Kelake

Cribbed entirely from Wikipedia – it’s a good meta view of a design process.

Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a process which includes the “building up” of ideas, with few, or no, limits on breadth during a “brainstorming” phase. This helps reduce fear of failure in the participant(s) and encourages input and participation from a wide variety of sources in the ideation phases. The phrase Outside the box thinking has been coined to describe one goal of the brainstorming phase and is encouraged, since this can aid in the discovery of hidden elements and ambiguities in the situation and discovering potentially faulty assumptions.

One version of the design thinking process has seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn. Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen. The steps aren’t linear; can occur simultaneously and be repeated. A more simplified expression of the process is Robert McKim’s phrase; “Express-Test-Cycle”.

Define

• Decide what issue you are trying to resolve.
• Agree on who the audience is.
• Prioritize this project in terms of urgency.
• Determine what will make this project successful.
• Establish a glossary of terms.

Research

• Review the history of the issue; remember any existing obstacles.
• Collect examples of other attempts to solve the same issue.
• Note the project supporters, investors, and critics.
• Talk to your end-users, that brings you the most fruitful ideas for later design.
• Take into account thought leaders’ opinions.

Ideation

• Identify the needs and motivations of your end-users.
• Generate as many ideas as possible to serve these identified needs.
• Log your brainstorming session.
• Do not judge or debate ideas.
• During brainstorming, have one conversation at a time.

Prototype

• Combine, expand, and refine ideas.
• Create multiple drafts.
• Seek feedback from a diverse group of people, include your end users.
• Present a selection of ideas to the client.
• Reserve judgement and maintain neutrality.
• Create and present actual working prototype(s).

Choose

• Review the objective.
• Set aside emotion and ownership of ideas.
• Avoid consensus thinking.
• Remember: the most practical solution isn’t always the best.
• Select the powerful ideas.

Implement

• Make task descriptions.
• Plan tasks.
• Determine resources.
• Assign tasks.
• Execute.
• Deliver to client.

Learn

• Gather feedback from the consumer.
• Determine if the solution met its goals.
• Discuss what could be improved.
• Measure success; collect data.
• Document.

Although design is always influenced by individual preferences, the design thinking method shares a common set of traits, mainly; Creativity, Ambidextrous thinking,^[5] Teamwork, User-Centerdness (Empathy), Curiosity and Optimism.

From Design thinking on Wikipedia

I’ve always been a sucker for process, especially formulating a daily routine. This sense of order was first drilled in me by my grade 6 teacher, who was a force to be reckoned with, and an expert on the to-do list, a craze of which still seems unabated. Her desire for order and structure in her classroom pails in comparison to my experience in trumpet studio at Humber College where Don Johnson would etch out our daily routine, forbidding any contact with the opposite sex until after a rigorous regime of long tones and controlled blatts and squawks.

From an article by Maria Popova is a letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his wife where he outlines his daily routine.

Dearest Jane,

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I’m just as glad they haven’t consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach of prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That’s all right. I like to have my heart broken.

From Brain Pickings.

Something I am thinking about today.
Through-out grade school I was always taught to write notes on whatever I was reading and to rewrite any other notes as a means to comprehend the material I was studying. I think I read somewhere since that writing involves higher level cognitive processes that aid in memory (I don’t have time to find the source). Even my Mandarin teacher forced me to write ad nauseam pinyin, and later characters, on the white board as a means to remember and to help keep me warm in winter.
Up until the past five years or so most of my learning and research activities were slow – the act of writing, high-lighting, reading books, and bookmarking passages took time. Time which allowed for greater absorption of the data at hand. Generally, you had to read through allot more material to help support your arguments.
Contrast that with the methods I, and many others, use now for the light research activities I am involved in in an almost daily basis. It’s all at the meta level – delicious for reference material, textedit for in-use snip-its of text, Google docs for draft sharing and collaboration, Flickr and iView for images, weblogs and micro-blogs for sharing, Yojimbo for data stores, and Google and host of other sources for research. It’s all fast and shallow with an emphasis on cut ‘n’ paste.
In effect we’ve become curators and convenors of other peoples material. We don’t absorb, we regurgitate. We don’t take the time to allow for that transformation of data to knowledge.
What effects does this have on the ability to concentrate? When I told a doctor I was having trouble focusing he advised to read real books slowly.
I wonder if there is anyway to actually slow down the process and still use digital tools? I’m not convinced I ever truly read anything onscreen as well as in a book. It’s more scanning and collecting.
More:
The Effects of the Shared Writing Process on Reading Comprehension of Second and Third Grade Students.
Improving Reading Comprehension Through Higher Order Thinking Skills (pdf).
An insight on designers’ sketching activities in traditional versus digital media

, a worthwhile read brought to you by Stephen Hay and A List Apart.

Designers, programmers, and other specialists create essential elements of the whole. But the art director is in a position to tie these parts together for maximum effect, and maximum business results.

The purpose of this article is to introduce our readers to the principles and techniques of the art director

“There are hundreds of techniques for generating ideas, and many variations
of these as well. We have taken a few techniques, and classified them
according to the dominant Innovation Style strategy they embody.”

Check it out. Found via xblog.

Clement Mok has been an influential design leader on the American scene for years. His self titled web site’s career section is an interesting presentation for an impressive career but it’s his thoughts on his time as founder of studio archetype which seems quite poignant to me now. I have included most of it here:
“… One often assumes size kills creative organization and that nothing good ever comes out of a large organization. I think this is more a myth of practitioners’ own making than the truth.
… One can experience great personal satisfaction in a large design firm just as one can easily be miserable in a small firm doing lousy work. I’ve learned that size is not the enemy; it’s the lack of vision that drains the life blood out of a design organization. The difference between a great or a lousy organization has to do with the rigor the core values of design are reinforced and the opportunity one has to do impactful and challenging work. More importantly, it’s about having trust in the leadership to do the right thing.
The explosive growth Studio Archetype experienced in the three short year of its existence was just such a place. Great people, great clients, great projects and long, long, long hours. It was not without its flaws and challenges but it was a place where one was asked to stretch and take on responsibilities.”

“A redesign has some built-in advantages over everyday maintenance; the most useful being focus. And focus is the loam that allows a shared vision to grow. A group chooses to redesign typically because the site is no longer working, and the pain of the site not working is greater than the pain of stopping business as usual and entering into an expensive and emotional project. But once committed, you have to move the project from reactive (something is broken) to proactive (we