My impression of design thinking is that it is the process of using creativity to solve a problem.
When I am presented with a problem I consider every possible approach, no matter how insane or “out there” the approach may be.
I found a great video that illustrates the process of design thinking: http://stratige.net/2009/01/desing-thinking-at-stanford/ (Some Stanford students put together a video of how a coffee cup holder came to be).
The students defined the problem and their user (the user-bicyclers who like a coffee before class, the problem being that they had no good place to put their coffee cups while enroute). They come up with different ways to solve the problem (creatively using blue duct tape), then chose a prototype that worked and implemented their idea.
I like the quotes “Design Thinking is creativity in reaction to everyday problems” and “Wild Ideas Welcome”.
Thanks for sharing the video…It was funny and nice to watch… My only comment is that part of design thinking should be to look at current design ideas and why people don’t use them or why they have failed….I took some time to look at coffee cup holder for bikes and there are thousands of designs… This made me think if we really needed a new design or we need to inform people… Probably coffee stores should start selling them…
Nice post..
By: Maricel Medina on April 21, 2009
at 3:01p04
I think it’s always interesting to see how outside developers design products. In the past two years at GMU I have experienced a lot of different personalities in my groups that have allowed me to see different perspectives on different projects that we have worked on. However, I still feel somewhat in a bubble and that’s why I say its good to see outside designers and how they operate. Although their process was very similar (for example, they did an audience analysis and used iterative design with their prototypes), it is an entirely different type of product then what I am used to looking at. Thanks for sharing.
By: Ben Yzaguirre on April 25, 2009
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Comment from Marc:
Interesting to see how students used their creativity and observations in
their design thinking. It’s good they balanced their out of the box thinking
with user feedback and trial and error testing in the development of their
prototype.
I think if design groups have the opportunity to express their ideas,
participants feel their view is valued and they understand that the ideas
discussed aren’t final, this helps encourage creativity versus inhibiting
it.
Whether it’s a coffee cup holder on campus or figuring out a technology to
tag a lost dog/child (http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/249), I enjoyed reading
this post and pondering design thinking.
By: bbannan on April 29, 2009
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