Design Thinking is a popular new idea in the business world – organizations as diverse as entrepreneurial start-ups, big established corporations, and government and social service organizations are experimenting with Design Thinking as an alternative
approach to traditional problem-solving. Accelerated by the spectacular rise of Apple and IDEO, Design Thinking is seen as offering a new approach better-suited for dealing with the accelerating pressures for growth and innovation faced by so many organizations
today. But Design Thinking can remain mysterious for people interested in introducing this approach into their decision-making processes. Demystifying it is the focus of this course.
Though designing as a
craft requires years of dedicated education and talent to master, Design Thinking, as a problem solving
approach, does not. In this course, we work with the following model that
contains 4 questions and several tools:
The 4 sequential questions that take us on a journey through an
assessment of current reality (what is?),the envisioning of a new future (what
if?), the development of some concepts for new business opportunities (what wows?), and the testing of some of
those in the marketplace (what works?). The process of Design Thinking begins with data gathering: at the outset of the design process, designers gather a great deal of data on the users for whom they would like to create value. They mostly do this through ethnographic methods, such as experience
mapping, rather than traditional methods, such as focus groups and surveys. Farther along in the process, designers make their new ideas concrete (in the form of prototypes) and go out and collect better data from the real world in a process that is hypothesis-driven. That is, they treat their new ideas as hypotheses to be tested. They surface the assumptions underlying their hypotheses and test them, usually looking for the kind of behavioral metrics that will allow them to iterate their way to improved value
Accompanying the 4 questions is a set of tools to help
business people achieve the same kind of disciplined approach to innovation and
growth that they bring to the rest of their business. In this course, we will
look at several stories from different organizations
– major corporations like IBM,
entrepreneurial start-ups like MeYouHealth,
and even social service organizations like The Good Kitchen – all
using the Design Thinking tools and approach to achieve better outcomes.
Week 1: What is Design Thinking? We will begin our course by unpacking
what we mean by Design Thinking and why it is more effective than traditional
business methods when the goal is innovation in the business environment. By looking at the case history of The Good Kitchen, a Denmark program for providing meals for
the elderly, we will explore how the mindset and practice of the innovation
team that partnered with innovation consultant Hatch & Bloom enabled them
to achieve innovation and growth. We’ll conclude Week 1 by examining what
kinds of problems and challenges are best suited for a Design Thinking
Week 2: How can we prepare ourselves to
be leaders of innovation? Design Thinking is not only about process and tools. It is about people as
well: about you as a design thinker
and about the people you want to create value for and with. And so, before we jump
into the process of using Design Thinking to generate and test ideas, we want
to first focus on your own mindset and look at whether your mind is prepared to both see and act
on opportunity when it shows up in your world. We will examine this issue by
looking at the stories of two very capable managers, George and Geoff, and how their differing mindsets affect their ability to lead innovation and
will also look at the role of visualization tools that use imagery and storytelling
to bring ideas to life.
Week 3: How can you use Design Thinking
to generate ideas? Now we will dive deeper into the Design Thinking process, looking at how we can
use it to generate better ideas. This week, we will look at the story of an
entrepreneur, Chris Cartter, and his start-up, MeYouHealth, as they worked with
Boston design firm, Essential Design, to understand the kind of
opportunity that social networking might hold for helping us to improve our
what already exists is the first step in the Design Thinking process. As part
of assessing what is, designers
“follow the customer home” and explore the problems they are trying to solve in
life versus their product use. Once they have thoroughly explored and
looked for patterns in what is, designers
look toward the future and ask what if?These two questions – what is and what
if – along with their associated tools will
be the focus of Week 3. This is the creative part of the process, but it also
contains a disciplined approach.
Week 4: How can you use Design Thinking
to test ideas? Having generated all
these great ideas, what’s next? The Design Thinking process now helps us to
take the many ideas we have generated and figure out how to determine which
ones are likely to produce the specific kinds of outcomes we want, whether these
take the form of improved nutrition for the elderly (The Good Kitchen), healthier lifestyle choices (MeYouHealth) or even more “hot leads” emanating from your trade shows
(in the IBM example we will look at this week). This week,
we will follow the activities of an IBM team working
closely with experience marketing agency George P. Johnsonas they develop and test ideas for a revolutionary
approach to trade show participation. This process begins by asking what wows?This question brings together
the customer and business cases supporting our new concepts. Typically, the
“wow” zone occurs at the intersection of three criteria: somebody wants it, we
can create and deliver it, and doing so has the potential to produce the
outcomes we as an organization want. Then
we ask what works? and conduct small experiments to test if our assumptions
are accurate. We'll conclude the week by reviewing what we have covered.
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