What if we viewed our strategy as a vehicle for shaping our services rather than the other way around? By looking at a strategy as more than a plan, but as a service design we can better align what we want with what we do. We begin this look by considering what kind of questions …
Identity shapes design of products and services so why ignore it when we are designing for humans lives? Who we are, who we think we are, or who we see ourselves to be all shapes how we act. Our identity is among the most powerful forces that influence our behaviour. Research on change has shown …
Winter provides a literal and metaphorical season ripe for sense-making if the other seasons are different Winter creates a natural opportunity to reflect. The cold weather, darkness, and general lack of ability to grow crops has meant that people traditionally spent this season telling stories and making sense of the world as they awaited the …
Shared events do not always yield common experiences or perceptions: our design research must keep that in mind. Prior to the global pandemic of 2020 design philosophies tended to view research as ’rounding out’ or ‘filling the gaps’ in our knowledge about someone or something. Designers would assume they had a good read on what …
Checking our assumptions about basic things could be the difference between design delight and doom. If you were to tell me that one of the greatest lessons I would take from the pandemic – one of the few globally reaching, shared issues of the last 100 years — was a much deeper appreciation of diversity …
Design sprints are created for technical systems, not human ones. We need better research and attention to human-centred principles if we are to achieve the aims of rapid innovation in a responsible manner.
Empathy is considered to be at the bedrock of good design. But what if how we’re thinking about empathy is wrong? Empathy is certainly having its moment. Anywhere you look for writing on design and innovation and you’ll likely find a big role for empathy. Designers are encouraged to empathize with their potential customers and …
If to think and be aware of those thoughts (to think about thinking) is a defining feature of what it means to be human, why is it such a challenge to think about types of thinking? An answer to that question might help explain why design thinking is so difficult to translate into action and …
It is time to pull design thinking from the embers of hyperbole and placed under the microscope and macroscope of reflective practice and research. Once there, we might better comment on what this idea means for business, social innovation, human services and our overall wellbeing by pointing to something other than an exclamation mark to make our point.
