Week 14

DIGITAL-

Design Thinking 

Sir Ken Robinson described research that showed that young people lost their ability to think in divergent or non-linear ways, a key component of creativity (TESS, 25 March 2005). Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.

Design Thinking has been implemented across many industries since the 1950’s as companies increase their understanding of, and need for, more divergent thinking and greater employee contribution to ideas and problem solving.

The process of applying a design thinking approach within the classroom increases student engagement, enables deeper dives into new content and greater comprehension and provides a important framework for specific learning tasks and outcomes.  

Design thinking by TMLU

In this week's session we'll try out The Mind Lab by Unitec Design Thinking Process + materials, which uses our 'kite' model

• Empathise
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Test
• Reflect

Change by Design

Tim Brown, the current CEO of IDEO, has written the book about Change by Design (2009). According to him, Design Thinking is Human-centered: ‘The basic problem is that people are so ingenious at adapting to inconvenient situations that they are often not even aware that they are doing so. Our real goal is helping people to articulate the latent needs they may not even know they have’. 

Observation is important too: ´When we observe people going about their daily lives, what is it that they don’t do or don’t say?´ as well as empathy, or as Brown calls it: 'Standing in the shoes of others'. Brown talks a lot about the importance of prototyping, because: ‘Like every other kid, I was thinking with my hands…’. If you want to hear him talking about his book, we recommend you listening to this radio show.

Making ideas tangible always facilitates communication

According to Brown 'Prototypes don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. In fact, the opposite is better: Put as little time and effort into prototypes as you can and still generate useful feedback and drive an idea forward.'

(Re)capture the Creativity of your Childhood

de Saint-Exupéry (1943) wrote a story about The Little Prince where he tried to showcase that as we age, how we see the world changes. It is the rare person who is able to hold on to the sense of wonderment, of presence, creativity, or of sheer enjoyment of life and its possibilities that is so apparent in our younger selves. As we age, we gain experience and we become better able to exercise self-control. We become more in command of our faculties, our thoughts, our desires. But somehow, we lose sight of the effortless ability to take in the world in full. The very experience that helps us become successful threatens to limit our imagination and our sense of the possible. When did experience ever limit the fantasy of a child? 

One part of the story of Little Prince also relates to customer communication, and to latent needs. At one point, the little prince is asked by a boy to draw a picture of a sheep. After several attempts that fail to meet with approval, the little prince just draws a box with holes in it:

"‘This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.’ I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge: ‘That is exactly the way I wanted it!’".

Like the little prince, you don't know what your or your customers want and neither do they - until you show it to them.

LEADERSHIP- Diffusion of Innovations and Design Thinking for Leadership
Innovators - 
Early adopters - trendsetters, easy to please and don't need much persuading.