VI E W P O I NT S

Design Thinking: Combining Creativity, Ideation, and Empathy to Deliver Innovative Results

DENNIS BOYLE Partner IDEO

Dennis Boyle, Partner at IDEO, an award-winning global design and innovation consulting firm, shared with Abbot Downing how design thinking is transforming the way we do business, create products, and solve problems. With examples ranging from healthcare and financial services, to cooking and other daily tasks, Dennis brought to life how design thinking is everywhere and how this human-centered approach is enhancing how we interact with the world. Here are a few of the key ideas that Dennis shared:

RELATED RESOURCES

IDEO website

Creative Confidence

Change by Design

Key Takeaways

• Start with the human factor—what is desirable? Look for inspiration and cultivate awareness.

• Prototype and experiment early and often.

• Use the rules of brainstorming for fluency and flexibility. Hold o on converging.

• Build on and go beyond prototypes and concepts to generate stories and scenarios.

DESIGN THINKING

PEOPLE (desirable)

BUSINESS (viable)

TECHNICAL (feasible)

INNOVATION

• At its core, design thinking is an innovation process with a fundamentally human-centered approach.

• Innovation is a balancing act between human factors, business factors, and technical factors. We have found over the years that it is important to begin with the people part of the equation—the human factors—and then address the business and technology realities.

• Design thinking projects start with broad, open-ended questions such as “How might we…?”, “What if…?”, “What is the future of…?”

• Inspiration, ideation, and implementation are core components to design thinking. Start with inspiration gathered through observing and inquiring, move to ideation through brainstorming and prototyping, and then transition to implementation by experimenting and telling the story of what was done and why.

• A key part of design thinking is observing people at work and play. Put yourself in their shoes and have empathy be the guiding focus to discover new ways of solving problems. Through this, you see things from other people’s point of view, not your own.

• Look for inspiration, prototyping, and storytelling ideas by observing workarounds, which are signs and behaviors that show how people are inventing ways of solving problems. Through watching what is not working and how people are responding to it, there is opportunity to identify new ways of seeing the problem and solving for it. Being human centered is not simply about doing what the customer tells you, but watching and observing what the customer is facing and solving for that problem.

• Prototyping is essential to design thinking. You learn more quickly from building something right away, rather than perfecting your vision before you start to build.

• Team brainstorming tips: Defer judgement, encourage wild ideas, build on the ideas of others, stay focused on the topic, one conversation at a time, be visual, go for quantity.

• Form the habit of encouraging divergent thinking to generate creative ideas and explore a multitude of possibilities. Delay convergent thinking which assumes there is only one possible solution.

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