What is "Design Thinking"?
＃１ What is design thinking?
Design Thinking has recently received more attention from different fields such as product design, business design and social design. Interestingly, there is no simple and clear definition of design thinking among many books.
But, there are some common factors between “design thinking” and “designer activity”. For example, to think much of a human-centered view, to observe the reality with empathy, to esteem insight, to generate many ideas, to rapidly create prototypes and improve them based on feedback.
Tom Kelley and David Kelley, the authors of “Creative Confidence” which describes design thinking and its examples, think that design thinking is one of the methodologies for promoting innovation constantly. They reworded design thinking as innovation of design initiative, and everyone can develop their own creativity by utilizing design thinking.
Also, the three factors of innovation process such as technology, business and human play the important role. In design thinking, it should focus on needs of person, and it always should start from human factor”.
As mentioned, design thinking has been applied not only for business fields such as product development and new business development in the present age when it is very hard to achieve satisfactory sale, but also for social fields such as vitalization of local communities (called as social design or community design).
＃２ The Process of Design Thinking
In Ken Suzuki Seminar, we have worked on social design projects based on design thinking approach as well as leadership training. We are currently doing two social design projects: one is in Kunisaki City in Oita Prefecture and the other is in Masuda City in Shimane Prefecture.
＃３ “Human-Centered”, “Prototyping”, “Speed”
Then, what is the process of design thinking as a tool to solve problems?
In the book of“Creative Confidence”, it introduces the perspective of IDEO, a design consulting company, which spreads design thinking methodology in the world. There are three steps: (1) Inspiration, (2) Synthesis and (3) Ideation & Experimentation.
❶What is “Inspiration”?
It is the first step to be aware of underlying problems, but you will never be able to realize them if you are only waiting for. It is rather required to get insight about hidden problems by your initiative through empathy observation, communication or interviews with people.
❷ What is “Synthesis”?
It is the step to make insight more appropriate for clear understanding. In other words, it adds meanings or values and we need to identify the problem..
❸What is “Ideation & Experimentation”?
It is the step to generate a lot of solution ideas, and assess them. And the most looking-promising idea should be developed by rapid prototyping, and it is going to be more effectively and efficiently improved by iterating the process.
“d.school” at Stanford University was another power center of design thinking in the world. It has defined design thinking process by five steps below:
(1) Empathize, (2) Define, (3) Ideate, (4) Prototype and (5) Test. This process is a little different from three steps above by IDEO, but essential parts are the same between IDEO and d.school in terms of how to implement design thinking.
＃４ Design Thinking Projects
Kunisaki Project
The Kunisaki Project started in 2013. One of former seminar students met Mani-san who is the chief priest of KODOJI Temple in Kunisaki City in Oita Prefecture in 2012. Mani-san was feeling a sense of urgency about a stagnating local activities due to the declining birth rate and increasing aging population in Kunisaki. And the seminar student introduced Mani-san to Professor Suzuki.
❶ What is "human-centered"? It contains three aspects. First one is an observation with empathy and respect other people who have problems. Second one is to capture problems as their own perspective. Lastly, third one is the attitude to solve the problem. Those are major sources of design thinking.
❷ What is "Prototyping"? It is to create a trial or a mockup. In other words, it is not just an idea, but a continuous improvement based on implementation with the feet on the ground.
❸ "Speed" is needed to raise the quality. By speeding up, you can acquire much more useful information from experience and learn more to improve things.
Masuda Project
Mr. Katsuo Kimura, who is a friend of Professor Suzuki and an entrepreneur, asked Professor Suzuki to make Masuda (Mr. Kimura's home town) revitalized by design thinking approach in 2015. Professor Suzuki started a field study program to make international students and Japanese students in APU involved in the project as well as local core people in Masuda in 2016.