1. Discuss Empathy Maps
2. Discuss Next steps — Click here for competitive analysis document
3. Blog on your empathy map post to team blog
4. Examine the competition
5. Blog on the competitive environment
6. Post new values
1. Discuss Next Steps
2. Read article on Empathy Mapping (click here)
2. Analyze interviews to complete 2 Empathy Maps
3. Complete 2 empathy maps
4. Blog on your empathy map post to team blog
5. Whole Class Review accomplishments
6. Post new values
1. Update Blog from yesterday
2. Prepare to present your proposal
3. Present your proposal to the class — I will have a slide template for you
4. Feedback — take notes
5. Update Values
The different stages in the design thinking process require different ways of thinking. During one stage you may be open to all ideas. In the next stage you will think more critically about the ideas you generated, grouping them, refining them, and selecting ideas that seem to best address the problem. Design thinkers approach problems with a flexible, positive, and critical thought process that helps them synthesize information from a variety of sources. This ability to apply many ways of thinking to solve a problem is what helps design thinkers identify new ideas, innovations, or improvements from the insights they gather during this stage.
Once a problem description has been finalized, design thinking in the early stages of the process can feel very vague, especially when first considering design problems or opportunities. During this early stage you will brainstorm, create mind maps, and use other strategies to get everything you think of that is associated with this problem out in the open and onto paper or a whiteboard. This early stage takes time. In later stages of the design process, thinking can be lightning fast. These “a-ha!” moments that may occur later in the process are fueled by the work that is done in early on. The thinking you do during prototyping can be very linear as you consider issues associated with evaluating and implementing your solution.
Through the entire process, the most important question you can ask is Why? Asking “why” keeps your thinking fresh and prevents you and your team members from settling for a solution that isn’t as good as it could be. “Why” helps you test out the problem description in the early stages and evaluate new ideas that emerge.
The key skill in design thinking is to be aware of your thinking throughout the design process, making sure that you’re not being limited by your own misconceptions.
There’s a story about a truck that illustrates how hard it is to identify the influence of old understandings of a problem.
Can you relate in a few words to design thinking as far as your work?
design thinking is synonymous with good design behavior. Ummm, we as designers, I think, are inherently
planners, and that’s very much at the core of what I believe
to be good design activity.
>>Dan: So what are the characteristics of good design?
How do you see good design?
>>Josh: Good design is, at its core, as we’ve said,
serve a human-centered activity.
It’s something which starts at the needs
that we have as humans and builds out around those
needs to deliver answers to problems which are clear,
thoughtful, and engaging.
I think that if you’re thinking about the human at the center,
you’re thinking about the needs of society at the center.
You’re thinking about how we move through the banal as well
as the complex aspects of our lives
with the same motivation, which is to move humanity forward,
not backwards.
That’s what human-centered design, humanistic design means.
Designers are like farmers.
We plant seeds, but we plant seeds not just of solutions,
but also of desire.
We make things which people need but also want.
>>Dan: Tell me more about desire.
This is an interesting topic to get into,
because I think that understanding what people need
and what people want is what designers are good at,
it’s what ultimately our training enables us to do.
And that’s something beyond the sort of bean-counting
that happens in marketing, for example, right?
It’s just knowing that because of the lineage
of certain ideas, we can understand the future
of where those ideas might go.
I think that’s one of the things that design thinking kind of proposes.
>>Dan: What are the characteristics or relations
between design thinking and good design?
>>Josh: Good design is understanding that we
should be fearless with regard to testing our ideas.
We should be– and when I say fearless,
I mean engaging in the process and pushing ideas forward
furiously and failing fast and at the beginning of things,
so that we can learn from those failures
and those struggles to evolve ideas.
I think that’s part of what enables
us to function as designers and to solve problems,
is that iterative study of things.