Think Like A Design Thinker

Change by design, a book by Tim Brown

This is a book that I wanted to read for a long time. And now that I have read it, I would recommend it to all. Not only does it allows you to expand your mind to alternative ways of thinking but it's also an extremely powerful tool to learn creative thinking in business, society systems, and life. It's the type of book that you have to read and re-read again and again, like a small bible.

The best place to start this summary is to define what design thinking is.

Most people see designers as professionals that are good at drawing beautiful stuff or aligning the right colors together. Designing is a little more complex than that. Designing is more than creating something visually appealing. It's about developing concepts, systems that are an expansion of the human that use them. It's about creating what people would connect to in the most natural way possible.

To best understand this, let's dive into a story that outlines the concept of "desire lines".

After completing the design of the building of a college campus, an architect left the grassing areas around the building without sidewalks.

He let the people that were using the building put their use form path in the grass throughout a year. And then created a road in accordance with their use form path.

(Pause watch the pictures and re-read the architect story to make sure you extract the subtility from it)

This concept is also known as the desire paths.

By now, you should see how design thinking can transform the way you operate your business.

Let's dive into some of the practical advice Tim Brown gives in his book.

Foremost I want to give him a quick introduction. Brown is the chair of IDEO. A design and consulting firm that worked with companies ranging from Apple, Nike, the American government, the Rockefeller Foundation, and way more.

My goal with this summary is not to collapse the whole book into a few lines. That would be a waste as you would not understand the depth and the power of the ideas evoked. Instead, I want to give you a glimpse of few concepts present in the book in order to convince you to read it.

Or at least add it to your reading list.

"Converting need into demand or putting people first"

To be a good designer, you have to be able to see patterns that are floating around and materialize them. The desire paths are highlighting the demand to you, all you need to do is see them. It's almost like transforming air into matter.

To do that you have to observe the ordinary and question the ordinary.

Brown talks about 3 steps to "convert the need into demand": insight, observation, and empathy. Insight is about the way people interact with the product. And you will not get it by looking at data but by "learning from the lives of others". By looking around you and understanding your customers. Observation is "watching what people don't do, listening to what they don't say."

Henry Ford understood this when he remarked, “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘a faster horse.’ "(p.43)

A good piece of advice that Brown gives is not to focus on the center of the bell curve don't look at the modern consumer. He will likely tell you things that you already know, instead find "extreme users".

a collector who owns 1,400 Barbies, for instance, or a professional car thief.

A seven-year-old girl struggling with a can opener highlighted issues of physical control that adults have learned to disguise.

Finally, there is empathy which is about putting yourself in the shoes of others.

So many business owners struggle with that, yet having empathy is the single most important thing when you're in business.

Empathy is the mental habit that moves us beyond thinking of people as laboratory rats or standard deviations.

If you think about it, empathy is at the center of capitalism.

The businesses that strive are the businesses that understand the pain points of their customers and serves them better than anyone. If your product/service/ system is trash you will never succeed in business. If your product transforms people's lives, you will succeed in business. That's why I believe capitalism will save the world. It forces you to create models that are not just theoretical but that respond to the needs of real people, not "laboratory rats" that are forced to conform to the inefficiency of your society design.

The software engineers who labored over the interface would have probably resorted to the standard lament: “RTFM”—“Read the (ahem) Manual.” For design thinkers, however, behaviors are never right or wrong, but they are always meaningful. (p.25)

Convergent and divergent thinking

I have always believed that "art is about exploration and science is about mastery". This grasp the essence of what Brown is explaining in this chapter.

To have an idea, you must first have lots of ideas

Divergent thinking is about exploring new ideas, let your mind wander, be creative, let your right brain have fun. Be like a kid in a candy store. And write everything that comes into your mind. Then be an adult again and use your left brain, rationality to see what is feasible and what is not. Think about how to implement the ideas that you generated. Dream time is over. Now is about execution.

Creating experiences, instead of offering "services" and "products"

Richard Branson, a hero of mine had a special gift to penetrate many highly competitive industries and grow a billion-dollar conglomerate. He was able to that by designing a better customer experience than what was already present in the market.

Experiences are deeper and more meaningful. They imply active participation, not passive consumption, which can happen on many different levels. Sitting with your three-year-old daughter as she sings along with The entertainment. A family trip to Disney World may be quite stressful—the food is terrible, the lines are too long, and the youngest sibling will melt down when she’s told that she’s too short to go on Space Mountain—but most visitors remember it as one of the great experiences of family life.

When you stop focusing on the transaction or even the immediate product/service that you offer. Everything changes. You are able to look at the transformation that you bring in these people's lives, the good emotions, and the precious moments that you allow them to live.

You let a trace in their heart.

An application of this philosophy that I see in real estate is that every agent focuses on telling homeowners in their city: "I can sell your house for top dollar". But what homeowners really want is to be able to move into a house that really suits their lifestyle and do it without all the stress. Tell them instead: "I can help you get the most money out of the sale of your house with a straight-forward and stress-free approach to allow you to find a new place home sooner. " By doing that you are focusing on the experience of working with you, on the transformation. The transaction is not what they really want, the transaction is just a means. A means to achieve their desired life.

Highlights of the book

Wright was motivated by the belief that design and execution must work together if the architect is to deliver not just the house but the experience of it.

the Swarthmore College psychologist Barry Schwartz has identified as “the paradox of choice.” Most people don’t want more options; they just want what they want.

Reminds me of a quote I heard in a documentary about Instagram: "As a designer, you never want to let people make a choice that they don't care about. " That's the insight between the infinite feed.

From the perspective of the design thinker, a new idea will have to tell a meaningful story in a compelling way if it is to make itself heard. There is still a role for advertising, but less as a medium for blasting messages at people than as a way of helping turn its audience into storytellers themselves.

People love the idea of following bands of adventurers as they compete to achieve the impossible.

Richard Branson's favorite marketing strategy. I would like to break some Guinness records just for the sake of promoting a brand in the future, that seems fun.

The innovation also had an impact on how nurses felt about their job. In a survey, one commented, “I’m an hour ahead, and I’ve only been here forty-five minutes.” Another was excited that this was the “first time I’ve ever made it out of here at the end of my shift.”

We need more divergent minds in the world because a lot of systems could be so much more efficient with little improvements.

convergent thinking in education is so dominant that most students leave school with the belief either that creativity is unimportant or that it is the privilege of a few talented oddballs.

develop an educational experience that does not eradicate children’s natural inclination to experiment and create but rather encourages and amplifies it.

The school system was created to form people that are good at conforming and obeying. To create the perfect labor for the factories of the industrial age. But history has proved that innovation and disruptive ideas are what moves societies forward. A nation that re-design its school system to have creative graduates will have an army of people who can actually change the world. ( starting with their own nation)

Ewald