This blog post has come from a set of notes that I’ve made during an event that took place on 26 September 2017 at the Royal Society of Arts, London. The event was a lecture, entitled ‘the power of design thinking’ by Sue Siddall, who works as a partner at IDEO, an international design and consulting company.
My interest in a design has emerged from my interest in computing. I have been an associate lecturer for an interaction design module for ten year and before then I studied software development, specifically looking at how computer programmers maintained computer software. During my studies, I briefly stepped into the area of design: software maintenance can, of course, mean software design. Also, for a brief period of time, I helped to manage the tutors who delivered a number of design modules at The Open University, until there was a restructure, and I joined the School of Computing and Communications.
A history
Sue presented a story of a career, where she moved from the subject of law, to advertising and then into IDEO. An interesting note I made (regarding advertising) was: ‘simple ideas enter the brain quickly; if you throw ten balls at someone they won’t catch any, but if you throw one, they will catch one’. A key point regarding a transition to design was the importance of putting human beings at the centre of everything.
Examples
One slide conveyed the message that we use design to tackle complex problems, products, services and environmental issues. We were presented with two very different examples. The first example was about designing a series of nutritional products for people who had a particular metabolic condition; children didn’t want to consume products that were designed in such a way that singled them out from others. A key idea was to reframe a question from a business problem to a human centred problem. A thought was that this change in perspective could change the nature of an entire business.
The second example was uncovering ways to run, organise and structure private schools in Peru. By looking at the systems and by considering the end users point of view, curriculum was designed, teachers were supported and it was mentioned that financial models were provided.
Final points
We were left with three things to take forward: (1) the importance of asking user centred questions, (2) create movements (amongst staff and people), not mandates (to tell them to do things), and (3) be optimistic and consider the opportunity of uncovering better ways of doing things.
There were two questions that I noted down from the audience. The first was: how do you get, nurture or encourage diversity of thought amongst people [when it comes to designing products, services or systems]? This question was answered in terms of diversity of employees. As Sue as responded, I thought about different idea generation techniques that has been taught on a design module that I once studied for a while.
The second question was very interesting: can design thinking be used for bad things? Expanding on this: can designs be used to hook people into using things that are not good for them, or nudge them towards taking certain actions? At this point I remember the earlier link to advertising. A quick search reveals a whole subject area called ‘nudge theory’. The answer was in terms of people are becoming more familiar with the ways in which people are manipulated. A comment was that designers have an ethical responsibility. As this answer was given I recalled the emphasis on ethics within my own discipline by organisations such as the British Computer Society.
Links and reflections
During the talk I collected (which means writing down) a number of links. The first was to IDEO.org. Drawing on a constant habit of browsing webpages, I tried to find an about page that offers a simple summary of what this site was all about, but I couldn’t find one. Scrolling down a big page led me to the following: ‘we design products, services, and experiences to improve the lives of people in poor and vulnerable communities’. There was also a reference to DesignKit.org,which is described as a ‘book that laid out how and why human-centered design can impact the social sector’ (IDEO website) Another site mentioned was OpenIDEO.
From a personal perspective, I think I was expecting something slightly different from the talk. Looking outwards from my own discipline, I see that human-computer interaction has changed fundamentally as computing devices are becoming embedded into everything. It is also interesting to see the shift from HCI to the idea of user experience. I have also been curious about the onwards extension to the broader area of service design. What I found interesting was the way that design thinking was presented in terms of being able to address bigger and organisational problems. I totally agree that humans are, of course, the most important part in any system: understanding their needs, motivations and desires are paramount.
What I was expecting was more detail about exactly how ‘design thinking’ was applied in these situations. Some tools were mentioned (such as personas), but I wanted to know more. It is at this point that I thought: I need to go look at those resources.