Change by Design - Tim Brown Flashcards
Describe the design process
Moving from inspiration, though ideation onto implementation
What is a reference design used for?
To show what is possible and to create inspiration
What are the three spaces of innovation? Describe them.
inspiration - the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions
ideation - the process of generating, developing and testing ideas
implementation - the path that leads from the project room to the market
What is the reason for the nonlinear nature of the design process/journey?
Because design thinking is fundamentally an exploratory process
What is the mark of a designer?
A willing embrace of constraints - Charles Eames
What is the first stage of the design process often about?
Discovering which constraints are important and establishing a framework for evaluating them
What are the three criteria by which constraints can be visualized?
feasability - what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future
viability - what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model
desirability - what makes sense to people and for people
What is an example that has succeeded at designing in the realm of constraints?
Nintendo Wii
What drives design thinking to depart from the status quo?
placing a strong emphasis on human needs - as distinct from fleeting or artificially manipulated desires
What is the difference between a competent designer and a design thinker?
A competent designer will resolve the constraints of a design but a design thinker will bring them into a harmonious balance
What are three approaches a company may take to new ideas?
- They are likely to start with the constraint of what will fit within the framework of the existing business model. Because business systems are designed for efficiency, new ideas will tend to be incremental, predictable and all too easy for the competition to emulate
- Engineering-driven companies looking for a technological breakthrough will have teams of researchers discover a new way of doing something and only afterward will they think about how the technology will fit into an existing business system and create value
- An organization may be driven by its estimation of basic human needs and desires. At its worst this may mean dreaming up alluring but essentially meaningless products destined for the local landfill - persuading people, in the blunt words of the design gadfly Victor Papanek, “to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress neighbors who don’t care”
What is the project?
The vehicle that carries an idea from concept to reality
Describe a design project.
It has a beginning, middle and an end, and it is precisely these restrictions that anchor it to the real world
Given that design thinking is expressed within the context of a project, what does it force?
a clear goal from the outset, it creates natural deadlines that impose discipline and give us an opportunity to review progress, make midcourse corrections and redirect future activity
What is vital to sustaining a high level of creative energy in a project?
Clarity, direction and limits of a well-defined project
What is the brief?
The classic starting point of any project. It is a set of mental constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, and a set of objectives to be realized: price point, available technology, market segment and so on
What is the project brief not?
a set of instructions or an attempt to answer a question before it has been posed
What happens if a design brief is too abstract?
it risks leaving the project team wandering around in the fog
What happens if a design brief is too narrow?
it almost guarantees that the outcome will be incremental and most likely, mediocre
What does an individual need to operate within an interdisciplinary environment?
Strength in two dimentions - the T-shaped persons made famous by McKinsey & Company.
Describe the T-shaped person.
On the vertical axis, every member of the team needs to possess a depth of skill that allows him or her to make a tangible contributions to the outcome. On the horizontal axis, they should have a breadth of understanding of various subject matters and disciplines
What is the difference between a multidisciplinary team and an interdisciplinary one?
A multidisciplinary team has each individual become an advocate for his or her own technical specialty and project becomes a protracted negotiation among them. In an interdisciplinary team there is collective ownership of ideas and everybody takes responsibility for them
What is the difference between groupthink and design thinking?
Groupthink suppresses people’s creativity whereas design thinking seeks to liberate it
What is a good culture of innovation?
one that believes it is better to ask forgiveness afterward rather than permission before, that rewards people for success but gives them permission to fail, allowing for new ideas to be formed more easily
