Presentation on design thinking

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hello everyone, my name is Kim Sung Jie. In this video I will present on Week 2’s article on Design Thinking by Tim Brown.
• #3: This presentation is structured as follows: Firstly, I will provide a brief introduction of the article. Then I’ll touch on the difference between innovation and invention. After that I’ll talk in depth about Design Thinking – that is, What is it? What are the phases? Why do people use it? Last but not least, I’ll wrap it up with some discussion questions. Note: A list of references will be provided on the last slide.
• #4: In this article the author brings together the concepts of innovation and design thinking, which I will show later that they are largely overlapping concepts. Brown shows us how Design Thinking was applied in practice through his design and consultancy company, IDEO, which has worked with many large organisations around the world to innovate and solve their problems.
• #5: Using Thomas Edison as an example, Brown illustrates the important difference between innovation and invention. Although Edison was famous for many inventions like the [c] light bulb and the [c] R&D lab, it wasn’t the good ideas alone that led to their success but, as Brown says… …it was [c] Edison’s ability to blend “art, craft, science, business savvy, and an astute understanding of customer and markets” that ultimately led to the success of his inventions. For example, Edison had to build the electricity generation and distribution infrastructure, design the lamp stands, switches and wiring to bring his invention of the light bulb to practical use. This example of innovation is consistent with other authors’ definition of it. Specifically, [c] Tidd and Bessant defines innovation as the “long process of bringing a good idea to widespread and effective use.”
• #6: The concept of design thinking is not new. Brown claims that Edison’s approach was an early example of Design Thinking [c]. However, in academia Design Thinking has been studied since at least the 1960s [c]; but it is only until the last decade or so that DT has gained much popularity in the business setting [c]. Many companies, like IDEO, show that DT can be used to solve complex business and also social problems. [c] As one author describes it: “Design Thinking is about unwrapping the problem solving process: it suggests that the creative process is not sequential, but overlapping and iterative; it requires input from people with different disciplines and backgrounds; it is argumentative, and requires integrative thinking. It’s about ‘failing forward’, rapid prototyping and using the wisdom of crowds” (Logue, 2012),
• #7: There is currently no universally agreed standard for Design Thinking; many variations exist and are in use by different companies. Brown presents the DT model as consisting of three phases (or “spaces” as he calls it). These are: Inspire, Ideate and Implement. [c] These phases can be visited back and forth a number of times (in an iterative and overlapping manner) as the project or innovation team continually refines the ideas, prototypes and test the solutions. 
• #8: I’d like to note that Stanford has been researching and teaching DT for many decades and their model of DT is arguably the most influential. It is similar to Brown’s model, and it shown here as a reference in case you want to check it out further.
• #9: As mentioned earlier, the innovation process and DT are highly overlapping. This diagram of the Innovation Cycle shows similar features as the two DT models presented previously – that is, they are iterative and they involve the end-to-end process from idea generation to implementation and diffusion.
• #10: I will now go into a bit more detail about each phase of Brown’s Design Thinking model. [c] Firstly, the inspire phase typically involves: Defining the challenge Overserving and gaining insights [c] When Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare provider in the US wanted to improve its overall quality of both patients’ and medical practitioners’ experience, they trained their project team in Design Thinking with the help of IDEO. Over several months the project team, [c] which was made up of staff from different departments with diverse skills, held workshops [c] and extensively collaborated with stakeholders to identify problems. [c] They observed what people do, interviewed them, and asked what they needed. [c] They used empathy and a people first approach to see and experience things first hand and build a deep understanding of stakeholders and the problems they were facing.
• #11: The Ideate phase is about: Generating ideas and concepts, and Building Prototypes and experimenting Generally, the project team will use their [c] creativity and temporary ignore constraints to generate as may ideas as possible. [c] They turn ideas that may work into a physical form through rapid prototyping. Prototypes can be anything from drawings, to role playing to building a rough model. At Kaiser they videotaped the performance of new prototyped services and built a simple software to test their ideas. [c] Prototyping shouldn’t take too long, because it’s main purpose is to allow stakeholders or users to see and interact with the potential solution, so they can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the idea and get feedback for further prototyping.
• #12: In a TED presentation in 2009, Brown suggested that solutions should aim to satisfy three design constraints: [c] desirability, [c] feasibility and [c] viability.  As this diagram shows, when a solution can balance all three constraints, [c] innovation is the result; that is a technically and financially viable solution that meets users’ needs… I believe this is essentially what Edison was able to achieve with his inventions.
• #13: The Implement phase is about: Identifying capabilities and resources, and Bringing the new product/services to market [c] At Shimano, a Japanese cycling company, the innovation team used the human-centred approach of [c] Design Thinking to gain new insights into the cycling population, which led to the discovery of a new category of cycling called Coasting. [c] Shimano not only developed the components to allow the new Coasting bikes to be made by manufacturers, but they also [c] engaged in many activities to bring the new type of bikes to the market; for example they created in-store retailing strategies for independent bike shops, and developed a brand that identified Coasting as a way to enjoy life.
• #14: In summary, Design Thinking is a creative problem solving methodology that can be used to generate innovative products and services. Now, here are some questions for the discussion forums are: What type of skills do you think are important for a design thinking practitioner? What are some of the disadvantages of the design thinking approach? How would you introduce a new concept such as design thinking to your workplace?