Design Thinking

This is a book for Business, IT, and Design professionals responsible for assisting their organizations in the adoption and leveraging a design approach for innovation strategy and organizational transformation.

The influence and scope of Design Thinking is expandingrapidly. Numerous organizations are appointing Chief Design Officers (CDO) to lead innovation efforts and effect internal “design cultures.” Corporations like SAP, PepsiCo, and Microsoft are using design thinking to transform their feature-centric development cultures into user-centric ones. Accenture and McKinsey, among other global business consultancies have established design agencies to serve growing customer needs. Successful startups like AirBnB are establishing organizational cultures grounded in Design Thinking.

Design Thinking is an essential foundation for organizations dedicated to goals of innovation, adaptability, agility, and sustainability.

This book presents Design Thinking as a worldview that supports alternative ways of thinking about complex problems and their solution. Origins and applications of this worldview are provided in order to ensure a solid foundation for understanding and leveraging Design Thinking.

The second part of the book presents practical perspectives, principles, concepts, practices, and evaluation techniques in the form of 23 patterns. Each pattern is a focused discussion of one aspect of Design Thinking. The patterns are intended to supply tools to provide the means to accomplish organizational design objectives.

8 Acknowledgements

10 Manifesto

12 Introduction

37 What is Design

75 Composite Systems and Wicked Problems

125 Designers Mind

160 Design Thinking

211 The Patterns

    228 Essence

        230 Form

        242 Unfolding

        252 Zen Mind

        262 Logos

        272 People First

    282 Principles

        284 Gestalt

        292 Russian Dolls

        298 Magical Liminal

        304 Forever Jung

        312 Personae

        322 Embodied Mind

        330 Glossolalia

        346 Everything and Object

        358 Thick Description

        366 It’s About Time

        376 Room of One’s Own

        388 Tribes

    396 Practices

        398 Participant Observation

        406 Design Brief

        414 Prometheus Bound

        422 System Metaphor

        430 It Takes a Village

        438 Story Telling

        446 Show Me

    452 Evaluation

        454 Fit

        462 Invisibility

        470 Seed Recognizes Flower

        478 Attractiveness

        486 Joy

498 Conclusion

511 Bibliography

519 Iconography