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Design Thinking  - Tim Brown

‘Design Thinking’ by Tim Brown is an article about the development of design thinking in the ideation stage of a project and how it has led to new ideas that have flourished due to the consideration of the human element.

It’s always interesting to discover a new facet of the design process and while I believe that Design Thinking is something that we have been integrating into our learning for the past couple years, it’s nice to take a more in-depth look at it and this article is an easy introduction.

Here are my key takeaways:

Innovation = design thinking. One follows the other, you can invent on your own but it won’t ever get far without other’s input and without thinking of the human element.

The design process has been reimagined in the sense that designers no longer come in late to the project but are involved from the beginning and are often even asked to help with the design of the actual product/program.

Design Thinking is only growing as a ‘trade’ as economies shift from physical products to knowledge-based outcomes.

Succesful design thinkers are empathetic, integrative thinkers, optimistic, experimental and collaborative.

I found this case study for a portable incubator called Embrace. Embrace was developed with the idea of keeping premature babies alive by offering a portable incubator to families that live far from the hospital. What I like about this piece is the objective behind it, and a key message in the article.

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

This project really focuses in on the people using it and went through a couple iterations before being finalized. It took feedback from users in the areas it was wanting to help seriously and that’s what made it successful. If they’d only designed something and sent it out to people without consideration, the project would have failed. This article does a good job of showing that.