Design Thinking - Tumblr Posts
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.
In a world where most people have access to the internet, having an opinion is a dangerous thing. Bringing facts to the table along with your viewpoint is essential for anyone who wants to start a conversation on a topic and while there were some points that I thought made sense in Natasha Jen’s talk, I can’t help agreeing with Richard Banfield’s critique of her critique.
While I’m not a person who really believes in the use of ‘buzz words’ to prove my point, I think that in some cases buzz words just appear naturally in conversation between two graphic designers. Buzz words are also often important to the client, depending on who you’re working with, they want to know the mystical process behind the design work.
Now, I don’t personally believe that just because you’re using a design term it’s a buzz word. I was looking at Natasha’s list of words and while some of her concerns seem to be valid, a lot of the words she listed are common, easily understood terms. (scale, empathy, user outcomes, etc.) I’d have to agree with Richard that her talk leaned more towards making jokes it seemed than actually proving anything.
I’m open to see both sides of the story, and I do think that there are probably some cases where a process is mislabeled as design thinking because it’s trendy, but I think it’s incorrect to write off a whole process just because of some outliers.
Also, though it’s popular to say so, a messy or cluttered space does not necessarily mean that the designer is a genius, nor does it mean that the designer did not use design thinking. (That felt like a desperate point in Natasha’s talk.)
The issue of ‘where crit fits’ in the process too is an odd one to me. Obviously, as a trained graphic designer, I know that crit comes at any and all stages of the process whether you’re asking for it or not. As someone who regularly critique’s my colleague’s work, I know that as soon as I show anything to them I will receive crit. Crit is in every single step of the process, for Natasha to focus so directly on where it fits almost makes me feel like she does not actually have a full understanding of her own design process, despite her lofty position.
Perhaps that is incorrect of me to say, but hey, it’s just a little bit of crit for her.
I think that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and can certainly choose to follow their design process how they see fit. Critique on a process is always welcome at any time and will be thoroughly dissected, ingested and critiqued in return by the graphic design community. The coolest part about graphic design is that we are a collection of creatives, all with different opinions and ways of doing things. If you’re going to give a talk where you critique an entire school of thought though, it’s probably best to come prepared with more than just some jokes about post it notes, buzz words and demands to see evidence when you could just google search some case studies.
When I think about Design Thinking, I mainly just think about a circle. A circle represents fullness, infinite and the feeling of being complete. It also has no actual beginning or end, much like the design thinking process. Sure, you start with a problem and you end with a solution to the problem (hopefully) but your path to get there isn’t always linear and can involve a lot of back and forth. Or, you get there in one full turn. Either way, each step of the process is connected. Whether you choose to believe in design thinking or not, you most likely have a loose concept of it that you follow anyway.
The Rise of Design Thinking in Meetings and Events
I really enjoyed the relevancy of this reading for this class and felt that although it uses some industry-specific language it is still accessible. It seems like such a simple concept to ‘design from the attendees’ perspective’ but it also et like a ‘eureka moment’ to read that phrase. I think that in the past, many events have been designed specifically with the organizers perspective and it feels like designing for attendees is just common sense. What better way to use a people-oriented method like design-thinking?
Opportunity, Formulate, Build and Debrief
It’s easy to fall deeply into the design aspect of our grad show because that is the primary focus, displaying our work, but I think this reading has an excellent point about involving the attendees to keep their focus. There’s the yearning to want to make a whole new experience and refresh the Design grad show but there’s also the need to work with the space (and items in that space) that we have. We want the attendees to feel welcome but not overwhelmed, and we want to make sure that everyone involved is getting the same amount of attention to detail and care as everyone else because all attendee’s motivations for being there are different and in the case of our event, they’re most likely there to support one or two students in particular.
“Consciously think about event design from the user perspective.” I think that our focus for the grad show, now that we’ve obtained a speaker and location, is to really focus on wayfinding and hammer out how we want to display our work in a way that does the work justice. We need to map out the floorplan in a way that prioritizes the attendee’s experience and can maybe be interactive.
I’m wondering what might be a good way to make our show a bit interactive? We were thinking about creating a walk through an area of our work that would require the attendee moving through all of it, sort of like a museum floor, but even better could be printed objects they can pick up and touch or digital screens that they can swipe through.
I think we have many opportunities here and after this reading, I’m feeling inspired.
Design & Thinking Documentary
Design & Thinking is an interesting documentary to watch as a designer because it has designers in the working field that agree and disagree with it, and designers who don’t know exactly what it is. I’m always fascinated when we get to hear from other designers in a visual sense, much more so than the written word. I thought some interesting things were said, here are some ideas that I really quite liked.
“Design Thinking is applying design methods to the working class and world.”
I thought that this was a neat little concept because it really helps me as a designer understand more what Design Thinking is and what we’re trying to do with it. This makes it feel like Design Thinking is less a scientific method and more of a way to bridge a gap.
“Design is a sport where you have to participate.”
I think a lot of designers, myself included, feel like we have to figure everything out on our own but Design Thinking really cements the idea that design thinking is a team effort. I really like how this phrase puts it into such easy terms.
“Rapid Prototyping: It’s ok to have a bad idea.”
Luckily, this is something we’re taught well in our program but it’s nice to see this concept out in the real world. I’m so nervous about having to be perfect when I leave school but making wrong decisions seem inevitable.
“Ask Why”
This I think, is my favourite idea from the documentary. I feel like it’s so easy to just take a client’s request and push it out without thought to exactly what they asked for. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm and just forget how to use our design minds, but I never want to forget how to be creative.
Opportunities for Change & Innovation
This seems like a very self-centred approach to this project because I might be one of the select few that faces this problem. But hey, I think it’s important to do a passion project every now and again.
Before reading anything much about circular design I felt like I had a vague concept about what it was already. My understanding was that circular design focuses not only on the design of the project but the scope of it and the life cycle.
Now I think I can understand that Circular Design is more focused on the reusability of the product and how many times it can be reused within its cycle, which seems like an interesting ideology as there’s been a lot of focus on proper recycling in the past few years. My dad likes to talk my ear off about how back in the day, people used to fix stuff instead of throwing it out. There’s evidence of that too when you look at food packaging from back in the day, cracker tins could be reused to hold bits and ends. Flour sacks were purposefully printed with fun patterns in the 1930′s after manufacturers realized that women would make clothing from them.
Maybe they weren’t thinking about it that way at the time, but that seems to be a prime example of circular design. It’s the idea of the continuity of the design’s life after its expected death and giving it a new purpose.
I think that circular design ties in nicely with design thinking but wouldn’t say that it’s here to replace design thinking. I think if anything, that it’s just something to consider when using design thinking.
One concept I don’t like is the idea of subscriptions. While that works for single-use items like books or games that you might want to eventually pass on, it annoys the living hell out of me that there are so many subscriptions in the digital sense. For example, why do I have to pay monthly or yearly for the Adobe cloud when I’d be better off just buying it in one go?
I think when it comes to our show at least, we can definitely think about circular design. Here are some ideas:
reusable frames for the display that we can leave to the next year or take home for personal use.
personal branding that can be reused for other purposes, eg. a program booklet that refolds with guides into a paper airplane.
Renting table cloths instead of buying them.
I think we need to also think about the environmental impact of printing for our show and consider less projects but a more careful selection on what to show.
Frame Your Design Challenge
What is the problem you’re trying to solve? The problem that we are trying to solve is that making coffee at home can be a messy process due to the current packaging for coffee or the tools used to brew it.
Frame it as a design question What can we do to streamline the brewing process for a better at-home coffee experience? State the ultimate impact you’re trying to have. To make at home brewing the chosen method of coffee drinking.
What are some possible solutions?
Redesign coffee packaging
Redesign the brewer (hassle-free load option)
Design a scoop with a lid that you can flick closed.
Write down context and constraints that you’re facing
Time constraint of >1 month.
Small budget
Perhaps context is bagged coffee + using a scoop.
The reason that coffee is bagged as it is:
Coffee bags have that little valve on them for a reason “A Degassing Valve: Sealed bags without a valve usually inflate and can even explode. A degassing valve allows the carbon dioxide that roasted coffee releases to escape the sealed bags. It's a one-way valve: carbon dioxide goes out, but oxygen doesn't come in.”
There has also been a few different neat redesigns of coffee bag to solve the sustainability and mess issues!
“Tchibo created a new kind of coffee package for its Caffe Crema Vollmundig coffee beans. The bag looks standard at first glance - side gussets and a one-way valve - but upon further inspection, a capped plastic spout is discovered inside the top of one of the side gussets. When the consumer desires to open the bag, they push down and unscrew the cap, cutting a hole in the film. They can then pour out their beans with greater control and reseal the screw the cap, eliminating the need for other reclosure systems.“
DT: Secondary Research
So last time I posted about this, you know, before the world was ending, I was talking about the importance of coffee valves in a bag of coffee beans to keep the bag from exploding from the buildup of gasses. The valve allows carbon dioxide from the beans to escape, making it necessary. The problem with this, is that means it’s one of the things that makes a coffee bag not entirely compostable. So I was looking into that in particular and found that there’s a company called TricorBraun Flex that is working on a sustainable bag line called Biotrē that currently has a 60% compostable coffee bag and is working on a 100% compostable bag, so that’s great for the future of coffee.
On that note, we researched what’s already out there for improving the coffee making process and I found it interesting that despite how old coffee is and the multitude of different ways of brewing it, most cultures have a certain way of doing it and have predominantly stuck to their methods and tools through history. Of course things have updated as technology evolved but there’s definitely been an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach to at home brewing or, people have developed their own methods.
Of course, there are many influential coffee shops and brew masters out there, even on the west coast, that are constantly developing new methods and shortcuts that often make their way to the home via baristas but we’ve yet to see a significant, single method in coffee brewing.
The reason for this is that brewing is a very personal, particular thing. People like their coffee a certain way and everyone stores it, grinds it and prepares it differently. Still, I did find some neat little things that have been introduced to the brewing world in the last century!
I mainly looked at spoons when doing my secondary research and really enjoyed this concept:
Using the spoon as a clip as well to keep the coffee bag closed is a neat idea because the spoon would always be around for measuring and the bag gets closed, meaning the coffee keeps fresh for longer.
Alternatively, a coffee scoop with a sliding lid could help when scooping coffee. This is a picture of one used for medicine.
Another cool thing is that there are a few drip coffee makers out there that actually grind the beans for you. It’s a no mess method because it also portions out the beans, making a pot of coffee is just keeping the water tank full and clicking a button.
Erin Gibbs Response
This past week, we had Erin Gibbs join our class and present her process to us. She was extremely knowledgable and very thorough about her process. As someone who creates items for a customer base already, I found it really cool and helpful to learn about how she creates and how her items get manufactured. It was our task to come up with a piece in response to her work or inspired by it. I remember immediately scratching out this phrase after the class, perhaps the fact that she showed us a jungle-inspired line was to blame. Either way, I had a lot of fun making this piece though it alone took me 5+ hours. I can’t imagine creating a whole line based on it!