Untitled

[whatthehecklilbeck-blog]

Design Thinking

Design Thinking.

Rebecca Flores

Sara Mitschke

There are many types and stages to design methodology. Design thinking is just one of many. However, there are important stages of design thinking that help provide a solution to complex and simple problems. The stages are; Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Though there is no correct order of operation, many times you will bounce back and forth between steps. (Dan, R)

Stage One: Empathize. To empathize means to “understand and share the feelings of another.” If there is a problem that needs to be addressed, you must first WANT to fix it and understand WHY it needs to be fixed at all. This come from researching said problem, asking experts, engaging in the topic, and finding the motivation.

Stage Two: Define. Here, after conducting research, expressing empathy, and gaining information about a particular field, is where you will define WHAT exactly the problem is. You should take what you’ve learned and analyze where the problem is starting, what it’s cause and effect is, and define it with a problem statement.

Stage Three: Ideate. The next step, after defining the problem is to brainstorm ideas that could potentially solve said problem. This is where you can begin to think of simple or “outside-the-box” solutions. You can brainstorm in many ways, always ask for other people opinions and write down your train of thought to go back to later.

Stage Four: Prototype. After deciding on an idea that might work, its time to put it into action. Here you will reconstruct, if necessary, a small scale version of the entire problem and implement the potential solution. It could be something you physically build or design or even just act on differently.

Stage Five: Test. Once a prototype has been proven to work on a small scale, it is time to test it in the real life situation. Did it correct the problem? Did it create new problems? Is it user friendly? This is many times where the design thinkers must go back to the drawing board and redefine the problem. However, they will have even more understanding and knowledge of the challenge than before and can start with new ideas.

These stages are merely outlines of what design thinking entails. As mentioned, there is no right or wrong way to go about design thinking. You will eventually hit all these steps throughout your process. You may stay in one stage longer than others, or you may keep going back to square one, or there may be a whole other group of people working on different stages. No matter what, design thinking is a crucial part in problem solving, creative thinking, and often leads directly to human centered thinking.

Citation:

Dam, R., & Siang, T. (n.d.). 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process. Retrieved from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

[sammiedavid290]

I really liked how in detail you went about every step throughout the process. I also like how you bolded important words in the processes because it helps the reader understand what they are trying to convey and answer. However, the most important part of this post is when you said, “these steps are only outlines and guidelines for the whole process”. I thought that this is a really important part to add because everyone will go through the process differently. No one has the same creative process and time line so it is all up to the individual, but these are steps to help guide them to a finished product.

[sydneyrichter1302-blog]

Creative Thinking

Creative Thinking

              Creative thinking is a vital part of the design process.  Good ideas don’t just appear the instant we are given a problem, but through a critical thinking process, which gets better over time. Graham Wallace, the author of The Art of Thought, said that the creative process had four stages to it. They are, Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, and Verification. First, we’ll examine Preparation.

              The preparation stage is all about defining and closely inspecting your problem to get a better understanding of it. Try to obtain any information regarding the problem and try to examine it from all angles and point of views to learn as much about it as you can. You should try to fully immerse yourself in the situation so there won’t be any misunderstandings in your knowledge of the situation so that your solution will be the best answer to the problem. After we have gained a full understanding of the problem, we move on to the incubation stage.

              The incubation stage is basically when you take a step back from the problem and begin to let your mind process all the information you took in in the preparation stage. This is the time that creative thinking really is in action.  This is when we stop thinking about the problem and let our minds wander. When our subconscious takes over, we begin to form solutions, and as our minds continue to wander, we find even more, and better solutions. Sometimes they’ll come to us in times when we shut or minds off from the problem completely. We can try this approach by taking a walk or occupying our minds with other activities. This stage of incubation comes to an end when we reach the next stage, illumination.

              The illumination stage is when all your wandering mind’s work pays off. This is the moment you find the solution to your problem. It feels as if everything makes sense again, and you’ve been given some sort of insight or knowledge that was previously unknown. It can be a very rewarding moment. The illumination stage is a pretty quick and short stage, where you’ll want to get this new great idea on paper as soon as possible so you won’t forget it. It leads to the next stage, verification. This is when you take your great new idea and evaluate it for any weaknesses and test it to see if it will work. After all of this testing, you may find that your idea will not actually work, so in this case you would unfortunately have to start the process over from the beginning. However, if it only needs to be slightly modified, or needs no changes at all, you are finished with the process, and have made yourself a great new idea.

              Now after the process, with a new, creative idea, we can appreciate the fact that creativity is not something that people are born with, but more of a skill that is developed over time. It involves a great deal of work, planning, and critical thinking. With the understanding of the four step process of creative thinking, we can become aware of how our ideas are made, and try to work our mind and use some strategies to create more creative ideas.

Sources:

“Creative Thinking Process.” The Peak Performance Center, thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/types-of-thinking-2/creative-thinking-process/.

[sammiedavid290]

I really liked how you described the process of creative thinking. The most important part of this post is when you talked about letting your mind wander. Most people will just sit and try to drill into their head to get ideas out when the best way is to let them come to you when you are not worried about it. This will lead to more creative ideas and will not tire your brain out as much. It will however, take an unknown amount of time so the process may not be too speedy.

[sammiedavid290]

Creative thinking

Creative thinking is used in people’s daily lives. It allows for a fresh perspective on solutions to problems. People use creative thinking to solve problems that they are faced with. There are different ways that creativity can emerge which is through a process called Creative thinking process.

           Throughout this process, there are different steps for the process to take place. Step one is preparation, step two is incubation, step three is illumination, and step four is verification. In the preparation stage, “you define the problem, need, or desire, and then collect any information regarding the topic or problem”. You want to acquire as much knowledge about your problem as you possibly can. Then after you gather all of the information, create an outline to guide you to a solution. In this stage, you can immerse yourself into your problem so you can fully understand it.

In the next stage, incubation, you make sense of the information you just found. Your brain works through the information to make “new connections, separating out unnecessary information, and cultivating new thoughts”. Throughout this stage, you can take a wider look and let your brain work through possible solutions. This will also help you get ideas since you have more creativity when your mind wanders. In this stage, it is best for you to stop consciously thinking about the subject. This means for you to do other activities that occupy you thought process so you can unconsciously come up with a solution.

           The third step is Illumination. In this stage, you finally have an “Aha moment” for when the idea comes to you at a random time. This is the briefest stage as that after your moment, you are encouraged and ready to begin the next process. The little insight leads to a strong push to acquire that light from that “lightbulb”.

           The final step, verification, is when you decide if your solution will work. Throughout this stage, you will examine and test your solution to make sure that it will fit and solve your problem. You need to use your thinking skills, such as critical and analytical to make sure your solution will work. If the solution does not solve the problem, you will either have to redo the whole process to come up with a new solution or make minor adjustments to your current solution.

             These steps are just an outline to help designers come up with a creative solution to a problem. Within these steps there are also other things that you can do to help you be creative and think outside of the box. You can do things such as re-conceptualizing the problem, daydreaming, embracing the absurd, or even simply brainstorming. These extra little steps will help anyone renew their brain if they are all out of ideas and can not think anymore. Even simply taking a break to go eat lunch can still produce these effects. These tips help to make the creative thinking process even easier for everyday people.  

Resources: https://www.sparringmind.com/creative-thinking/  http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/types-of-thinking-2/creative-thinking-process/  

[sammiedavid290]

Statement of Intent

I intend to create a representational piece that illustrates a few different animals found within the zoo. I plan to communicate this through using positive and negative space within my designs.

[sydneysokora]

Creative Thinking VS Design Thinking

Sydney Sokora

ARTC 1302

Professor Sara Mitschke

January 30, 2019

Without design, where would we be as a society? Nowhere. Without design, we wouldn’t have safe cars (air bags), an easy way to keep catalogs of items (bar codes), or a way to adhere things to one another (tape/glue). Our world would be unorganized, unsafe, and inconvenient. The people who generated these ideas used various processes such as creative thinking and design thinking to come up with these innovations.

           Creative thinking takes time. For some, ideas come easily with some focused thinking. For others, it takes a plan for creativity. In the book, The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas, the author delivers a four-stage process of creative thinking. The first stage is preparation. In this stage, your goal is to research and find out everything you can about your problem or topic (“Creative Thinking Process”). Second, you let your brain fully process all the information you found in stage one through “incubation” (“Creative Thinking Process”). Illumination, the “Aha moment”, is stage three in the process. This idea appears when you are least expecting it and can give you an “emotional reaction of joy” (“Creative Thinking Process”). The final stage in the process is verification. In this stage, you want to evaluate, test, and hopefully verify the idea” that you received in the third stage. While this is not a fool proof way of generating ideas, it is very helpful for many of people when you feel like you might be stuck.

           Design thinking is similar to creative thinking in the way that they both require the person involved to explore all perspectives of the issue. However, design thinking is “a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems” (Dam). Just like creative thinking, design thinking has a process. The first stage is to empathize. In this stage, you will be doing in-field research, meeting with experts in order to find out more about your problem. The goal is to immerse yourself in the environment, so you can empathize with people and be able to better appreciate their experiences (Dam). Secondly, you must “define the problem” (Dam). Once you’ve reached an understanding of your user, you will begin generating ideas in the third stage, ideate (Dam). In the fourth stage, the designer will create a prototype in order to experiment with the product and discover any adjustments that need to be made (Dam). Lastly, you will “test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase” (Dam). The design thinking process is a very useful tool when trying to determine solutions to design related problems.

           Creative thinking and design thinking are responsible for some of the world’s greatest inventions. These ways of processing information for a problem or issue have helped many understand what it is like to think like a creative designer. As a society, we will continue to come up with new ideas and innovations that help humans live simply.

“Creative Thinking Process.” The Peak Performance Center, thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/thinking/types-of-thinking-2/creative-thinking-process/.

Dam, Rikke, and Teo Siang. “5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process.” The Interaction Design Foundation, The Interaction Design Foundation, 26 Jan. 2019, www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process.

[sammiedavid290]

I really enjoyed your essay and how you compared creative thinking with design thinking. I think it was a great idea how you compared the differences between them but also talked about how they are similar with helping the designer to come up with good solutions. The fact that both are paired together really shows how similar they actually are. Thus because of their similarities, it would be easy to incorporate them together throughout the design process to create a creative solution to a problem. If you just add the creative plan into the solution-based approach, you will come up with a solution that has never been done before.

[thomasbauman-blog]

The Importance of Human-Centered Design

     In today’s society, art and design are scattered all throughout the world, making it nearly impossible to escape the sight of it. In fact, we view upwards of 4,000 advertisements on average each day. Advertisements, logos, posters, packaging, and much more are all responsibilities of graphic designers. Of the different types of design, human-centered design is the type that most intrigues me due to how much it influences our behavior.

     Human-centered design is quite unique compared to creative thinking and design thinking. It is a “framework that considers human perspectives throughout the design process” (prototypr.io). These designers carefully study human behavior and interaction in order to understand human nature. This understanding of human nature gives the designers insight on how to make their products efficient and effective for their clients and customers to use. When I think of how products are made to fit the needs of others, I think of it almost as a science. We have to learn what people like and do not like, what their habits are, and how this product will affect their lives.

     Like any form of art and creativity, there is a process that designers must follow in order to achieve their desired product. Within the human-centered design process, there are three main steps: inspiration, ideation, and implementation (IDEO, 11). With inspiration, the designer(s) develop a better understanding of people; they study behavior, desire, and people’s daily lives. Next, we move into ideation, in which we generate innumerable ideas and designs, and test which work the best. Lastly, in the implementation stage, we “figure out how to get [our] idea to market and how to maximize its impact in the world” (IDEO, 11).

     Failure: everyone experiences it, and it is possibly the most crucial step when creating art and designs. Human-centered designers are very much like inventors: they “tinker and test, [they] fail early and often, and [they] spend a surprising amount of time not knowing the answer to the challenge at hand. And yet, [they] forge ahead” (IDEO, 10). Much like inventors, designers experience a significant amount of failure. Without failure, we would not be able to make improvements to our work. More importantly, we would not be able to learn new techniques and methods to help with other projects. With this gained knowledge from failure, we are able to effectively refine our designs to better fit the needs of our clients.

     Human-centered design is vastly unique compared to design thinking and creative thinking due to how much time goes into research and the development of a product catered to human action and behavior. Going through the design process and following the steps of inspiration, ideation, and implementation allows designers to gather adequate information about their target audience and test their theories out with others before the final product is released in the market. During this testing phase, failure makes itself known, allowing for us to correct our errors and to learn from our mistakes. Learning from mistakes is the best lesson a designer can learn so that they may not make those same mistakes on the next project.

Works Cited

Elisia, Francesca, and Francesca Elisia. “What’s the Difference Between Human-Centred Design and User Experience Design?” Prototypr, Prototypr, 20 Aug. 2017, blog.prototypr.io/whats-the-difference-between-human-centred-design-and-user-experience-design-2f48e5c9be25.

IDEO. “The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design.” IDEO.org, bestgraz.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Field-Guide-to-Human-Centered-Design_IDEOorg.pdf.

[sammiedavid290]

I really like your explanation of human centered design. I like how you added that it influences our behavior because I never thought of it that way. I also thought that it was interesting in how you basically described failure as a step. Failure is inevitable in any design or anything that we as humans live through. No matter what we try to do to prevent failure, it will always come knocking at the door. I do not know that as a designer you can learn to not make the same mistake as each design will be vastly different, but it will help you grow. 

[sammiedavid290]

The Impact of Human- Centered Design

How can someone be the best designer that they can be? There are three techniques that help designers think and pull out successful projects. The techniques include Creative thinking, Design thinking, and lastly Human- Centered design. I will however talk about one of them today. I believe that Human-Centered design is an amazing process that sets any designer up for a successful design.

When you start to think of a solution for the problem, you have to stay positive. It is stated in IDEO’s The Field Guide to Human- Centered Design,“that all problems, even the seemingly intractable ones like poverty, gender equality, and clean water, are solvable” (09). In order to stay positive throughout the whole process you need to believe that no matter what happens, you will get to a solution that solves the problem the best it can. Staying positive is the foundation to any design process because if you let a failure get to you, then you will not be able to improve.

In the field guide, there are three steps that will lead you to a successful design. The first step is Inspiration. The Field Guide states that this step is all about learning “how to better understand people” (11). The designer has to go out into the field to better understand their hopes and desires, along with understanding their lifestyle. This is one of the hardest parts because the designer must fully understand what the best option and direction would be to go in that would benefit the people the best. At this stage, the designer also creates a team that they believe would best suit the needs of the project.  The second step is Ideation. In this stage, the first thing you do is generate tons of ideas after you make sense of all the data that you collected from the inspiration stage. After you understand the goals that you are trying to achieve, the next step is to make a rough prototype and send it out into the field to get feedback. This is so the designer can see how well their idea would impact and help the lives of others. This step will “keep iterating, refining, and building until you’re ready to get your solution out into the world” (75). The last and final step is implementation. In this step you will finally be able to bring your solution to life and put it out on the market. At this point is it important to build partnerships and refine your business model, this will help to maximize your brand and product. Your solution for the people will be a success due to keeping the “people [you are] looking to serve at the heart of the process” (133).  

Throughout the whole book, IDEO gives the reader a guide to follow to be most successful. They want to give you guide lines to get the most out of your design experience to be the most successful. For example, throughout the first step, inspiration, they say to frame your design. This is to help you organize and create a better plan to create your solution. After that it instructs you to build a team and then to do interviews, either in an individual setting or a group setting. For the second step, ideation, they guide you to download your learning which is gathering all of the ideas throughout the whole team and placing it in one location. Another strategy they suggest is to create a top five, which can either be themes or even ideas. This helps to narrow down ideas that you would like or to even help create prototypes. For the last stage, implementation, they say to have a prototype out in the world. By making a prototype in the real world, this allows for you to see how it will really work and what its faults can be. They also suggest that you make a roadmap which is there for timing purposes. The roadmap will help create deadlines to make sure you can get your product out onto the market in time.

Overall, this book from IDEO helps to make sure that any designer that follows it will be successful because they keep “people’s lives and desires at the core” of every design that they make (09). These three steps may be challenging and take a lot of time, but it will ensure a positive outcome. By using just this one technique, you will already make a giant step in a good direction because you will be able to determine a design and get to test it before it is put out on the market.  

Sources:

IDEO: The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design http://d1r3w4d5z5a88i.cloudfront.net/assets/guide/Field%20Guide%20to%20Human-Centered%20Design_IDEOorg_English-ee47a1ed4b91f3252115b83152828d7e.pdf

[weirdlandtv]

Western Electric ad from 1959.

[whyrsm]

“Doors shouldn’t need instructions.”

Human-centered design.

[dianas]

(via Lean vs Design Thinking — Medium)

[creativesomething]

What to do when you're creatively constrained

Creativity means making the most of it.

It’s easy to blame a lack of creative inspiration or motivation on circumstance, but to do so is to forget that creativity is about curiosity, resourcefulness, and action.

Creativity takes no excuses.

“My boss doesn’t allow for new ideas,” is another way of saying “I can’t come up with a creative way to sell my ideas, to innovate.”

“My job is too restrictive,” is another way of thinking you’re stuck with the perspective of the work you’ve been instructed to pursue.

But like the painter looking at the edges of the canvas, the best ideas are built within constraints, by seeing what’s possible within the bounds. As Steven Johnson writes in his book, Where Good Ideas Come From:

“Good ideas are…inevitably, constrained by the parts and skills that surround them.”

Often the solution to feeling creatively restricted is more creativity.

If you’re feeling creatively constrained, look at the resources available to you, flip your perspective, ask for help, or challenge yourself to innovate in small steps. If you find yourself constantly restricted in what you can do with your ideas, take a step back and determine what it is within yourself that is making you feel so.

Lack of energy or interest in the work, not enough on the table, feelings of the effort being unappreciated, these are all ways we lose touch with our creativity and turn toward external excuses rather than trying to solve the issues themselves.

Maybe above all, always remember the wise words from Pixar’s Ed Catmull:

“When faced with a challenge, get smarter.”

[sound-dream]

[sammiedavid290]

cred to designer

[ceepagedotcom]

Creative thinking

Ceepage.com