DesignUp 🚀 Issue #41 > The Design Thinking Collection

March 21, 2017

I have long shunned conducting DesignThinking workshops. Partly because it isn't like popping a painkiller or learning some quick magic tricks to impress party guests. Partly, because like Yoga, its about practice and as designers doing it overs the years also question if it makes sense to package this as weekend course and create the illusion of creating Design Thinkers. But I did bite the bullet and did a quick introductory session—with mixed feelings. And collect a bunch of interesting, useful and contrarian articles on Design Thinking.

Plus there's The Question in the 21st Century and Mixed-reality Games...

Start at the very beginning. What's all this Design Thinking fuss about? "A wonderful interface solving the wrong problem will fail. Design thinking unfetters creative energies and focuses them on the right problem."

When Harvard Business Review puts DesignThinking on its cover page, maybe its time to sit up and take note? "Design has historically been equated with aesthetics and craft, designers have been celebrated as artistic savants. But a design-centric culture transcends design as a role, imparting a set of principles to all people who help bring ideas to life."

Time for some contrarian thinking: "Bruce Nussbaum, one of Design Thinking’s biggest advocates, is moving on to something new." This article from 2011 is interesting - and as we look back Design Thinking may have gained as a currency but is it being practised effectively?

"Now that design thinking is everywhere, it’s tempting to simply declare it dead—to ordain something new in its place." A reflective article from a man who has been thinking, writing about it for a very long time. Rerun from an earlier issue!

the words empathy and ethnography seem to feature a lot when discussing Design Thinking. Here's a quick guide to "modern day UX research methods that answer a wide range of questions." And when to use what, and why.

Can it help you, not just your business?

And more intrestingness...

A interesting mind tickling takeaway from the Creative Head of Magic Leap. “The challenge of mixed reality is to move on again, and it’s really challenging because now, the games happen on our side of the piece of glass, in our homes.”

Historian Yuval Noah Harari on the most important question in 21st-century economics: "What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?"

Until next week,