"Design Thinking" is much more than Art and Craft !

Coffee problem in INFO 200 Class

When people think of a "designer" they often imagine someone in a black turtleneck who makes already-designed products look more pretty. How does this differ from the portrayal of design thinking and user-centered design in the article by Tim Brown of IDEO and the shopping cart redesign video? Use one of the examples from the article or video to help explain how user-centered design is much more than making products look attractive.

An open mind, a boss who demands fresh ideas who clashes his own, a chaos which can be constructive and team work are the recipe for a great innovation.”

The article enables us to think about the “ Design thinking”  in a very clear cut way. It defines a “designer” not just as a person in a a black turtleneck making changes to a saturated designed product but, portrays a designer whose skills include that of psychologist, physicist, biologist, artisan and many more.
Design thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and
ideas to meet with people’s needs with what is technologically
feasible and is worth buying for the consumers, which may even create market opportunities.
According to Tim Brown, these are different characteristic which puts designers and thinkers into a different pack and makes them unique.

The first one is Empathy, this in my view is the mother of an idea for Design thinkers. By giving people preference and taking care of different perspectives, they can imagine what problems are need to be solved and what design fits best for a specific group of people. It allows a Design thinker to take into view the needs of some unrepresented people. “ Aravind eye care system ” is a brilliant example of how Design thinkers use empathy.

The second one is Integrative thinking. This allows a design thinker to take into account both the sides of an idea and put this into prospective using empathy. They not only rely on analytical processes and data analysis but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient.

The most important one for a Design thinker is “Optimism”, being optimistic not only increases the chances of being successful in creating the idea into reality but also acts as a booster if the idea fails. This helps one find a better solution to an alternative we already have.

The forth and the last one according to Tim brown is collaboration, also know as team work.

“Pick good people, use a team and give them great tools and they are ready to bring change” - Bill Gates
 
Rather than making one person with all the skills of a psychologist, physicist, idealist make a team having each one of them with specialized knowledge. This will not only bring great designers together but will rather make the whole team as a “Design Thinker”

“ At IDEO we employ people who are engineers and marketers, anthropologists and industrial designers, architects and psychologists” - Tim Brown


The video explaining how Design thinkers work at IDEO makes it very clear that user-centered design is much more than making products look attractive. The way the team working on the shopping cart enhanced the ability of a cart from what it was before avows that Design thinkers not only bring art into a product but also increases its worth value and consumer value. This enables the consumers to be more comfortable and this directly effects the business market. This video clear shows the interconnection between designing, consumer satisfaction, change and business enrichment