take up. 

Now, something I was told to work on was my ideation component so I worked really hard to come up with at least 50 thumbs to work with. I’m not the type to put myself into a box (*bdm tss*) so I found that just letting my pencil take up the space it wanted was the best way to go for me. This created a bit of a flow of ideas rather than me just trying to fill little squares with thoughts. Sometimes, you need to think outside of the box. (*bdmmmm tsssss*)

Here are the ideas I came up with.

I wanted to make sure that I worked through as many shapes as I possibly could think of to be thorough about the ideation period. Although I came up with some really fun, crazy shape ideas, I found myself drawn to a simple box for ease of production and cost when it came to the packaging and decided to develop those concepts further.

After fleshing those out a bit more, I decided to just sit down and have fun. I forgot how much I loved this part of the ideation and creation period. Although I messed up a couple of times, I didn’t let that frustrated me and instead just enjoyed the tactile puzzle I was dealing with. 

These are the design solutions I have come up with thus far:

I can’t wait to get proper measurements down so that I have a better idea of what I’m working with. I’m not even sure at all which one I like best so far, although I can tell you that the most interesting one to try and create was definitely the rectangle with the pour spout! (I thought my brain was combusting a little bit as I tried to visualize what I had to do in my head.)

Day Five - Blog Post #6

Today we got started on redesigning a package of our choice. It’s a project I was kind of looking forward to since I first saw my friends working on it two years ago!

I had two packages I wanted to work on at the start of conceptualizing. One of them was an easy choice, an over packaged, instant matcha tea satchet, four box extra, plastic wrapped disaster. 

The other, was a beautiful knife pushed inside a plastic cage.

Though I knew which one would be easiest for me, something about the knife called to me. I started to paint pictures in my head of what my package could be and I knew, in the end, that was the one that I wanted to do. 

I have started ideating and drawing thumbs but I think I know what I’m heading towards. I want my audience to really enjoy their experience of opening the package to reveal their tool, in the same excited way that a graphic designer might unwrap their gorgeous apple packaging to reveal a macbook. 

To a culinary student or worker, a pairing knife is the ultimate tool, like the macbook is to the graphic designer. Both are equally important, both give the same delight and ease of use.

DAY THIRTEEN - BLOG POST #15

So there we have it, the last day of class and our final submission was due. I’ve pasted in a photo to give you guys a little look-see of how it turned out. As you can see, it really evolved from the initial concept to the final design. I know I say it constantly, but you need to ‘Kill Your Darlings’.

I don’t think I could have gotten to my final design if I wasn’t willing to flex on what I was doing and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I’ve learned to let go of my initial vibrant idea during my time in this class and I think I’ve learned that just because my initial concept works, it doesn’t mean it’s the only concept that does. 

Due to printing, my design shifted a little on the page and cutting it became an issue. I didn’t get as clean a prototype as I would have liked as a result, but I’m happy enough with the results! We went from a complicated little box with a pour spout to as little paper as I could manage and I think that I accomplished the goals of this project in that sense.  

I loved working with a real-life client and while my design was not chosen, she told me that she really liked it, so I feel happy about that.