- Greetings everyone, this presentation
is on the topic of design thinking.
There has been quite a bit of conversation about
design thinking in the business world,
in the design world,
because it looks at an important issue
of not only what designers create,
but how designers think.
(bright upbeat music)
Are there some unique processes,
some unique ways of thinking that
make designers who they are?
And again, other disciplines like business,
like engineering, like any other disciplines,
can they learn from this process of design thinking?
So today we'll talk about some of the basics
of what design thinking is all about.
And in order to do that,
let's ask a question of what exactly is design?
Is design an art, or is design a science?
And to think about this, maybe we can look at an analogy.
Maybe we can look at another
whole different area or cooking.
Now, if I was to ask you, how do you imagine cooking?
Do you think of cooking as an art?
Or do you think of cooking as a science?
Well clearly as you think about it more,
you'll realize that both art and science
are involved in cooking.
For example, if you're the kind of person
who can open up a fridge
and start looking at the ingredients inside the fridge
and put a meal together, based upon what you see,
maybe you're using some of your artistic thinking.
Maybe you're using creativity in the process.
If you're someone who looks at a recipe,
looks at the list of ingredients,
looks at the process of making that dish,
you are probably following a more scientific method
of doing cooking.
However, all cooks, all chefs use both.
They use a little bit of art,
a little bit of science as well.
Design is something similar.
Design straddles the world of art,
of science, of business, of engineering
in order to create the products, the spaces,
the buildings that we live in today.
So in a sense, design is both art and it is science.
So there are several definitions of what design thinking is.
One of them is by Tim Brown,
who is a CEO of a fairly well-known design consultancy
in the world called IDEO.
The way Tim Brown defines design thinking is like this.
He says, "Design thinking is an approach
that uses the designer's sensibility and methods
for problem-solving to meet people's needs
in a technologically feasible
and commercially viable way.
In other words, design thinking
is human-centered innovation."
This is one definition of design thinking.
And if we unpack this definition a little bit,
we'll realize that there's several components to it.
It's about sensibility, but it's also about methods.
So it's an approach, but it's also his methods.
It looks at technology,
but also looks at commerce
and it's about human-centered innovation.
This is a definition from Tim Brown.
Let's look at another definition.
This is a definition from Jeanne Liedtka,
and she defines it in another interesting way.
She actually compares design thinking
and scientific thinking.
This is what she says,
"The most fundamental difference between design and science
is that design thinking deals primarily with
what does not yet exist;
while scientists deal with explaining what is."
So in a sense, what Jeanne Liedtka is saying is that
when designers create something new,
that thing doesn't quite exist.
It's not there.
They go through the process of creativity of design
to create this new product.
But scientists, scientists are involved in analysis.
They take what is in the world right now,
they critique it, they analyze it,
they put it under the microscope,
they break it apart, they examine it,
and that is scientific thinking.
And so this is the difference between design thinking
and scientific thinking, according to Jeanne Liedtka.
So this is how I define design thinking.
Design thinking is a form of integrative problem-solving
that uses both artistic and scientific thinking
to improve life on Earth.
Let's unpack this definition a little bit.
Let's look at the word integrative problem-solving.
So when problems are solved,
when a team takes on a new problem to tackle,
the team often has to be multidisciplinary.
They have to be people from a variety of perspectives,
of ideas, of backgrounds to solve the problems.
And design thinking is about integrating
the perspectives of a range of people,
a range of ideas, a range of disciplines.
What kind of thinking is involved?
Both artistic and scientific.
So you need some creative thinking,
but you also need some scientific thinking.
And what is the fundamental goal of doing this?
The goal is to improve life on Earth,
not just for human beings,
but for all species on the planet.
So this is my definition for what design thinking is.
So over the next few presentations,
what we will do is we will talk about
some of the fundamental elements or components
that make up what design thinking is.
For instance, what we'll do
over the next three, four lectures
is we'll break this down into five components
of design thinking and we'll talk about
each of them one by one.
So for example, the first five will be
design is empathic, integrative, it is iterative,
it's optimistic and it's skeptical, just first five.
The next five, design is experimental,
it's prototype driven, it's collaborative,
it's inspired by diversity and it's systems-based.
That's the second set of five.
The third set of five design is inspired by serendipity,
it's traditional as well as modern,
it's convergent and divergent,
it's an ease with ambiguity and it breaks standards.
So these are the 15 components of design thinking.
And we'll talk about these in the next presentation.