General impressions by James Moultrie

Stanford D.School
 “Design thinking”
- began with the design of artefacts, and is now progressing to the design of ‘moments’
- process – human centred, prototyping and testing, how to move between the phases of the process
 Manifesto: to prepare future innovators, to use design thinking to inspire multidisciplinary teams, to foster radical collaboration, and tackle ‘big projects’ using prototyping to discover new solutions
 Teams:
- of students of the same discipline have a different dynamic to teams of students of different disciplines.
- Have teams of no more than 4 students, preferably 3 – more is a disaster. This has been verified through research at Stanford, with Microsoft – there is no such thing in the real world as teams of more than 3 or 4 people (apparently).
- The teams are then surrounded by faculty and coaches
 Teaching:
- Essentially traditional studio based teaching around projects
- Lots of team reflection: focus on ‘I like’ and ‘I wish’
 Space:
- The habitat governs how people behave
- The students own and can change the space for their projects
 Designs need to combine a ‘hit to the head’ and a ‘hit to the heart’ – function and form
 Projects (are topic agnostic)
- Technical: feasibility – thus need to include engineers, ops man etc
- Biz: profitability, viability – thus need to include MBAs etc
- Human values: desirability, usability – thus need to include anthropologists, ergonomists etc
- Focus on ‘content’ (was it a good idea or a good result) and ‘process’ (how did they get there)
- If there is any differential marking, then this is determined by the teams
 Projects aim to develop T-shaped people! Thus, the focus is largely on the top of the T, not the leg of the T
- Breadth: business knowledge, empathy, intuition
- Depth: domain specific knowledge
 Process
- “There is nothing more important than the questions people ask in the design process – there is an over emphasis (in firms) on managing the decisions that are made, rather than the questions that are asked”
- The top teams ask 45 questions per hour, the bottom teams ask around half this
- There is an emphasis in the process on ‘need finding’
- Engineers are not taught to design but to solve problems
- “We don’t make people design, we let them be creative and innovative”
- Art is important - “art forces decision making without reference to objective data – and builds confidence in the designers intuition”

IDEO
 “Design thinking”
- The way designers solve problems – this can also be used by designers
 Began by focusing on humanising technology – and are now moving into service, brand experience, space and urban planning
 Now over 500 people, across the world – 250 based in San Fran
 Storytelling – is a key part of the IDEO culture
 Recruiting: want domain depth, with empathy and passion for people and an empathy for staff in other disciplines
 “design fails most when relying on the brief and solving the wrong problem”
 Approximately 50% of projects are tactical and 50% are strategic
 The IDEO designers deliver a strategy embodied in objects, not just objects
 Biggest competition for IDEO is the internal capabilities of their clients – as well as management consultants such as McKinsey
 Tend to focus on growth projects – not incremental projects
 “If design is a tool for growth, then the firm must also have the capital for growth to implement the results of the design process”
 “most big ideas start small – and it next to impossible to really predict the future potential of a small idea”
 “There is no design equivalent of an MBA”
 Methodology is important, otherwise the process is too abstract – the process gives you the starting point, but cant be too predictable
 We are developing new tools to help designers think about business constraints
 Prototyping is at the heart of the IDEO way: prototypes are viewed as having 3 purposes – inspire, evolve, evaluate

Jonathon Ive
 Responsible for specifically the product. The organisation is close enough to be able to ensure consistency of brand and image through discussion and debate, rather than mandating and enforcing any design guidelines.
 Attention to detail is paramount – even though the consumer may not be aware of these details when buying and experiencing these products
 Good designers have a passion for the craft of design


Jump
 Focus on ‘growth projects’ – based on market and consumer insights. Delivering:
- New offerings (products, services, experiences)
- New business models
- New opportunity spaces
- Building the innovative capability of the clients
- New management systems for innovation
 Projects combine three things:
- Design: what is possible
- Culture: what is desirable
- Business: what is profitable
- When recruiting, new staff must have expertise in 2 of these 3 areas – thus creating not ‘T’ shaped people, but ‘3 legged stool’ shaped people!
 Their definition of innovation: invention with social and economic impact
 People: they don’t have multidisciplinary teams, but teams of multi-disciplinary people
Thoughts, Surprises & Insights
 Role of design tools & the changing design process: Art is important - “art forces decision making without reference to objective data – and builds confidence in the designers intuition”. It is interesting that in the design consultancies there is a great effort to visualise and codify the design process (through post-its, display etc). In some ways, this is a way of dealing with the need to communicate this intuitive process with a business community that struggles to work with such intuition. From this perspective, these new strategic design tools and methods are important. It would be interesting to see how much they help the design process, as opposed to helping build confidence in and communicate the design process.
 Design skills are being applied to a range of new areas. Increasingly, there is an emphasis on the design of complex infrastructures, systems and experiences. However, there is still a demand for the core design skills (visual communication, ideation, development of ideas, aesthetic sensibilities, empathy with people, innate curiosity, visioning, use of implicit language etc).
 The ability to use post it notes does not a designer make.
 We need to better promote what we currently do well: Much of the approach of the D.School is similar to the way in which design projects are run at Cambridge on the Manufacturing Engineering Tripos. Throughout the third year of the course, the students undertake a major design project. All projects combine the mutual goals of solving real problems with a human focus, creating something of technical feasibility and developing a viable business plan. The teams are comprised of single discipline students, and the teams have the ability to agree differential marking if appropriate. The teams meet on a weekly basis in a ‘studio’ setting with a range of roving consultants to support their work. The maximum team size is 4 students, with some teams of 3. At the end of the year, there is a design show to demonstrate their work. The main lesson for me here is that we should be being much more vocal about this work, to better promote the quality of the design education of our engineering students.
 Storytelling: several companies have mentioned the importance of storytelling. Again, this is reflected in the development of new tools and methods to enable story telling both within the design team with the clients and ultimately with the consumer. This might include stories about the product form (e.g. Apple Mac handle to enable a point of contact, the balance point of the screen to enable vibration free movement etc).
 Growth projects: The more strategic consultancies tend to tackle projects focused on growth in the client organisations, not just incremental development, which is perhaps more within the capabilities and expertise of the client organisation – most firms tend to be optimised around their current products/services/technology and thus don’t have (and arguable don’t need) a capability for radical innovation. Thus, the strategic design firm is more interested in delivering radical innovation.
 Opportunities for education: a design focused ‘MBA’
 Design process in different domains: the process is different in different domains. In engineering, the process tends to be less iterative and more focused on the early arrival at a solution that meets a specification, which is then tested against that specification. Other domains (e.g. product design) tend to follow a more iterative process, encouraging the generation of many alternatives and the late selection of solutions.
 Design thinking vs design doing: there is a difference between being able to appreciate and adopt ‘design thinking’ and being a skilled designer capable of creating aesthetic, desirable, usable and profitable artefacts/experiences. We still need to focus on the development of designers capable of doing. However we also need to help people from other domains better understand the way in which these designers work. There is a potential danger however in non-designers believing that design is then simple by the adoption of a few methods and tools and thus believing that the professional designers are no longer needed. We need to ensure that our designers still have a deep foundation in the craft of design, whilst also developing the wider business perspective.
 Design isn’t (necessarily) the same as innovation: although the design consultancies have become synonymous with innovation through their people centred approach creating products & services.
 Dealing with ambiguity: Designers are adept at dealing with ambiguity. This is often a skill which businesses need, but don’t really understand.