Design Thinking Digest

Design & Economics

At the 2006 ID Strategy Conference one of the sessions was conducted by Russell Redenbaugh and Natalia Davis of the Kairos fund. They talk about the dimension that 'time' plays in an innovation.

You can download the podcast and presentation from the ID Strategy Conference 2006 site. Russell also maintains a wonderful and entertaining blog of his own called Reading the World. that provides a throughly readable and entertaining look at (trust me) economic and financial policy.

Why UCD doesn't matter (Or will soon matter alot less)

Alot of people misinterpreted Nicholas G. Carr's seminal HBR study IT Doesn't Matter. This trend continues today as people misinterpreted the value of Six Sigma. Soon we will all be misinterpreting, or placing false hope in, the value of user centered design (UCD). Effective IT and quality management are simply table stakes and expectations of the marketplace. Don't expect a reward if you do them well but expect to be punished if you don't.

UCD has often been touted as a differentiator or value adding principle by companies and individuals that espouse and/or practice it. But does practicing UCD make you an innovative and differentiating company? I think it used to, but I'm not sure it's going to matter much in a few years. In short I think UCD is already a table stake in software development, or at least it soon will be.

It's a win for everyone when companies get good at UCD but it's not a good enough differentiator to hang your hat on anymore.

Design Methods on Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a nice an accurate entry on the history of design methods and how they've evolved. One of the contributors is a peer I met while studying at The Institute of Design.

Of note is some quotes from a rare and hard to find paper on the subject written by Jay Doblin in the early 1990's.

It's worth a read if you'd like to get an ideal of the underpinnings of the current conversations in business that are focused on innovation.

Design Methods

Another Blog on Design and Innovation?

It's reasonable to ask why we need yet another blog talking about design or innovation. As a matter of fact, it's one of the things that has kept me from starting one. But I've noticed a lack of conversation about how design thinking, versus the actual practice of design, impacts software development, even though it's being applied at companies as diverse as IBM and SAP to firms like 37 Signals and Adaptive Path.

If you're one of the folks that thinks ALL the talk on innovation and design is BS I don't expect that I'll change your mind here. But if you someone that is new to some of the terms and principles being exposed on design thinking you'll find the blog as a good source of commentary and as a linkage to the conversation that is occurring among design, business and higher education. Let me help you connect the dots and serve as a curator on a topic that is impacting virtually everything we do.

Design Thinking in the Enterprise

Some very smart and credible people are making big investments in design thinking as a cornerstone of their corporate strategy. One such company is SAP. Check out the keynote presentation from Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP and current chairman of the supervisory board.

It's a vigorous and detailed explanation of how SAP does and will use design thinking in their business. How does a company like SAP deliver on a bold vision like this? By bringing the discipline of design thinking inside, in their case by the creation of a design services lab that reports directly to the CEOs office.

Design & Disaster Planning

As we shortly approach the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina I was reminded of an article the New York Times had that I felt was a largely superficial post back in September of 2005 entitled Can Design Prepare Us For Disaster?

This article could be used as a case study for why people are dismissive of designers, with its superficial and product focused solutions to crisis planning that focus more on styling than solving design problems. While not to denigrate the work of the artists featured it demonstrated how design journalism in general still seems to worship and focus on some of the more basic of our endeavors.

The opportunity for a deep analysis of where the value of design thinking should live is crisis and disaster planning is lost with a focus rooted in solving product design issues versus systems issues. Less sexy but certainly a more valuable venue in which design can play.

(Note, the linked article has since been archived, you'll need to be a Times Select Member to access it.)