Design Thinking for Managers

Design Thinking can do for organic growth and innovation what TQM did for quality.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is Ideo's approach for design which is human-centered. As a design company, Ideo tries to solve design problems starting with the user's requirements, feelings and difficulties in using or experiencing products. While tech-centered companies focus on their technical capabilities to design products, Ideo focuses on its behavioral research skills to understand the customers' pain points and pleasure points.

Ideo's research for product design is based on teams having persons from diverse disciplines spanning from business to behavior sciences (that includes engineers and scientists). The research team tries to observe consumers during their product evaluation and purchase decisions through videos and photographs apart from interviews. It uses photographs and videos persons in physical locations of the companies to observe how they feel and why they feel in the location. The insights gained are used to improve the facility. It forms of groups of consumers to help it in evaluating the experience in using products and encourages them to take pictures and videos and write descriptions regarding their feelings on various aspects of the products.

Frequent prototypes of are made of the proposed products so that consumers can give their evaluation more frequently about the proposed products. It encourages its employees and the employees of client companies to participate in the research project. One illustration of the benefit of this approach is an objection by Steve Jobs to the noise made the movement of a proposed mouse design. It was resolved by rubber coating the steel ball.

The principal focus of Ideo is on solving usability problem for consumers. It research is broad to cover many consumers and in depth to discuss issues with select group of consumers. The approach of Ideo now became a design excellence model like that of Toyota Production System for World Class Manufacturing.

(Source: Marketing Case Study in Kotler and Keller, Marketing Management, 15th Ed. P.160-161)

10 tools that you can combine with traditional business thinking that will enhance your ability to profitably grow your business.

10 Tools

Visualization

Journey Mapping

Value Chain Analysis

Mind Mapping

Brain Storming

Concept Development

Assumption Testing

Rapid Prototyping

Customer Cocreation

Learning Launch

Source

Ten tools to help managers to think creatively - Jeanne Liedtka
http://lockwoodresource.com/ten-tools-to-help-managers-think-creatively-by-jeanne-liedtka/

Design Thinking - Talk by Jeanne Liedtka

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Book

Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers

Jeanne Liedtka, Tim Ogilvie
Columbia University Press, 2011 - Business & Economics - 227 pages

Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie educate readers in one of the hottest trends in business: "design thinking," or the ability to turn abstract ideas into practical applications for maximal business growth. Liedtka and Ogilvie cover the mind-set, techniques, and vocabulary of design thinking, unpack the mysterious connection between design and growth, and teach managers in a straightforward way how to exploit design's exciting potential.

Exemplified by Apple and the success of its elegant products and cultivated by high-profile design firms such as IDEO, design thinking unlocks creative right-brain capabilities to solve a range of problems. This approach has become a necessary component of successful business practice, helping managers turn abstract concepts into everyday tools that grow business while minimizing risk.

Google Book Link
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=HIxh2_ExnXMC

Jeanne Liedtka, "Learning to use design thinking tools for successful innovation", Emerald 39, (2011)





Related Articles

The Highs and Lows of Design Thinking
http://www.metropolismag.com/Point-of-View/July-2013/The-Highs-and-Lows-of-Design-Thinking/

Why design thinking doesn't work in schools
http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/why-design-thinking-doesnt-work-in-education/

http://lockwoodresource.com/insight/design-thinking/

Updated 28 September 2021,  29 January 2017, 30 August 2013