Design Thinking in LeadershipDesign Thinking argues very convincingly that we would need to provide more time for the discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation and evolution of ideas, both for students and for teachers.
Instead of looking at what assets a company has to create a product, leaders who use design thinking first ask what their clients require and then identify how the organisation can fulfill those needs. Research, interviews and first-person observation identify problems that need solving, which in turn inform the products and services a company develops using creative thinking and diverse perspectives. For learning, design thinking could apply to how programs and learning tasks are developed and delivered. We shouldn't just teach design thinking to our students, but we should use it to create our projects and learning tasks.
This approach is said to help leaders by removing the taboo of creativity. According to Dr Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Design Thinking shrinks innovation to something that doesn’t require a massive strategic change in an organization, but can be applied every day; from how might we better communicate within a team to how might we increase our ability to identify new learning potentials and trends.
Instead of looking at what assets a company has to create a product, leaders who use design thinking first ask what their clients require and then identify how the organisation can fulfill those needs. Research, interviews and first-person observation identify problems that need solving, which in turn inform the products and services a company develops using creative thinking and diverse perspectives. For learning, design thinking could apply to how programs and learning tasks are developed and delivered. We shouldn't just teach design thinking to our students, but we should use it to create our projects and learning tasks.
This approach is said to help leaders by removing the taboo of creativity. According to Dr Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Design Thinking shrinks innovation to something that doesn’t require a massive strategic change in an organization, but can be applied every day; from how might we better communicate within a team to how might we increase our ability to identify new learning potentials and trends.
Organisational Focus on DesignKeep in mind that design thinking doesn’t solve all problems. Like Kolko in this Harward Business Review article suggests, it helps people and organizations cut through complexity. It’s great for innovation. It works extremely well for imagining the future. An organisational focus on design offers unique opportunities for humanizing technology and for developing emotionally resonant products and services. Adopting this perspective isn’t easy. But doing so helps create a workplace where people want to be, one that responds quickly to changing business dynamics and empowers individual contributors. And because design is empathetic, it implicitly drives a more thoughtful, human approach to business.
'How Might We'? According to IDEO (http://www.designkit.org/) every problem is an opportunity for design. By framing your challenge as a How Might We question, you’ll set yourself up for an innovative solution.
Start by looking at the insight statements that you’ve created. Try rephrasing them as questions by adding “How might we” at the beginning.
The goal is to find opportunities for design, so if your insights suggest several How Might We questions that’s great.
Then take a look at your How Might We question and ask yourself if it allows for a variety of solutions. If it doesn’t, broaden it. Your How Might We should generate a number of possible answers and will become a launchpad for your Brainstorms.
Finally, make sure that your How Might We’s aren’t too broad. It’s a tricky process but a good How Might We should give you both a narrow enough frame to let you know where to start your Brainstorm, but also enough breadth to give you room to explore wild ideas.
Design Thinking Mindsets
Human-centered design is as much about your head as your hands. IDEO suggests that how you think about design directly affects whether you'll arrive at innovative, impactful solutions. These 7 Mindsets explore and uncover the philosophy behind Design Kit’s approach to creative problem solving.
Learn from Failure
Make it
Creative Confidence
Empathy
Embrace ambiguity
Optimism
Iterate, iterate, iterate
Four principles to Design Thinking (According to Plattner, Meinel and Leifer) The human rule – all design activity is ultimately social in nature
The ambiguity rule – design thinkers must preserve ambiguity
The re-design rule – all design is re-design
The tangibility rule – making ideas tangible always facilitates communication
Rogers’ adoption of Innovation Adoption LifecycleLike innovations, also adopters have been determined to have traits that affect their likelihood to adopt an innovation. A bevy of individual personality traits have been explored for their impacts on adoption, but with little agreement. Ability and motivation, which vary on situation unlike personality traits, have a large impact on a potential adopter's likelihood to adopt an innovation. Unsurprisingly, potential adopters who are motivated to adopt an innovation are likely to make the adjustments needed to adopt it.
Rogers outlines several strategies in order to help an innovation reach this stage, including when an innovation adopted by a highly respected individual within a social network and creating an instinctive desire for a specific innovation. Another strategy includes injecting an innovation into a group of individuals who would readily use said technology, as well as providing positive reactions and benefits for early adopters.
Innovators, Early Adopters and Early MajorityAccording to Rogers (2002), whereas innovators are cosmopolites, early adopters are localites. This adopter category, more than any other, has the highest degree of opinion leadership in most systems. Potential adopters look to early adopters for advice and information about an innovation.
Early majority are pragmatists, comfortable with moderately progressive ideas, but won’t act without solid proof of benefits. They are followers who are influenced by mainstream fashions and wary of fads. Majorities are cost sensitive and risk averse. They are looking for simple, proven, better ways of doing what they already do. They require guaranteed off-the-shelf performance, minimum disruption, minimum commitment of time, minimum learning, and either cost neutrality or rapid payback periods. And they hate complexity.
Robinson (2009) has summarised Rogers' ideas in of the Diffusion of Innovations and he suggests that when working with early adopters one should
Offer strong face-to-face support for a limited number of early adopters to trial the new idea.
Study the trials carefully to discover how to make the idea more convenient, low cost and marketable.
Reward their egos e.g. with media coverage.
Promote them as fashion leaders (beginning with the cultish end of the media market).
Recruit and train some as peer educators.
Maintain relationships with regular feedback.
Robinson describes the early majority as pragmatists, comfortable with moderately progressive ideas, but won’t act without solid proof of benefits. They are followers who are influenced by mainstream fashions and wary of fads. Majorities are cost sensitive and risk averse. They are looking for simple, proven, better ways of doing what they already do. They require guaranteed off-the-shelf performance, minimum disruption, minimum commitment of time, minimum learning, and either cost neutrality or rapid payback periods and they hate complexity.
Leading in a Culture of ChangeIf you haven't yet read Michael Fullan's book "Leading in a Culture of Change", we warmly recommend it. Fullan has written expansively about educational change and how to manage it. Since "Change is a double edged sword... for better of worse, change arouses emotions", it hopefully helps in your LDC2 planning that you are ok with your and others emotions.
He has proposed (2001) that leaders would become more effective with their efforts to lead in a culture of change if they would be constant in their efforts to establish these five components of leadership:
Moral Purpose: A commitment to betterment and improving life
Understanding Change: A culture of change consists of great rapidity and non-linearity on the one hand and equally great potential for creative breakthroughs on the other. The paradox is that transformation would not be possible without accompanying messiness.
Relationships, Relationships and Relationships: How people interact with each other and the trust and loyalty they are able to create is essential to the success or failure of a change.
Knowledge Building: The process of a person taking information in and creating an understanding that is then used in society.
Coherence Building: Accepting that change is inevitable and can be positive, this is helping everyone make sense of the ’messiness’ that comes along with the changes that are being experienced.
OptimismJohn Bielenberg
Founder, Future Partners
You need to believe its possible.
The bigger the challenge the more important optimism is
Is the thing that drives you and makes it possible.
“Optimism is the thing that drives you forward.”
We believe that design is inherently optimistic. To take on a big challenge, especially one as large and intractable as poverty, we have to believe that progress is even an option. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t even try. Optimism is the embrace of possibility, the idea that even if we don’t know the answer, that it’s out there and that we can find it. Human-centered designers are persistently focused on what could be, not the countless obstacles that may get in the way. Constraints are inevitable, and often they push designers toward unexpected solutions. But it’s our core animating belief that shows just how deeply optimistic human-centered designers are: Every problem is solvable.
Iterate, Iterate, Iterate
Gaby BrinkFounder, Tomorrow Partners
Gain validation along the way that we are working towards better solutions as we are hearing from the people we are designing for. Pay off is when people are implementing in their lives.Moving through concepts more quickly. We arrive at better solutions more quickly. Able to test ideas so we aren't investing in a single idea that might not be the right one.“What an iterative approach affords us is that we gain validation along the way...because we’re hearing from the people we’re actually designing for.”Human-centered design is an inherently iterative approach to solving problems because it makes feedback from the people we’re designing for a critical part of how a solution evolves. By continually iterating, refining, and improving our work we put ourselves in a place where we’ll have more ideas, try a variety of approaches, unlock our creativity, and arrive more quickly at successful solutions.
We iterate because we know that we won’t get it right the first time. Or even the second. Iteration allows us the opportunity to explore, to get it wrong, to follow our hunches, but ultimately arrive at a solution that will be adopted and embraced. We iterate because it allows us to keep learning. Instead of hiding out in our workshops, betting that an idea, product, or service will be a hit, we quickly get out in the world and let the people we’re designing for be our guides.
EmpathyEmi KolawoleEditor-in-Residence, Stanford University d.school
putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Its a chance to be completely other than you are.
understanding - true human centred design
New solutions i have to get to know new people and new situations.
Dive into something completely different
“I can’t come up with any new ideas if all I do is exist in my own life.”Empathy is the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and start to solve problems from their perspectives. Human-centered design is premised on empathy, on the idea that the people you’re designing for are your roadmap to innovative solutions. All you have to do empathize, understand them, and bring them along with you in the design process.Immersing yourself in another world not only opens you up to new creative possibilities, but it allows you to leave behind preconceived ideas and outmoded ways of thinking. Empathizing with the people you’re designing for is the best route to truly grasping the context and complexities of their lives. But most importantly, it keeps the people you’re designing for squarely grounded in the center of your work.
We iterate because we know that we won’t get it right the first time. Or even the second. Iteration allows us the opportunity to explore, to get it wrong, to follow our hunches, but ultimately arrive at a solution that will be adopted and embraced. We iterate because it allows us to keep learning. Instead of hiding out in our workshops, betting that an idea, product, or service will be a hit, we quickly get out in the world and let the people we’re designing for be our guides.
EmpathyEmi KolawoleEditor-in-Residence, Stanford University d.school
putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Its a chance to be completely other than you are.
understanding - true human centred design
New solutions i have to get to know new people and new situations.
Dive into something completely different
“I can’t come up with any new ideas if all I do is exist in my own life.”Empathy is the capacity to step into other people’s shoes, to understand their lives, and start to solve problems from their perspectives. Human-centered design is premised on empathy, on the idea that the people you’re designing for are your roadmap to innovative solutions. All you have to do empathize, understand them, and bring them along with you in the design process.Immersing yourself in another world not only opens you up to new creative possibilities, but it allows you to leave behind preconceived ideas and outmoded ways of thinking. Empathizing with the people you’re designing for is the best route to truly grasping the context and complexities of their lives. But most importantly, it keeps the people you’re designing for squarely grounded in the center of your work.
Creative Confidence
David KelleyFounder, IDEO
Lots of people say that they aren't creative.
People have fear that is blocking there confidence.Have to go through lots of iterations.“Creative confidence is the notion that you have big ideas, and that you have the ability to act on them.”Anyone can approach the world like a designer. Often all it takes to unlock that potential as a dynamic problem solver is creative confidence. Creative confidence is the belief that everyone is creative, and that creativity isn’t the capacity to draw or compose or sculpt, but a way of approaching the world.
Creative confidence is the quality that human-centered designers rely on when it comes to making leaps, trusting their intuition, and chasing solutions that they haven’t totally figured out yet. It’s the belief that you can and will come up with creative solutions to big problems and the confidence that all it takes is rolling up your sleeves and diving in.
People have fear that is blocking there confidence.Have to go through lots of iterations.“Creative confidence is the notion that you have big ideas, and that you have the ability to act on them.”Anyone can approach the world like a designer. Often all it takes to unlock that potential as a dynamic problem solver is creative confidence. Creative confidence is the belief that everyone is creative, and that creativity isn’t the capacity to draw or compose or sculpt, but a way of approaching the world.
Creative confidence is the quality that human-centered designers rely on when it comes to making leaps, trusting their intuition, and chasing solutions that they haven’t totally figured out yet. It’s the belief that you can and will come up with creative solutions to big problems and the confidence that all it takes is rolling up your sleeves and diving in.
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