Tim Brown urges designers to think big
Moving from Design to Design Thinking
The speaker discusses the shift from traditional design to design thinking and its impact on creating meaningful solutions.
Importance of Design Thinking
- Traditional design focused on making products more attractive, easier to use, and marketable.
- However, this approach was incremental and lacked a significant impact.
- Design as a tool of consumerism emerged in the latter half of the 20th century.
- Today, design is often associated with amusing but less important products.
A Different View of Design
- Shifting focus from the object to design thinking as an approach can lead to bigger impacts.
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel's innovative designs in the 19th century exemplify this approach.
- Brunel's integrated transportation system aimed for passengers to travel seamlessly from London to New York.
Design Thinking and Problem Solving
- Design thinking involves integrative thinking, exploiting opposing ideas and constraints for new solutions.
- Balancing desirability, technical feasibility, and economic viability is crucial in design innovation.
- As industrial society matured, design became more focused on aesthetics and fashion.
Reemergence of Design Thinking
- Application of design thinking to global issues like climate change, education, healthcare is making design big again.
- Basic principles include human-centeredness, understanding culture and context before generating ideas.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Innovative Designs
The speaker highlights Isambard Kingdom Brunel's notable designs in the 19th century that demonstrate his use of design thinking.
Great Western Railway
- Brunel designed the Great Western Railway with a vision of providing passengers with an experience of floating across the countryside.
- He achieved this by creating flat gradients through viaducts (e.g., Thames at Maidenhead) and tunnels (e.g., Box in Wiltshire).
- Brunel envisioned an integrated transportation system, allowing passengers to travel from London to New York.
Design Thinking and World-Changing Innovations
The speaker discusses how design thinking can solve problems and create world-changing innovations.
Integrative Thinking
- Design thinking involves integrative thinking, exploiting opposing ideas and constraints for new solutions.
- Balancing desirability, technical feasibility, and economic viability is crucial in design innovation.
From Systems Thinkers to Fashion-Focused Designers
- As industrial society matured, design became a profession focused on aesthetics, image, and fashion.
- However, there is a reemergence of design thinking applied to tackle global issues.
Basic Principles of Design Thinking
The speaker presents some fundamental ideas related to design thinking.
Human-Centered Approach
- Design starts with understanding human needs and making life easier and more enjoyable.
- It goes beyond ergonomics by considering culture and context before generating ideas.
Application of Design Thinking
- Design thinking is being applied to various domains such as global warming, education, healthcare, security, clean water.
- Observing the reemergence of design thinking provides useful insights into solving new kinds of problems.
Design Thinking and Human Need
This section discusses the importance of starting with human need when applying design thinking. It emphasizes the value of understanding people and culture before considering technology.
Starting with People and Culture
- The team in India worked with patients and community health workers to understand how a PDA and an application on a PDA could replace technicians in fitting and diagnostic services.
- Instead of focusing on technology, they started by understanding people's needs and cultural context.
Learning by Making
- Design thinking emphasizes learning by making rather than just thinking about what to build.
- Prototypes help speed up the innovation process by allowing us to understand the strengths and weaknesses of our ideas when they are put into the real world.
Innovation at Aravind Eye Institute
- The Aravind Eye Institute in Madurai, India serves poor patients by cross-subsidizing their care through revenues from those who can afford to pay.
- They achieved cost breakthroughs through early prototyping, such as using low-cost CAD/CAM technology for manufacturing intraocular lenses.
- Their prototyping mentality allowed them to bring down the cost of lenses from $200 a pair to just $4 a pair.
Participatory Systems: Shifting from Consumption to Participation
This section explores the shift from passive consumer-producer relationships towards active participation in meaningful experiences. It highlights the potential for participatory systems beyond traditional consumption-based models.
Beyond Consumption: Participatory Systems
- Design thinking is exploring participatory systems that engage everyone in creating and measuring various forms of value beyond cash.
- The design of participatory systems is becoming a major theme for both design and the economy.
Reinventing Welfare State through Participation
- Hilary Cottam, Charlie Leadbeater, and Hugo Manassei suggest reinventing the welfare state through participation in their manifesto called Beveridge 4.0.
- They developed projects like Southwark Circle, where residents and designers collaborated to create a membership organization to assist the elderly with household tasks.
Design Impact in Healthcare
- Kaiser Permanente nurses and practitioners studied improving the patient experience by observing, brainstorming, and rapid prototyping.
- They developed a new way to change shift that reduced time away from patients from 40 minutes to 12 minutes on average, increasing patient confidence and nurse happiness.
Design Thinking in Times of Change
This section highlights the connection between design thinking and times of change. It discusses how design thinking can provide new alternatives and ideas during periods of significant societal transformation.
The Connection: Change
- Brunel worked during the Industrial Revolution when life and the economy were being reinvented.
- Today, we are experiencing massive change, similar to Brunel's time.
- Design thinking is a useful tool for generating new ideas and alternatives in times of change.
The transcript ends here.
Design Thinking: A New Approach to Problem Solving
In this section, the speaker introduces the concept of design thinking as a new approach to problem-solving. Design thinking encourages a divergent approach to explore new alternatives and solutions.
Why Design Thinking?
- Design thinking offers a new way of tackling problems by taking a divergent approach.
- Instead of defaulting to the normal convergent approach, design thinking encourages exploring new alternatives, solutions, and ideas.
- It allows for the exploration of possibilities that have not existed before.
The Importance of Defining the Question
- Before diving into the process of divergence, it is crucial to define the question or design brief.
- Questions like "How do I take a train from London to New York?" may have been asked in the past, but today's questions are different.
- Examples of modern questions include improving access to safe drinking water for the world's poorest people while stimulating innovation among local water providers.
Collaborative Approach with Acumen Fund
- The speaker shares an example project with Acumen Fund funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
- Instead of having American designers come up with ideas, they took an open and collaborative approach.
- Designers and investment experts teamed up with 11 water organizations across India to develop innovative products, services, and business models.
- Ideas were developed through workshops, followed by funding for selected organizations to further develop their concepts.
Impact and Expansion
- IDEO and Acumen worked closely with these organizations on social marketing campaigns, community outreach strategies, and designing new water vessels for storing and delivering water.
- Some ideas are already being launched into the market while similar processes are starting in East Africa.
- This project demonstrates how focusing on human needs, using prototypes, involving the community, and thinking in systems can tackle bigger and more interesting questions.
Engaging the Community
- The speaker expresses interest in hearing what the community thinks design thinking could be used to tackle.
- Suggestions and ideas can be shared on Twitter using the hashtag #CBDQ.
- Design thinking has the potential to create new ideas and innovations beyond consumer products on the High Street.
- Taking a more expansive view of design, similar to Brunel's approach, is essential.
Asking the Right Questions
- To make a difference with design thinking, it is crucial to start by asking the right questions.
- The first step is defining the question or design brief that guides the problem-solving process.