There’s a new sea change happening in the design community. I use the term design community loosely, because in the last 10 years, industrial design, graphic design, user interface design, user experience design, interior design and product design are all blendly into each other and morphing into a great mutated beast that is our collective industry.

Nowadays, you’re forced to work with a variety of different people. Gone are the days, (and really, it’s been this way in the commercial space for 30 some years.) where you design something in a vacuum. Instead of pitching to a client, and then having them love your tagline, you go directly to the moms who are buying the sugary cereals for little Johnny and Jenny. Market research and consumer research are the new thing.

Which is a great way to lead into the book I’m about to review.

While these ideas and concepts are not necessarily new to our industry, some industries have had to play catch up to the other ones who’ve been doing design thinking longer. This has happened because of the interdisciplinary nature of our industry almost out of necessity and pragmatism.

So, what the crunk IS Design Thinking?

Tim Brown, the CEO and President of IDEO, says that design thinking is about understanding constraints and then working within those constraints, adapting whatever it is that your designing to fit currently within the structure and environment in which that thing lives.

Well, what does THAT mean?

Esssentially, it means being flexible. Being humble and to have the strength and courage to change something, or throw something away that you’ve worked on, or telling the president of the company that that’s not going to work, and having the data to back up what your face is saying.

There’s three constraints that are highlighted in the first chapter of the book, to help frame up features on a product your designing, or a design element.

Imagine them on a triangle…. At each of the three points. They are Desireability, Viability, and Feasibilty. Within these three constraints most decisions can be mapped to and can be weighed out.

Well, now that you have your features, how do you go about getting a sense of what it is your doing?

The second part of this book, is helping the reader to understand the different ways  behind which to achieve insight into the person that you’re designing for. Traditionally this has taken shape in sterile environments with focus groups, incentivizing people to tell you what they think you want to hear, and ultimately not yielding a lot of results.

The counterpoint to this is to do what’s called Contextual Analysis, which is just a fancy word for hanging out and documenting how someone does a specific task. It typically can happen in a lab, but it’s usually more fruitful if done in the actual environment of the subject.

Another way of gaining insight about the people you’re designing for is through Empathy. Walk a mile in their shoes. Usually this happens with people if you’re desigining something for a friend or a loved one. For example, if my wife had diabetes, I may know very intimately how she feels about pricking her finger in public at work, or how she may feel if she needs to wear an insulin pump. This is because I know her very well.

Not saying that you need to marry everyone your designing something for, but you must be willing to get outside of the office and truly get to know someone to make some assumptions about them.

The book then moves into the area of designing and prototyping with the people you’re desining for right there. It went into paper prototyping and the need for fast iteration, before you get into development of something.

This is something that the field of industrial design has known for quite sometime, which is the main bread and butter of IDEO, which makes sense why the author places such a high value on it.

The book then goes from prototyping to acting things out with the person-your-designing-for. This gives your more of an understanding of their needs and helps facilitate a deeper connection with the person because you’re letting them into the process of design, and giving them the opportunity to design something for themselves.

A key fundamental statement of the book, is that people aren’t dumb. Everyone knows when something doesn’t work, and whne you work together to figure those things out before development rather than after, you drive your costs down, and ultimately make a better product.

PART II. What happens when you try to bring this into your organization?

The second half of this book explains the very real aspect of trying to bring in the practices of design thinking within your stuffy, bloated, huge, corporate environment and how to get buy-in from people to get them to understand the value of it.

I feel that a lot of what’s discussed in this section is more for upper management, to understand the concepts discussed previously. There are a lot of business cases and stories about where this type of thinking has been done successfully. While these are interesting if you’re trying to prove a point to other people in your business, if you don’t have the leverage or if it’s not necessarily within your job description to evangelize the tenants of a new method of thinking in business, you could probably stop reading the rest of the book altogether.

I found this second half to be entertaining, because I already see the value of design thinking. If you’re looking for business cases to prove the value of design thinking, then you’ll find a lot of gems in here.

While it may be valuable, another large part of the audience could pretty much stop there.

There are some charts in this book that i’ll be including later, when I have the time to do screengrabs and give them enough context to give them justice.

All in all, a pretty good book, that helps bridge the gap between business and design and helps both parties respect the design process more.