Sahibzada Mayed is a creative alchemist who uses design and storytelling to cultivate joy and imagination as tools of liberation. Mayed serves as the Co-Lead for Strategy and Research at Pause and Effect, a liberation-focused imagination and design collective based on Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Beyond that, Mayed leads a small-scale startup, Naranji, that focuses on gender justice and decolonization in fashion. Today, we talk about decolonizing design and creative liberation.

Listen to learn about:
>> The impact of colonialism and power structures on design
>> The need for critical social analysis in design
>> Designing for Joy
>> Decolonizing design
>> The importance of locality and place in design
>> Rethinking how we think about and experience systems

Our Guest
Sahibzada Mayed is a creative alchemist who uses design and storytelling to cultivate joy and imagination as tools of liberation. Mayed serves as the Co-Lead for Strategy and Research at Pause and Effect, a liberation-focused imagination and design collective based on Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Beyond that, Mayed leads a small-scale startup, Naranji, that focuses on gender justice and decolonization in fashion. Their work has been prominently featured during New York and Chicago Fashion Weeks and highlighted in several publications across the United States, Pakistan, Thailand, and Japan. Mayed's identity is shaped by their background as a Muslim immigrant of Persian, Afghan, Indian, and Pakistani heritage, as well as lived experiences of queerness, disability, and neurodivergence.

Show Highlights
[02:15] Mayed’s unconventional journey into design, combining engineering and social sciences.
[04:05] How this background has helped Mayed in their work.
[06:01] Mayed’s current work focus is on understanding the impact of colonialism in design.
[07:36] The challenge of collaborating when existing power differentials have yet to be addressed.
[09:28] What is power?
[12:04] Mayed shares thoughts on designing when you’re close to, or a part of, the community you’re designing for, versus being outside that community.
[13:53] Dawan talks about how perfection is the enemy of change.
[15:57] The fear and discomfort of taking responsibility for causing harm.
[16:28] Good intentions do not absolve responsibility.
[17:30] Building accountability into what you design.
[19:19] Ethics in design and looking for the potential of harm while designing.
[22:45] There is an assumption of neutrality and objectivity around design.
[24:47] Designing to prevent harm, and also designing for joy and compassion and care.
[29:45] Decolonizing design.
[35:12] Grounding design in the context of the place and space where it will live.
[38:47] Shifting the way we think about design, to move beyond the human.
[40:44] Rethinking how we think about and experience systems.
[45:13] Last thoughts from Mayed about doing the work and the responsibility that comes with that.

Links
Mayed on LinkedIn
Mayed on Medium
Mayed’s website
pause + effect - 5-week intensive, Reimagining Research
Interview: Fashion Designer Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
I Don’t Want A Seat at Your Table w/ sahibzada mayed
Decentralizing Power through Design with Sahibzada Mayed and Lauren Lin

Book Recommendations 
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, by Adrienne Maree Brown

DT 101 Episodes
Design Social Change with Lesley-Ann Noel — DT101 E128
Radical Participatory Design + Relationships in Complex Systems Inclusive Design with Victor Udoewa — DT101 E127
Design Ethics with George Aye — DT101 E136

Matthew Van Der Tuyn is a designer and healthcare innovation strategist. Matt is the Senior Director of Design and Strategy at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation at Penn Medicine. The mission at the Center is to serve as a catalyst and accelerator for initiatives that dramatically improve health outcomes, patient and provider experiences, and decrease the cost of care. Matt has had the unique opportunity to help build the Center’s design, discipline, and elevate design thinking as a key tool in Penn Medicine's organizational toolbox. Matt's design process balances divergent and creative thinking to push beyond incremental solutions with the rigor of an evidence-based approach. We talk about becoming and being a designer in healthcare and Matt's practice.

Listen to learn about:
>> The unique challenges of designing and innovating in the healthcare space
>> Problem-centric vs solution-centric thinking and action
>> The importance of change management in the design process

Our Guest 
Matt is a designer and health care innovation strategist. Matt’s design roots are in information, product, and service design. His design practice began with visual arts, information design, and product design for luxury goods before deciding to pivot into design for social impact. With this new focus on using design to solve societal issues, Matt’s work expanded into the design of services and co-design as a tool for empowering disadvantaged communities. Matt’s guiding principle is that design is a mindset that anyone can leverage, and that the role of the “Designer” is to help others tap into this mindset to imagine new possibilities.

In 2012, Matt made a leap into health care when he joined the newly minted Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation at Penn Medicine (CHTI). The mission of this new center was to serve as a catalyst and accelerator for initiatives that dramatically improve health outcomes, patient and provider experiences, and decrease the cost of care.

Entering as the first designer on this new team, Matt has had the unique opportunity to help build CHTI’s design discipline and elevate design thinking as a key tool in Penn Medicine’s organizational toolbox. Matt’s design process balances divergent and creative thinking to push beyond incremental solutions with the rigor of an evidence-based approach.

Matt leads with the belief that the foundation of great design, and building a culture of innovation, is empowerment. That the greatest ingredient for innovation in any large service organization is the people on the front lines of service delivery who have the passion, insight, and opportunity to effect change. However, there are not often clear pathways for these staff to gain traction with ideas nor are there efficient ways for leadership to identify and support these frontline champions. Matt believes bridging this gap, through design, between high-level organizational objectives and the frontline staff with the answers, where agency is created for innovation, is the key to unlocking the true potential of an organization.

Matt does not see design as a silver bullet, but rather a binder that can align the many, diverse, voices and skills needed for transformative solutions. In addition to design, Matt will quickly point to the various disciplines and individuals across Penn Medicine that he feels create the secret sauce that makes anything possible. From behavioral economists to data scientists, quality and safety experts to hospitality experts, Matt is a firm believer that everyone has something to contribute, if we center ourselves around a shared set of values that prioritize improving the lives of others.

Show Highlights
[02:02] Matt’s love of the fine arts, and why he ended up in graphic design.
[02:34] Evolving from graphic design into product design of dinnerware.
[03:25] The book that helped change Matt’s design path.
[04:33] Grad school at the University of Arts in Philadelphia.
[05:44] How Matt’s grad school project with Penn Medicine led to the creation of the Center he works at today.
[09:30] Being problem-centric instead of solution-centric.
[12:45] The unique challenges of innovation work in healthcare.
[14:26] One of Matt’s big “a-ha!” moments.
[15:29] An exercise Matt uses to help people move past assumptions and think creatively.
[18:31] Looking for the people who really wanted the help.
[19:34] Storytelling in Matt’s work.
[22:28] The need for rigor and evidence when designing for healthcare.
[24:42] Matt encourages new designers to find ways to measure the success of their work.
[25:44] Getting comfortable with the business and finance side of healthcare.
[29:38] The importance of good change management.
[30:55] Using behavior design to help people with change.
[31:27] Conflict as a natural part of the design process.
[35:57] Matt’s advice for those wanting to work in healthcare design.
[38:32] Books and resources Matt recommends.

Links
Matthew on LinkedIn
Matthew at UPenn Medicine
Penn Medicine: Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation
A Global Pandemic Turned Everything Upside Down. What Has Penn Medicine’s Innovation Team Learned From That?

 

Book Recommendations
Design Revolution: 100 Products The Empower People, by Emily Pilloton
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, by Erving Goffman

DT 101 Episodes
Healthcare + Systems + Risk + Design with Rob Lister — DT101 E122
A Designer’s Journey into Designing for Health and Healthcare with Lorna Ross — DT101 E45
Designing Health Systems + Creating Effective Design Workshops with Sean Molloy — DT101 E44

Julie Dirksen is the author of the books Design for How People Learn and Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change. She is a learning strategy consultant with a focus on incorporating behavioral science into learning interventions. Julie was my guest for episode 42 of the show. In this episode, we talk about her latest book, ways to motivate learners and workshop participants, designing learning experiences for skill development, and more.

Listen to learn about:
>> Julie’s latest book, Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change
>> Behavior change challenges
>> The biggest challenge when creating virtual learning experiences
>> Motivating and engaging learners
>> AI in education

Our Guest

Julie Dirksen is the author of the books Design For How People Learn and Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change. She is a learning strategy consultant with a focus on incorporating behavioral science into learning interventions. Her MS degree is in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University. She’s been an adjunct faculty member at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is a Learning Guild Guildmaster.

She is happiest when she gets to learn something new, and you can find her at usablelearning.com.

Show Highlights
[02:02] Julie gives a quick summary of her first book and how Talk to the Elephant is its natural sequel.
[02:42] The new book tackles the challenges in actually changing behavior.
[04:26] On learning experiences.
[05:21] Julie is starting to organize a third book, which will be on skill acquisition.
[05:34] The evolution of behavioral design.
[06:21] The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest behavior change experiment in the history of the world.
[07:06] The book’s audience are those in the learning and development field — people who design learning experiences.
[08:00] The Change Ladder.
[08:54] Julie offers one case study she uses in the book to demonstrate the challenges around behavior change.
[14:17] The importance of communicating and working with the people you serve when it comes to changing behaviors.
[14:58] Julie tells a story illustrating the importance of talking to and understanding the people you serve and their needs.
[17:57] It’s important for people to participate in their own behavioral design.
[20:15] Creating the conditions for learners to motivate themselves.
[21:22] Making things as easy as possible for someone to do.
[22:42] A Miro Moment.
[25:27] Creating learning experiences that engage learners.
[26:14] The biggest challenge in designing virtual workshops.
[27:55] Why Julie is interested in Virtual Reality.
[29:34] The top two challenges Julie sees in almost every behavior change.
[34:55] Immediate impact and immediate rewards help learners stay motivated.
[37:21] Helping learners see what they will be able to do with this new skill or new knowledge.
[42:53] Julie shows appreciation for how video games onboard players as a great example of guiding people along the learning curve.
[45:11] Designing learning experiences to make your learner feel smart and capable as they acquire new skills and knowledge.
[48:42] Julie talks about research on self-directed learning by Catherine Lombardozzi.
[49:20] Julie and Catherine will be doing a webinar on the key behaviors seen in good self-directed learners.
[52:05] Julie ponders how systems thinking and design fits into behavior change.
[52:54] Dawan and Julie talk about AI and its role in education.

Links
Julie on LinkedIn
Usable Learning
Designing for how people learn

Book Recommendations
Design for How People Learn, by Julie Dirksen
Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change, by Julie Dirksen
Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
Nudge: The Final Edition, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
How Change Happens, by Cass Sunstein
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things, by Dan Ariely
Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely

DT 101 Episodes
Learning Design + Designing for How People Learn with Julie Dirksen — DT101 E42
Learning Design with Yianna Vovides — DT101 E58
Adding System Awareness to System Design to Your Innovation Stack with Julie Guinn — DT101 E43

Marion Leary is the Director of Innovation at the Pennsylvania School of Nursing. We discuss innovation and nursing education, University of Pennsylvania’s free online Design Thinking for Health platform, nurses as innovation leaders, and why storytelling matters. Show host: Dawan Stanford.

Show Summary

Design thinking was not Marion’s first focus. She was a researcher for 13 years before taking the role of Director of Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She has a dual degree, with a Master’s in Nursing and Public Health. Marion is currently pursuing her Ph.D., focusing on innovation and design thinking around cardiac arrest and bystander response. She is interested in using design thinking to solve problems in nursing and healthcare.

Marion enjoys the empathetic, human-centered approach of creatively solving problems in health and healthcare, which connects with nursing. She is a leader in design thinking and created the course Innovation and Health Foundations of Design Thinking using a flipped-classroom, active-learning approach. This interdisciplinary course at Penn can be taken by upper-level undergraduate or graduate students, regardless of their major.

Learn how Marion collaborates with other departments to create a successful design thinking cohort, how she coordinated the first Penn Nursing Innovation Accelerator Program, and how Marion is integrating design thinking into her curriculum.

Listen in to find out:

>> How nursing and design thinking are similar iterative processes
>> More about the Innovation and Health Foundations of Design Thinking course
>> How this design thinking course attracts students from many majors
>> Marion’s experience on campus leading design thinking students
>> Marion’s prediction for long-term trends in nursing and innovative design

Our Guest

Marion Leary is the Director of Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Nursing. As the Director of Innovation at Penn Nursing, she works to amplify and educate nurses as leaders in health and healthcare innovation, recently launching a free, online, open access platform called Design Thinking for Health. Ms. Leary is a member of the American Nurses Association's Innovation Advisory Committee, a Founding member of the Society of Nurse Scientists, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Leaders (SONSIEL), and a member of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Innovation Subcommittee. This past August 2019, she was named as an Influencer of Healthcare winner in the category of Excellence in Innovation by the Philadelphia Inquirer.  In 2017, she was named Geek of the Year for her outstanding achievements in Philadelphia's vibrant geek community in the areas of innovation, technology, and activism.

Show Highlights 

[02:22] Marion walks us through her journey to her current position today.
[04:30] How nursing and design thinking are similar processes.
[06:11] Marion describes the design thinking course.
[09:12] Student experience in the design thinking classroom at University of Pennsylvania.
[11:10] Marion’s experience leading design thinking on campus at University of Pennsylvania.
[12:30] The first Penn Nursing Innovation Accelerator Program.
[14:05] Her prediction for long-term trends in nursing and innovative design.
[17:14] How do others outside of nursing use Marion’s design thinking resources?
[21:45] Focusing on storytelling as an integral part of design thinking.
[24:49] How healthcare leaders and designers can support nurses in their role.
[27:28] The type of listening that comes with nursing training.
[31:44] Scope of practice and human-centered design.
[35:45] How Marion is integrating design thinking into her curriculum.
[39:14] Resources to use for learning first-aid and first response techniques.

Links

Design Thinking for Health
Design For Health at UPenn
UPENN nursing
IDEO
Health Design Thinking by Bon Ku and Ellen Lupton
Design resources at UPenn
Marion Leary on Twitter
Marion Leary on the Web
Marion Leary Nursing Profile

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Designer's Role in Healthcare & Public Health + Studio Thinking with Jess Roberts — DT101 E21
Nursing + Service Design + Healthcare Innovation with Brittany Merkle — DT101 E38
Healthcare Design Teams + Wellness + ScienceXDesign with Chris McCarthy — DT101 E24

________________

Thank you for listening to the show and looking at the show notes. Send your questions, suggestions, and guest ideas to Dawan and the Fluid Hive team. Cheers ~ Dawan

Free Download — Design Driven Innovation: Avoid Innovation Traps with These 9 Steps

Innovation Smart Start Webinar — Take your innovation projects from frantic to focused!

Anne van Lieren is a service designer and behavior design enthusiast. We talk about her path to joining Livework in the Netherlands as a service designer, where service design and behavioral design are converging, examples from her work, and what happens when you add behavioral design to journey mapping.  

Anne discusses her path to Livework with Dawan Stanford, your podcast host. She started working part-time through Livework through the University of the Netherlands and eventually started working at Livework Design full time. Anne worked on numerous projects, including helping organizations to adopt design principles and practices, and innovation projects optimizing current client services or building new service pathways.

Show Summary

With her bachelor’s degree in design from the University of the Netherlands, Anne moved on to Strategic Project Design, which was mostly focused on Service Design. While working on many user research projects, she developed an interest in psychology and behavior, and in understanding why people behave in specific ways. So, she decided to start looking into behavioral science and how this applied to service design.

Find out how Anne bridges the understanding gap for clients within the context of mindset, why she believes experiences are the key to training her client’s mental mindset, and why she focuses on the human-centered mindset. Learn how Anne teaches her clients to be more collaborative, think across departments and stakeholders, and encourages companies to be more experimental.

Learn how Anne:

>> Uses situation-specific prototypes for solutions in the workplace
>> Teaches companies how to use new and existing tools for design
>> Works with creative agility and the positive design that results from working the creative mental muscle
>> Specifies the types of mindsets she focuses on in the context of experimental experiences with her clients
>> Deals with the expectations of clients looking for solid answers
>> Frames the dynamics involved in the design thinking process
>> Incorporates behavioral design in the design thinking process to influence others in their behavior
>> Builds and designs co-design workshops

Our Guest

Anne is a service designer and behavioral expert at Livework Studio. She leverages insights from behavioral science and Livework’s expertise in service design to create environments that make customers aware, active, and able to make better decisions. By fundamentally understanding behavior and designing behavioral interventions, she helps organizations to create a durable impact on behavior change. Her research into nudging was published at a major international conference on design research.

Show Highlights 

[02:27] Anne’s path to becoming a service designer.
[03:30] How Anne’s journey took her to working with Livework Design.
[05:01] What process does Anne implement to assist clients in understanding mindset?
[06:38] Anne speaks about creative agility — the creative mental muscle.
[12:12] The source for Anne’s enthusiasm for design based on working with her students on design projects.
[13:52] How incorporating behavioral science basics is beneficial for design thinking.
[16:51] An emotional hot state example and how to design more thoughtful interaction with nudges.
[19:55] Nudges and rational overrides in the context of behavioral science.
[22:31] Negotiations on the delivery side and how Anne handles this conversation.
[24:17] Building and designing co-design workshops.
[27:00] Advice Anne gives for others building co-design workshops.
[29:52] How Anne started using journey maps during her thesis.
[33:31] Anne’s prediction for service design’s future and role.
[36:32] Working on difficult social issues.

Links

Livework Design Studio
Anne van Lieren at Livework
The Behavioural Insights Team Annual Update Report 2017–18
Podcast: You are not so smart
SDGC19 | Anne van Lieren: Customer Behaviour by Design - Influencing Behaviour Beyond Nudging
Contact Anne van Lieren
Anne van Lieren on Twitter
Anne van Lieren on LinkedIn

Book Recommendation 

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Cass Sunstein & Richard Thaler

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Teaching and Learning Service Design for Designers and Non-designers with Maurício Manhães — DT101 E34
Service Design in Healthcare Inside Multiple Business Contexts with Jessica Dugan — DT101 E22
Nursing + Service Design + Healthcare Innovation with Brittany Merkle — DT101 E38
Behavioral Science + Behavior Change Design + Social Impact with Dustin DiTommaso — DT101 E28

________________

Thank you for listening to the show and looking at the show notes. Send your questions, suggestions, and guest ideas to Dawan and the Fluid Hive team. Cheers ~ Dawan

Free Download — Design Driven Innovation: Avoid Innovation Traps with These 9 Steps

Innovation Smart Start Webinar — Take your innovation projects from frantic to focused!

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. In today's episode I am joined by Bruce Hanington. He remembers being introduced to design as a small child with his father being a Commercial Designer. Initially headed for a career in architecture, his journey took a detour as an undergrad when he ended up graduating with a degree in Applied Psychology. But Bruce realized he wanted to get into design, and that he wanted to be on the creative side instead of just studying design. During his graduate work in industrial design, he continued his interest in dealing with the more human factors of design, primarily, how design affects everyday encounters and life.

After emerging with an Industrial Design education coupled with Applied Psychology, he landed in academia in the School of Design as a part of the Industrial Design core, able to teach in all the aspects of teaching he loves best, including form giving, human factors, and understanding the interpretation of objects with meaning and significance. His recent promotions included an appointment to the Head of Design at Carnegie Mellon six months ago.

Bruce believes technology, and the products which are a part of our life now as a direct result of technology, are the biggest game-changers for design thinking. The orientation of work toward social causes, and designing for social good, has become an established part of design thinking.

On disciplinary boundaries, “I think you see a broadening of boundaries so regardless of what form of design you may have a particular passion for and how you might study it, ultimately I think that designers have a more broad-based understanding of design and problem solving in general, and design methods, approaches and practices can be applied to almost any design.”

Bruce has seen a shift in design methods over time, especially in the surge of information via books and online courses. He recently authored his own book on design thinking, “Universal Methods of Design.” There’s been a shift in design thinking to design responsibly for everyday living to enhance people’s lives.

Listen in to find out the new hurdles of design thinking, what new companies are looking for concerning the design thinking process, and why design thinking is more of a philosophical approach. Find out Bruce’s opinion on which methods or approaches to design have changed the most in the past decade.

Our Guest

Bruce Hanington is a professor and head of the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Prior to this, he was director of graduate studies, and program chair of industrial design. Bruce has dedicated his teaching and research to methods and practices for human-centered design, with an emphasis on design ethnography, participatory design, and the meaning of form in context. 

In addition to working with industry partners through collaborative projects and executive education, his work has been published in Design Issues, The Design Journal, and Interactions, with chapters in Affective Sciences in Human Factors and Human-Computer Interaction, and The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design. Bruce is co-author of the book Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions.

In This Episode

[01:06] How Bruce arrived to where he is today.
[05:32] Bruce’s recent promotions in the design field.
[06:35] Factors which Bruce believes are having a significant impact on design in the classroom.
[08:45] Components which are a factor of design maturing in the United States.
[10:21] How Bruce has seen design research methods shift over time.
[13:34] Wrestling with the “rush to artifact.”
[16:48] Companies are looking for ways to design more creatively, flexibly, and collaboratively.
[18:45] Challenges brought to the design thinking table, and responses that work well.
[23:11] Changes and updates that Bruce has recognized in the newest edition of his book.
[28:20] Where students are headed in the future, and what will they need to be equipped with to succeed in design thinking.
[35:38] What needs to happen at the personal level for students and professors.
[38:52] How you can contact Bruce and learn more about his work. 

Links and Resources

Bruce Hanington on LinkedIn
Bruce Hanington on the Web
Bruce Hanington at CMU
Bruce Hanington's Research
Bruce Hanington's articles on Academia.edu
Design Research Methods: a Repository of Research Methods for Design
An interview with Bruce Hanington on Medium
Design for America
Elon By Design at Elon University
Center for Design Thinking at Elon University

Book Recommendations

Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems
Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions by Hanington, Bruce & Martin, Bella
The Pocket Universal Methods of Design by Hanington, Bruce & Martin, Bella

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today's 

Guest is Brittany Merkle. Her design path started at the University of Virginia in the College of Arts and Sciences. During her first semester, her grandfather was diagnosed with cancer. On weekend trips home, Brittany witnessed the incredible service Hospice offered. When she returned for her second year at college, she immediately changed majors and enrolled in nursing. Brittany shadowed nursing students and learned what nursing looked like as a career.

She jumped into qualitative research and realized she wanted her career to combine two things: 1. Creativity, and 2. Make a difference. "These two seemed very siloed in my mind," Brittany remarked.  She hadn’t yet considered fusing these two aspects into one career.

Brittany wasn't sure where she wanted to go for graduate school, when she came across the Savannah College of Art and Design. She started with Hospice Case Management, but continued to think of service design in relation to her profession. Brittany enrolled in the SCAD Master's program and started to unlearn her previous content she learned from her Bachelor’s degree, which was her biggest challenge. She was one of the first nurses to graduate from the SCAD program.

She was looking for a new approach to bring to the healthcare system, which she found as a lead innovation strategist with the University's healthcare team. Brittany wanted to make her mark in the system and to challenge herself with the design skills she has learned.

Our Guest

Brittany Merkle, RN, BSN, supports the innovation and design thinking efforts in UH Ventures. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing with distinction, and is graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with a Master of Fine Arts in Service Design.

She is one of the first nurses to graduate from SCAD, and the first in the country with this specific degree combination. She has experience in Hospice Case Management, and in acute and urgent care services as a practicing Registered Nurse before she began pursuing her Master's. Her thesis focused on service design as a lens for nursing innovation.

Brittany is passionate about the demystification of innovation and catalyzing innovative behavior amongst healthcare providers and caregivers. Her work is focused on enhancing patient and provider experiences through innovative care models and digital tools.

In This Episode

[01:13] Brittany’s background and path to design thinking.
[03:40] Her realization of what she wanted to do with her career.
[06:39] The turning point for Brittany, where her learning became her unlearning.
[08:44] How SCAD spoke to Brittany’s imposter syndrome.
[10:45] Brittany’s design internship.
[12:14] UH’s prototypical healthcare system.
[16:27] New design language Brittany is adapting to her new position.
[17:18] Unique superpowers when she is performing her fieldwork.
[19:33] Advice Brittany would give to other healthcare professionals who do not have a design background.
[27:49] Suggestions for faculty on the innovation side of healthcare.
[30:27] Resources that have helped Brittany along the way.

Links and Resources

SCAD | Savannah College of Art & Design Service Design Program
UH Ventures
Brittany Merkle on LinkedIn
Dustin DiTommaso’s podcast episode Episode 28, Behavior Change Design

Book Recommendations

This is Service Design Doing by Marc Stickdorn
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
On Managing Yourself by Harvard Business Review

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today's episode is part two of a two-part series on Design for America. Design for America is a nationwide network that supports design innovation for social impact. DFA was founded at Northwestern University, and is helping to shape the next generation of social innovators and student-led design-led studios on over 40 college campuses. Today, we'll speak to two guests about what Design for America is, why DFA exists, how DFA works, and what the future may look like at Design for America.

We start our episode talking to Kelly Wisneski about her DFA experience, which began at Washington University in St. Louis during her undergraduate education. She knew she wanted to talk to people who were involved in Design For America in the Washington University chapter. She was working on a project related to food insecurity in St. Louis when she realized DFA would be her entry point into St. Louis. Kelly joined DFA during her first semester at university, and found herself on the leadership board in her second semester.

She enjoyed being part of the leadership board and having a hand in growing DFA from a small studio into a more extensive workshop. Kelly assisted others in getting their projects off the ground in her early stages of leadership. In 2019, Kelly has contributed to the building of nine new DFA studios. "DFA is not just design thinking projects, they are projects that are here to make an impact on the people that it matters to the most."

Our second conversation is with Liz Gerber. We first chatted with Liz about how DFA was launched. She worked in the research sector of the toy industry with kids, asking them how they would build their own toys. As a new professor at her university, Liz was not satisfied with just research and publishing. She wanted to launch a new idea that she had brewing. Liz yearned to create a unique educational and impact structure in which students were working directly with community members. She broke down the boundary between the classroom and campus and the “real world,” giving students the ability to tackle and solve real-world community problems.

Our Guests

Kelly Wisneski is a Program Coordinator at Design for America, supporting DFA studios across the country and working to improve DFA's data systems. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Architecture and Computer Science and led her local DFA chapter for 4 years.

Liz Gerber is the Faculty Director and Co-Founder at Design for America. The question that drives her is, "What can I do for others," and she continues to create communities that innovate collectively to tackle messy and meaningful problems. She is a design professor with a passion for understanding social interactions and practical applications for the technology.

In This Episode

[01:34] Kelly talks about her early DFA experiences.
[04:25] Advice Kelly gives for studios that are getting off the ground.
[07:27] What Kelly has learned and what her students have learned when they are a part of the project experience.
[10:57] Kelly highlights some DFA project components she enjoyed learning.
[11:57] How Kelly is working with mentors and guiding them through the process.
[15:08] Kelly’s advice if you want to start a DFA studio.
[16:37] Liz tells the DFA launch backstory.
[20:30] The students’ first challenge: helping children with diabetes.
[22:15] Ten years later: Liz reflects on the work of DFA.
[23:40] Anniversary party for DFA and the DFA chapter’s ripple effects.
[29:13] Open questions about the future for DFA.

Links and Resources:

Liz Gerber at Northwestern University
Liz Gerber on LinkedIn
Kelly Wisneski on LinkedIn
UC San Diego Design Lab
Contact UC San Diego Design Lab
Design for America
Northwestern University
Elon By Design at Elon University
Center for Design Thinking at Elon University
Design for America Washington University
DFA Receives Cooper Hewitt Design Award in 2018

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today's episode is part one of a two-part series on Design for America. Design for America is a nationwide network that supports innovation for social impact. DFA was founded at Northwestern University, and is helping to shape the next generation of social innovators and design-led studios on over 40 college campuses. Today, we’ll speak to three guests about what Design for America is and what does the experience look like when a member participates in a Design for America studio.

We start our episode with Eric Richards explaining how he founded Design for America on the UC San Diego campus. Eric was interested in human-led design and, coupled with his interest in social impact, Eric started to search Facebook for others who had a similar desire in utilizing both fields interchangeably. He found a Good Design Lab founded by Don Mormont at UC San Diego. Many of the UC San Diego students who were interested in human-led design had worked at this lab. Eric liked the concept, applied to the university, and was accepted to the program.

Through this lab and Don's involvement, many design classes were available to students. Eric joined Good Design Lab as a sophomore - the year after the lab was founded - and took the introductory design class. During his journey with Good Design Lab, Eric became part of a very tight-knit community. He was grateful to have found a community that, like Eric, valued using their skill set for social impact.

Andrew Demas discovered DFA by accident while he was a student. He had a friend who was involved in DFA, and one day Andrew visited the Good Design Lab. He fell in love with the process and how the process affects social impact. DFA taught Andrew how to find out who your user is, gaining empathy for the user, and developing a solution for someone else. His new perspective not only changed the way he solved problems in real-world applications, it also changed his view of how he thinks about his curriculum at school, and changed the way he works towards coming up with solutions.

Throughout this time, Andrew was connected to many other students who had a passion for design and for giving back to their community in a sustainable way. He was able to put his newfound skills to use when he and his classmates rebuilt a community center that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Andrew felt that DFA gave him his best college and learning experience in university, and he’s passionate about his alumni board and networking for future leaders of design thinking and to get more corporations involved with DFA.

William Moner is a faculty member who sponsors a DFA Studio at Elon University. Dawan Stanford approached William to mentor and encourage students to engage in the design process. William talks about the process of creating a DFA Studio, using DFA guides, and bringing together the efforts of everyone involved to make DFA happen on campus. He also discusses the challenges of mentoring and recruiting students for DFA.

Our Guests

Eric Richards is starting his last year at UC San Diego, where he's studying Human-Computer Interaction and Design for Social Innovation. His interest is in design that empowers communities and advances equity and sustainability. He currently leads Design for America at UCSD, and advises undergraduate humanitarian engineering projects on campus.

Andrew Demas is a Senior Managing Consultant in IBM's Digital Strategy & IX practice and is also the digital account partner for one of IBM's top telecommunications clients. As an IBM Design Thinking Leader, he runs the New York Design Thinking Chapter. His passion for design started with DFA; he served as President of the Barnard-Columbia Design for America Studio for three years, and he currently sits on the DFA Alumni Board. 

William Moner is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Elon University and is the faculty mentor for the Elon Design for America studio. He holds a Ph.D. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas, and his research focuses on emerging methods of storytelling and interactive media production through open software platforms and systems.

In This Episode

[01:28] Eric tells his story of how he founded Design for America at UCSD.
[02:54] Eric’s early experience with DFA chapter on campus.
[05:15] How Eric foresees using his skills in his work in the future.
[06:31] How Eric came into and is currently developing his need-finding skills.
[09:09] The value Eric finds in DFA and his DFA experience.
[13:40] Andrew’s transformative experience with DFA on his university campus.
[15:43] Andrew’s most memorable project to date, and the skills Andrew and his classmates employed to this project, and what he learned from DFA.
[20:03] Andrew and his passion project with DFA.
[26:44] Students start to bring DFA to Elon University.
[32:30] Wicked problems in the DFA Studio at Elon University.
[34:28] William’s advice on how to mentor at a DFA Studio.
[38:58] The work of DFA and who William is grateful for at DFA.

Links and Resources

UC San Diego Design Lab
Contact UC San Diego Design Lab
Design for America
Elon By Design at Elon University
Center for Design Thinking at Elon University
Bernard-Columbia Design for America
William Moner
Andrew Demas
Eric Richards

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'll be interviewing Tony Hu, who is the academic director at MIT’s Integrated Design and Management Master’s program. We’ll be talking about how Tony discovered design, human-centered design’s impact on students, and MIT’s unique program combining design and engineering management.

We start our episode during Tony’s high school career, with his passion for writing. He started on the journalism team and edited the school newspaper. Additionally, he was interested in gadgets - this was during the Sony Walkman era. Tony was interested in working on a similar technology at the time. His father was an engineer and was a big influence on Tony’s career. He heard MIT was the route to take if he was serious about engineering, so he applied and was accepted, to the dismay of his journalism teacher.

While at MIT, Tony studied transistors and Maxwell’s equations, which was not an enjoyable experience for him. He stuck through the course and found an interesting opportunity with an internship from the media lab working with the “newspaper of the future.” He graduated with an electrical engineering degree; however, he wasn’t actually interested in the field. Tony wanted to learn about other aspects of products and interviewed with IBM in Boston as a Systems Engineer. When he started getting bored selling computers, he decided to look into a career in advertising. He was pursuing a bookstore for advertising books when just a few shelves down he discovered books on industrial design and product design. He found out about night classes at a local college and was hooked! After talking with several people, he found out about the Stanford program and fell in love with Stanford.

Tony talks about the challenges he faced in the early 1980s in the industrial design career. He realizes that students today are challenged with finding multiple solutions instead of just one engineering solution. Students are having to change their mindset and thinking, to offer numerous solutions. Another challenge is interviewing others, especially when they themselves are an introvert.

During his journey, Tony has designed toys and been a consultant to numerous companies. He was the first designer and product developer at a small company that sold baby products. At this first position, he learned the value of testing products. He then went through a succession of companies, exploring his passion for working with toys. His primary interest was to see a product all the way through from design to marketing, and he still wanted to stay in the toy field.

He started his own company creating toys and licensing them out to companies. One of his crazier designs was a bodysuit with casters which you could use to roll down a road! Another design he created was breathable, more comfortable protective gear for rollerblading.

Throughout this time, Tony taught Visual Design at Stanford. He met his wife, and 13 years later when she was expecting her first child and needed to find a teacher for her classes, she suggested her husband for the position. He ended up teaching several of her classes. Through his wife and teaching, he met Matt Kressy, who is an industrial designer from the Rhode Island School of Design. Matt went on to start a design program at MIT and invited Tony to check it out. A few years later, Matt asked him to join the program.

Our Guest

Tony Hu is the Academic Director of MIT's Integrated Design & Management Master's Program. As an entrepreneurial leader with 20+ years of experience as head of product development at both startups and large corporations, he has brought over 200 consumer products to market globally, including electronics, appliances, toys, and sporting goods, and is a champion of design, creativity, and innovation. He’s also an inventor, with 18 patents and 22 products he designed and licensed himself.

For the past 13 years, Tony has taught design thinking as a lecturer at MIT and Stanford. He earned his Masters in Product Design at Stanford and his bachelor in Electrical Engineering at MIT, where he conducted research at the Media Lab. As a teacher, he is a rarity: an engineer with a background in both design and business. Tony loves sharing his holistic approach to product design with students.

In This Episode

[01:05] Tony talks about his origin story in design and how he started on the path to design.
[05:07] How he landed a job at IBM and his experience at IBM in sales.
[07:01] Tony’s introduction into industrial and product design.
[08:30] Challenges Tony encountered in the early years of working in design.
[11:58] Tony talks about his first product development position and his takeaways from product development.
[16:04] Tony’s steps further down his design journey, focusing mainly on toys.
[20:18] Before the .com boom - more history and working with different companies.
[25:05] Tony talks about meeting Matt and how working with Matt influenced Tony’s path in design.
[27:28] How this unique program is attracting diverse learners.
[30:02] The process of design thinking on product development.
[35:33] Tony’s role in the transformation of teaching design thinking.
[39:08] Find out about Tony’s newest endeavor: Brainy Yak Labs

Links and Resources

Tony Hu LinkedIn profile
Brainy Yak Labs
MIT IDM on the web

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'll be interviewing Maurício Manhães and talking about his design position at Savannah College of Art and Design, his work at the Service Design Network and as the group leader at the Design Academic Task Force.

In this episode, we talk about the crisis that caused Maurício to shift into service design, how service designers are learning their craft, and his work to create service design curriculum for non-designers.

We’ll explore Maurício's 15-year background in IT and marketing, and his reaction to having a failed project. He couldn't figure out why his project was received poorly by his client until he discovered that he didn't understand the people he was designing for. This was when he found design thinking.

Maurício was intrigued by how service design was based on a complex and systemic approach to social technical design. Through this revelation, he understood his approach to design and problem-solving was flawed. At this point, he decided to return to school. He received a Master's Degree in Knowledge Management, and then a Ph.D, and he then started teaching service design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

Since Maurício joined SCAD, their program has gained over two dozen students, making their program one of the largest in the world. Students come with curious minds, wanting to know how they can involve stakeholders in the design process and have a better perspective on the social technical design context.

Maurício talks about how he and his department at SCAD are adding new courses pertaining to design to enhance the degree, including how innovation is understood in an adaptive system. The program is very demanding, resulting in two-thirds of the program's students being hired one year before they graduate.

This episode also offers a look at providing the perspective of the complex and active systems of design thinking to non-designers. Maurício explains how he conveys this complex concept to creators without a design background. He also delves into the ethics of service design, the illusion of being able to change a person’s behavior, and common issues first year designers have when they start their career.

Our Guest

Maurício Manhães is a Professor of Service Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design and an Associate Design Researcher at Livework and the group leader of the Service Design Network Academic Task Force. In 2015, he obtained a Doctoral degree in Knowledge Management with a focus on service innovation at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil in partnership with the Koeln International School of Design in Germany with the thesis "Innovativeness and Prejudice: Designing a Landscape of Diversity for Knowledge Creation." In addition to his professorship, he works on consultancy projects and conducts workshops, courses, and lectures on design, design research, and service innovation worldwide.

In This Episode

[01:10] Maurício’s journey from IT project management into design thinking.
[04:50] He gives background on SCAD department and his role in this department.
[06:54] SCAD department and how their cohort has grown.
[11:16] Curriculum changes to the complexity of the design program at SCAD.
[12:34] Maurício talks about why they are adding complex adaptive systems to the curriculum at SCAD.
[14:09] Two-thirds of students are hired one year before graduation.
[16:06] How service design theory and service design logic prepares students for design at high levels.
[17:53] How Maurício is bridging the gap between learning service design and the perspective of the complex and active systems of design thinking.
[22:24] Teaching service design to non-designers.
[27:02] Ethics of service design and how they play out among non-designers.
[38:13] Common threads on challenges that are faced by first year designers.
[40:41] The early days of design thinking. 

Links and Resources

Maurício on Twitter
Savannah College of Art and Design
Maurício on LinkedIn
Maurício on the Service Design Network
Maurício’s presentation on the Three Overarching Perspectives for Service Design at SDGC18, and the presentation slide deck: Three Overarching Perspectives for Service Design
Interview with Mauricio on the Design Decode website

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’ll be interviewing Aleksandra Melnikova and talking about her position as Head of Experience Design at Publicis•Poke in London, England. In this episode, we talk about humble design leadership and how design is evolving to better serve our clients and the world. Aleksandra tells us about how her art, sculpture, and drawing training inform her work as a designer and leader. Today, we explore Aleksandra’s work and her team at Publicis•Poke in London, design agency evolution, how she leads an experience design team with a wide array of talents, and how she inspires by mentoring people outside work.  Aleksandra likes to start from a blank sheet of paper and accepting that she and her team have a great deal to learn from and with clients. She fosters the culture of not being afraid to ask questions and being blunt about the information and what is going right and wrong. She encourages her team to spend 80% of their time on questioning. She believes the answer she needs will come to her when the question is formulated in the right way. Aleksandra talks about design agencies approaches to the work, and noted agencies are getting away from presentation culture and moving towards collaborative approaches to working with clients. She enjoys going into a business and looking at their workflow as a point of reference to start her work with the client. “We are communicators of connections in this world,” and Aleksandra believes these connections are systematic connections, and they more they are exposed, the better the end product. This episode also offers a look at the shift in approach to user design, and how the previous system of UX design was disjointed compared to today’s design thinking process of a team working together to manage the entire project. She talks about exposing research and data to clients that they have not synthesized into their operations, and how the data set is made into practical actions to solve problems. She also talks about how her team acts as a facilitator to the design thinking process. Our Guest Aleksandra’s mission is to bring the power of connected disciplines into design, research, and team management. Her background is in the Arts and Product Service Systems Design, her playground for creating new methods, tools, and approaches that frequently challenge existing structures and the status quo. Two of her biggest strengths are storytelling and system thinking. During the past 11 years, Aleksandra has worked from both the client and agency perspective and successfully delivered digital experiences for companies such as VISA, Lloyds, TSB, SKY, Aviva, VSO, GSK, and British Airways, and she has led the experience design team within Publicis•Poke. She has collaborated with UK universities, mentored at Global Service Jam, and has been a speaker on the topics of connections between literature, art, and design. In This Episode [01:30] Aleksandra’s journey in design thinking.
[05:04] She describes the team she leads as Head of Experience Design at Publicis•Poke in London.
[05:25] How Aleksandra brings out the best in her team, which has a wide array of talents.
[06:58] Aleksandra coaches humility with her team, based on the ever-changing world and the lack of knowledge we have because our world changes so fast.
[08:56] How Aleksandra assists clients in adapting to this process of questioning when they are working together.
[10:50] Tuning the relationship with the client when they haven’t worked with a team who uses design thinking.
[13:06] How blurring the boundaries on design affects the work being done by her team.
[15:03] Is there a shift in approach to experience design?
[18:54] The five why questions Aleksandra uses when having conversations with her clients.
[20:08] Viewing your project from the protagonist’s viewpoint is helpful with design thinking.
[22:14] Elements and engagements that is making Aleksandra’s work possible.
[24:09] How Aleksandra uses simple interviews and other elements to create valuable data for her clients.
[26:45] The value of the journey in the process of design thinking and how Aleksandra is against selling deliverables.
[30:41] Where can you find innovation in design thinking.
[35:47] Advice Aleksandra gives to emerging designers.
[40:08] The ethical role expanding and emerging in the design process.
[44:17] Thinking about the future and what is the worst thing that can happen if you say “no” to an idea or action.
[50:57] Use of technology and how technology can impact work.
[52:21] Don’t get too focused on the mono tools or methods and using them for every project.
[55:46] “Best practice” means “stop thinking."
[57:34] Looking forward to what can lead to transformation. Links and Resources Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro
Aleksandra Meinikova on Medium
Aleksandra on Twitter
Aleksandra on the Web
Find Aleksandra on LinkedIn
Aleksandra at Women Talk Design
Publicis•Poke

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'll be giving you a brief introduction to design thinking. It starts with a story about Doug Dietz. In 2012, Doug was a principal designer at GE Healthcare.

Doug designed a new MRI machine. One day, observing the new model in action at a hospital, Doug encountered a distraught child who had to undergo an MRI. He found out that over 80% of children had to be sedated to receive an MRI. As an MRI machine designer, he felt some responsibility for this. He also saw an opportunity do better for children. So, he spoke with teachers and other professionals who interact with children on a day-to-day basis, asking them how he could make their experience in an MRI machine less traumatic. As a result of those conversations, Doug and his team found a way to modify  an MRI machine for children. They added stickers to the floor with water and rock on them. Covered the MRI with stickers that looked like wood planks and sails. Now, instead of a scary piece of hospital equipment, the MRI looked a lot like a pirate ship.. They even created a storybook that accompanied the themed MRI. Parents could read to their child the pirate ship adventure story ahead of their child’s scheduled appointment. These changes resulted in a decrease in the need for sedation from 80% to 27%.

Today, we explore how seeing the problem is an integral part of design thinking, and we’ll break down design thinking into process, methods, and mindset. The process is your step by step "rough" guide. With the methods, we have a bit more cohesion; design methods help us explore problems in specific ways, and guide us to ask questions in new ways in order to discover the right problems to solve. The mindset is something you have to practice your way into, in order to learn how to change your mindset.

At its most basic, design thinking is the discipline of finding human problems worth solving, and creating viable new options in response. In many ways, it's the discipline of helping people ask the right questions at the right time.

This episode also offers a definition design thinking that replaces creativity myths with truths about discipline and action. I break down the design process into Seeing, Solving, and Acting, and talk about why we should think about design from the perspective of the people we serve.

In This Episode

[01:26] Doug’s background in MRI science and his experience with a child getting an MRI.
[03:04] Over 80% of children need to be sedated to have an MRI or a CAT scan.
[06:15] Design thinking can be broken down into process, methods and mindset.
[07:07] What has design thinking given students, and how design thinking can shape curriculum and projects inside the classroom.
[08:02] The definition of design thinking.
[09:57] Creating viable new offerings and what is defined as “new”?
[12:11] Breaking down the design process into its three main components: seeing, solving and acting.
[15:09] Responses generated from a fixed mindset in opposition to the responses from a growth mindset.
[16:51] Everything is a prototype and designers are open to questioning how things work.
[20:17] What Doug was Seeing as he redesigned the children’s MRI experience.
[22:54] Delivering solutions based on what you are seeing.

Links and Resources

Elon By Design and The Center for Design Thinking, Elon University
Dawan Stanford on Twitter
Design Thinking 101 Podcast on iTunes, and on The Podcast App
Transforming healthcare for children and their families: Doug Dietz at TEDxSanJoseCA 2012
Ten Types of Innovation

David Lemus is an independent design strategist with engineering roots working with organizations to empower teams to be customer obsessed and have a culture of iterative learning. He has designed and facilitated dozens of design thinking workshops across Fortune 500 companies, non-profit and government organizations. David is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Portland's Pamplin School of Business and leads the Portland Design Thinking Meetup community.

Listen to learn about:

>> Team facilitation
>> Human centered-design: mindsets over methods
>> [Re]Building human connection 

Our Guest

David Lemus is an independent design strategist with engineering roots working with organizations to empower teams to be customer obsessed and have a culture of iterative learning. He has designed and facilitated dozens of design thinking workshops across Fortune 500 companies, non-profit and government organizations.

David was in-house at Capital One on the Design Thinking and Strategy team. That team focused on changing the way the enterprise worked by empowering all employees with the mindsets and tools of design thinking. His team scaled practitioner and senior leadership programs throughout the risk-averse organization.

Prior to Capital One, David was a senior consultant at Peer Insight, a service design and innovation firm where he led service design projects with Fortune 500 and non-profit clients. David is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Portland's Pamplin School of Business and leads the Portland Design Thinking Meetup community. David has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Show Highlights

[02:10] How David went from engineer to design strategist.
[02:59] The two experiences as an engineer that led David into design thinking.
[04:46] Experimenting to find the right career path.
[06:54] The challenges of experimentation and risk-taking in the workplace.
[09:07] Teaching human-centered design and creativity at Capital One.
[11:16] David’s focus is on mindsets, not methods, when it comes to teaching design thinking to others.
[14:08] Helping non-designers to understand and use human-centered design in their work.[17:04] A Miro Moment.
[18:53] Breaking down silos.
[20:29] The lack of skilled facilitators for collaboration at work.
[21:20] Finding ways to make meetings productive and fun.
[22:40] Do you really need a meeting?
[24:47] Designing meetings.
[26:09] Practicing active listening during meetings.
[27:26] Cultivating the right energy in the team and creating the right environment in the room for the work you’re doing.
[27:26] Designing the right activities for your meeting in order to achieve the meeting’s goals.
[30:46] David and Dawan talk about why people’s design thinking expectations are often not met in reality.
[33:23] What David is working on now: Connection.
[38:37] Where to learn more about David’s work.

Links
David on LinkedIn
lemus&co
David’s website

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Public Sector Design + Outcome Chains + Prototyping for Impact with Boris Divjak — DT101 E26
Designing for Healthcare vs Sick Care + The Emergency Design Collective — DT101 E52
The Experimentation Field Book with Natalie Foley — DT101 E123

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'm interviewing Danielle Lake. She is the Director of Design Thinking and Associate Professor at Elon University. As a feminist pragmatist, her scholarship explores the connections and tensions between wicked problems and the movement towards public engagement within higher education. Her current projects focus on exploring the long-term impact of collaborative, place- and project-based learning, design thinking practices, and pedagogies of resilience. Lake is co-editor of the book series, Higher Education and Civic Democratic Engagement: Exploring Impact, with Peter Lang Publishing.

Danielle started her journey by designing her own major; she called "designing life" her philosophy, relating to who we are and what we want to do. In her Ph.D. program, she uncovered "The Field of Wicked Problems," while working with her Ph.D. advisors Kyle White and Paul Thompson, looking at large-scale systemic crises needing a different approach. She had learned from many experts before discovering design thinking, and she asked herself how she could take her teaching, research, and service, and weave them together.

Today, we explore how design thinking has played out in Danielle's teaching, such as redesigning student outcomes so that a final product is a practical solution to a current issue. This way of teaching has flipped the classroom for Danielle, and she talks about how this methodology on student learning has been very impactful in her classrooms. Project-based, relational, and on-going learning experiences are critical ingredients for long-term learning. Early on, she faced some challenges: opening up to students, starting small, and finding ways to invite other experts in and allow them to lead with their expertise. Danielle is looking to continue to design courses to give students the time to delve into the work they value.

We'll also dig into the relationship between design and philosophy, and how they work together to give us a place to start in learning about our environment, being collaborative, and solving societal issues. Danielle also talks about what she hopes to accomplish in her professional relationships moving forward, and we’ll hear a little about Dawan's own journey in discovering design thinking and the creation of Fluid Hive and The Education Design Lab. Dawan also talks about how he was introduced to Elon by Design, and his process of discovering design thinking was part of the Elon culture, and the importance of having the space to learn with others who are practicing design thinking.

Our Guest

Danielle Lake, Elon University

In This Episode

[02:26] Danielle’s journey into design thinking.
[04:06] Working with her advisors in her PhD program.
[05:25] Discovering design thinking and applying this to new curriculum at Grand Valley State University.
[07:07] What has design thinking given students and how design thinking can shape curriculum and projects inside the classroom.
[09:17] Danielle’s study of the long-term impact on student learning.
[13:32] Danielle speaks about her early challenges when implementing design thinking in the classroom.
[17:20] Where Danielle is now with her new role at Elon.
[19:32] How Danielle helps her students to launch their work forward and apply their work in the community.
[21:05] Students carving out relationships in society, applying their work from university.
[22:11] Danielle’s perspective on the relationship between design and philosophy.
[25:44] She asks, “How are we going to step in and learn from our mistakes?”
[26:39] What is Danielle hoping to achieve with her professional relationships?
[28:16] Dawan talks about where we want to take design thinking in the Elon University Program.
[30:45] Fluid Hive’s launch in 2008 with design work in higher education.
[32:55] Meeting Lambert and realizing Elon was serious about design thinking.
[39:00] The early days for Dawan at Elon.
[41:45] Placemaking and where is the Center going from here?
[44:58] Danielle reimagining how Elon can play a role in design thinking and building relationships to make institutions more fluid and dynamic.
[47:18] Benefits of partnering with other universities and public sectors to bring value and richness to the learning experience and community.
[50:34] Where you can learn more about Elon and Danielle.

Links and Resources

Elon By Design, Elon University’s Design Thinking Program
Recent publications by Danielle at Bepress
Service Design Network
Design For America

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'm interviewing Jason Schupbach, who is the Director of the Design School at Arizona State University. Prior to this position he was Director of Design and Creative Placemaking Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw all design and creative placemaking grantmaking and partnerships, including Our Town and Design Art Works grants, the Mayor's Institute on City Design, the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design, and the NEA's Federal agency collaborations. Previously, Jason served Governor Patrick of Massachusetts as the Creative Economy Director, tasked with growing creative and tech businesses in the state. He was formerly the Director of ArtistLink, a Ford Foundation funded initiative to stabilize and revitalize communities through the creation of affordable space and innovative environments for creatives. He has also worked for the Mayor of Chicago and New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs. He has written extensively on the role of arts and design in making better communities, and his writing has been featured as a Best Idea of the Day by the Aspen Institute.

Jason has always been interested in people who harness creative talent and is interested in systems which support creative artists and designers in cities. He wanted to know how he could create spaces for creatives to collaborate and have the ability to solve problems.

Today, we explore how Arizona State University is applying design thinking. ASU is the largest university and is engaged in social justice by creating educational opportunities with Starbucks and Uber. Challenges for design schools and how we need to teach soft skills and power skill sets knowledge. 

We'll also dig into how businesses are looking for students who can work collaboratively with soft skills as well as working knowledge of a field. How we can use goals and objectives to build online degrees integrating design thinking and why this must be done collaboratively and without one person delegating the entire process. How privilege plays a role in student preparedness to step into a designer role. Jason's role in providing local schools with how design thinking can be learned and applied inside the classroom. He is passionate about us all being in the boat together, tackling world problems with his programs.

Our Guest

Jason Schupbach on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonschupbach/

In This Episode

[01:38] Jason’s background and how he arrived as a design thinking leader.
[05:55] Design Thinking applied in Arizona State University.
[06:55] Making the world a better place using research which is valuable.
[08:17] Jason’s pitch to ASU to become a relevant, equitable and collaborative university.
[09:18] The poison in our society with a single leader and no collaboration.
[12:11] Why multiple skill sets are needed to solve today’s complicated problems.
[14:55] Engineering and business school at ASU incorporates design thinking.
[17:15] Assets we can use to build out and harness the power of design thinking.
[21:41] How students are presenting what they have learned and how privilege plays a role in student preparedness to step into a designer role.
[22:02] Support systems ASU puts in place for students in need.
[27:45] The NASA space map and how students designed future spaceships which they projected into the space model.
[30:35] Changes in US policy which are affecting student’s financial ability and quality of life.
[33:45] The change is coming and why it’s higher education’s job to implement change.
[37:47] Design a good human as well as a good student.

Links and Resources

Arizona State University https://www.asu.edu/
Research and Innovation at ASU https://www.asu.edu/about/research
Next City https://nextcity.org/
Redesign School http://redesign.school/
NEA Grantee https://www.arts.gov/video/new-nea-grantee-orientation
National Endowment for the Arts https://www.arts.gov/

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 podcast! I'm Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I'm interviewing Jason Schupbach, who is the Director of the Design School at Arizona State University. Prior to this position, he was Director of Design and Creative Placemaking Programs for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversaw all the design and creative placemaking grantmaking and partnerships, including Our Town and Design Art Works grants, the Mayor's Institute on City Design, the Citizens' Institute on Rural Design, and the NEA's Federal agency collaborations. Previously, Jason served Governor Patrick of Massachusetts as the Creative Economy Director, tasked with growing creative and tech businesses in the state. He was formerly the Director of ArtistLink, a Ford Foundation-funded initiative to stabilize and revitalize communities through the creation of affordable space and innovative environments for creatives. He has also worked for the Mayor of Chicago and New York City's Department of Cultural Affairs. He has written extensively on the role of arts and design in making better communities, and his writing has been featured as a Best Idea of the Day by the Aspen Institute.

Jason has always been interested in people who harness creative talent, and he is interested in systems which support creative artists and designers in cities. He wanted to know how he could create spaces for creatives to collaborate and have the ability to solve problems.

Today, we explore how Arizona State University is applying design thinking, and its engagement in social justice by creating educational opportunities with Starbucks and Uber. We also talk about the challenges for design schools, and how we need to teach soft skills and power skill sets’ knowledge. 

We'll also dig into how businesses are looking for students who can work collaboratively with soft skills as well as a working knowledge of their field. We’ll talk about how we can use goals and objectives to build online degrees that integrate design thinking, and why this must be done collaboratively and without one person in charge of the entire process. We’ll discuss how privilege plays a role in students’ preparedness and ability to step into a designer role, and Jason's role in providing local schools with how design thinking can be learned and applied inside the classroom. He is passionate about us all being in the boat together, tackling world problems.

Our Guest

Jason Schupbach on LinkedIn

In This Episode

[01:38] Jason’s background and how he became a design thinking leader.
[05:55] Design Thinking applied in Arizona State University.
[06:55] Making the world a better place using research.
[08:17] Jason’s pitch to ASU to become a relevant, equitable, and collaborative university.
[09:18] The poison in our society with a single leader and no collaboration.
[12:11] Why multiple skill sets are needed to solve today’s complicated problems.
[14:55] Engineering and business school at ASU incorporates design thinking.
[17:15] Assets we can use to build out and harness the power of design thinking.
[19:07] Jason asks, “How do we create and build using an architectural mindset?”
[21:41] How students are presenting what they have learned and how privilege plays a role in student preparedness to step into a designer role.
[22:02] Support systems ASU puts in place for students in need.
[27:45] The NASA space map and how students designed future spaceships which they projected into the space model.
[30:35] Changes in US policy that are affecting students' financial ability and quality of life.
[33:45] The change is coming and why it’s higher education’s job to implement change.
[37:47] Design a good human as well as a good student.

Links and Resources

Arizona State University https://www.asu.edu/
Research and Innovation at ASU https://www.asu.edu/about/research
Jason's ASU Profile
Design School at Arizona State University
Herberger Institute
Next City
Redesign School 
NEA Grantee Orientation
National Endowment for the Arts: Our Town, Art Works
Mayors' Institute on City Design
Citizens' Institute on Rural Design
Aspen Institute 5 Best Ideas of the Day
Putting the Artist to Work for City Resilience; Creative Placemaking: 100 Resilient Cities
Curry Stone Foundation's Social Design Insights, "Who Designs the Designers?"
The Future of Design Education

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’m interviewing Dustin DiTommaso. Dustin is a designer and researcher who works to integrate the study and application of behavioral science and human-centered design to develop digital interventions that change real-world behaviors. In 2009, he founded the Behavior Change Design practice at Mad*Pow, where he and his team have designed effective interventions for improving health, financial well-being, and life-long learning.

When he’s not working on client challenges and creating new real-world interventions, Dustin teaches “Design for Behavior Change and Social Impact” at the Rhode Island School of Design. He also collaborates on grant work with colleagues from University College London’s Centre for Behaviour Change and other academic affiliations.

Today, we travel down the path that Dustin took to get to where he is today. From his work at Botticelli Interactive, through the advertising world, and then back home to design, Dustin chats about his need to impact society in a meaningful way, and why behavior change design has resonated the most with him.

Dustin shares information on how he and his team approach their design projects and the methods they use to quantify and qualify third-party research. He also delves into their use of the COM-B model in creating, applying, and implementing their designs. They even use this framework when explaining the product to their clients!

Dustin shares several fantastic resources that he has written and used to inspire his design mind. He also provides some insights on how gamification in behavioral design has been used inappropriately and how it could be better.

Our Guest

Dustin on LinkedIn
Dustin on Twitter: @DU5TB1N
Mad*Pow

In This Episode

[01:28] Welcome to the show Dustin DiTommaso! He shares how he moved into designing for behavior change.
[03:20] How self-determination theory and motivation helped shape Dustin’s design practice.
[04:39] After realizing advertising was not for him, Dustin met Amy Cueva, the founder of Mad*Pow, and moved into using design to change lives.
[06:13] How do projects flow in behavioral design?
[11:15] When there are conflicts in the evidence, how do they compare and use that information?
[15:15] What kinds of methods do they use and how do they adapt them in the design stage?
[16:16] The COM-B model and how it applies to behavioral change design.
[22:19] COM-B is used to address all kinds of questions and tailor approaches for all involved.
[23:30] How do new designers react to the model?
[27:00] When walking clients through the details of the model and application, how do they break everything down?
[28:47] Do their client workshops help their team as well?
[32:38] Dustin shares more about his work in gainful design as applied to different contexts.
[38:15] What approaches to teaching about gainful design have been working?
[42:53] Learn what resources Dustin recommends to those looking to get into behavioral design.
[45:59] What is most impactful from a design perspective for those in public health?
[48:31] Some final resources… and how to find Dustin!

Links and Resources

Design Thinking at Work
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon 
Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare
Botticelli Interactive
Why We Do What We Do by Edward L. Deci
Self-Determination Theory in Practice by Jennifer LaGuardia
Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen
AR & VR for Behavior Change by Julie Dirksen, Dustin DiTommaso, and Cindy Plunkett
The Art & Science of Engagement by Dustin DiTommaso
Behavior Change Design: Toward a Vision of Motivational Technology; Solutions for Health & Healthcare
Health Experience Design Conference (HXD 2018): Dustin DiTommaso - Keynote

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’m interviewing Alix Gerber. She’s currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and has been developing and teaching courses there, such as Radical Design, where undergraduate students imagine alternatives to civic experiences like policing, capitalism, or voting. During our conversation, we talk about speculative design, designing for justice in Ferguson, Missouri, teaching radical design, and how her practice and teaching have influenced her as a design researcher.

Alix is a design researcher who works with people to visualize and enact the futures we imagine, provoking discussion around how our society could be more equitable and meaningful. Alix has worked with residents of Harlem, New York, and Ferguson, Missouri, to explore alternatives to our current policing and court systems by making artifacts from divergent futures.

She grew up in a family of designers; both of her parents as well as her brother have all chosen careers in design. She enjoys learning from her students when teaching her Designing Creativity: Innovation Across Disciplines class at Washington University. Alix is always learning and restructuring her teaching method to create a better learning experience for the students in her class, and working to design real life experiences for her students to learn from at the university.

Today, we explore Alix’s design career path from her start while attending Cornell University, and then following her design experience and growth through several different design types and projects during the last eight years of her career. Alix explains the different types of design she has used, when each type of design worked well in a project, and how the design tools she uses are applied in design thinking.

We’ll also dig into her teaching assignment, where Alix instructs undergraduate students on social design issues, and on understanding the impacts of different design perspectives on society.

Learn More About Today's Guest

Alix Gerber on LinkedIn
Designing Civic Experiences

In This Episode

[01:26] How Alix started her career with taking human-centered design at Cornell.
[03:00] Her shift to design with social problems, her shift to graduate schools and why she wanted this shift.
[03:57] Alix’s time at Parsons and studying transdisciplinary design.
[05:25] Types of projects she participated in when studying transdisciplinary design.
[07:25] Speculative design and how this differs from problem-focused design.
[09:01] How she assists clients with a speculative design project.
[11:45] Framing alternative problems in a design project.
[14:53] Alix’s work in Ferguson - how her work started and developed.
[19:18] Speculative design tools Alix uses in everyday work on her projects.
[21:14] How Alix defines radical design within design thinking and what she is teaching at Washington University.
[27:44] Light bulb moments for students in context to understanding the user experience.
[29:44] What Alix does to assist her students when they are struggling with ideas in class.
[29:44] Using radical and speculative design and her work projects in relation to how they influence Alix as a design researcher.
[39:45] What Alix would like to be practicing over the next few years based on her cumulative experiences in design.

Links and Resources

Email Alix at designradicalfutures@gmail.com
Washington University in St. Louis
Design Thinking at Work
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare
Designing Radical Futures
Instagram Tag #radicalcivics
Parsons School of Design
IA Collaborative
Lab at OPM
Introduction to Speculative Design Practice
Elliot Montgomery, Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management
Extrapolation Factory
Extrapolation Factory Operator's Manual
Neighborhood Policing Steering Committee (NPSC) Ferguson, MO
Alix learned about non-reformist reform from Shana Agid, Assistant Professor of Art, Media and Communication, Mariame Kaba (Prison Culture), and Critical Resistance.
Kees Dorst, Professor, Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation
Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, by Dunne & Raby
Convivial Toolbox by Liz Sanders & Pieter Jan Stappers
Discursive Design by Bruce and Stephanie Tharp

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’m interviewing Boris Divjak. He is a service designer and strategist based in the U.K., with 13 years of experience in creating digital services. He leads and advises teams on digital innovation projects in complex environments, such as local authorities and healthcare organizations, as well as commercial enterprises. Boris collaborates closely with clients in all stages of the innovation process, from initial customer research and co-design workshops through to developing a live service. He works best in an agile environment, where iterative improvements and open communication help guide the team towards a shared goal. Boris has been working in the public sector for the last few years; his current focus is on creating better public services outcomes and using service design and design thinking to deliver solutions to social problems.

Today we explore Boris’s path from his career start in visual design, which led him into web design and from there, finding his way to service design. Boris explains his perspective on service design, and what types of models and prototypes he uses when he is designing. He also talks about how companies can take a look at a series of changes to understand how their products have an impact on the public sector, and how companies can connect their work to specific outcomes to be more confident in their product output.

From his beginnings in a small startup in technology to his current position as a service designer, Boris talks about his experiences with service design, from client engagement to the characteristics he believes the ideal project advocate should have.

We’ll also dig into his project, Prototyping for Impact, which offers a toolkit that anyone involved in innovation - in both the public and private sectors - can use to guide their innovation process. Boris tells us more about the project’s purpose and what he hopes the project will accomplish.

Learn More About Today's Guest

Prototyping for Impact
Unboxed
NESTA
NESTA Levels of Evidence Report
Prototyping for Impact in Healthcare appeared in Touchpoint Volume 10 No. 3 October 2018, The Journal of Service Design

In This Episode

[01:32] How Boris got started and how his career trajectory played out.
[03:23] Challenges in moving from visual design to a service design career.
[06:20] Boris’s unique perspective of service design, and his design process.
[09:30] The relationship between work and outcomes.
[11:03] How outcomes chain together to make change.
[14:45] The need for having evidence to support your outcomes, and what assumptions can be made from outcomes.
[20:02] How Boris encourages client interest and client participation in service design.
[24:38] The characteristics of the ideal project advocate.
[26:45] How to work with clients who have deep institutional knowledge, and thus have the ability to shift the energy of the group.
[27:14] Boris gives details on his Prototyping for Impact project.
[31:49] Boris talks about experiences, books, and information that assisted him in service design.
[34:40] How you can contact Boris and get more information about his current work and projects.

Links and Resources

Design Thinking at Work
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare

Welcome to the Design Thinking 101 Podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’m interviewing Steve Reay. Steve is currently director of Good Health Design, a collaborative design studio at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. He is affiliated with the Designers Institute of New Zealand. Steve's research focuses on how the design of products and services may have a positive impact on people's health and well-being.

Today we explore Steve’s path from scientist to his role as the director of Good Health Design. Good Health Design enables designers to engage with clinical experts, healthcare professionals as well as researchers from other disciplines, to share and test ideas and develop unique solutions. We dive deep into team creation, what factors are important in team creation and which details are important particularly in the healthcare industry.

SSteve and I talk about the reality of design thinking in healthcare, what makes the most successful projects successful, and how one of the factors to a successful project is how people work together. The type of time it takes in order to build a successful team.

We’ll also dig into his project, Initiate.Collaborate: a new collaborative project can often feel like stepping into the unknown with an ongoing learning curve, a clash of worlds and perspectives within constraining systems and structures. Initiate.collaborate is a card game that is fun and enables responsive and responsible collaborations.

Learn More About Today's Guest

Steve Reay’s Profile
Initiate.Collaborate
Design for Health & Wellbeing Lab
Good Health Design

In This Episode

[01:43] We hear about Steve’s background, and his experiences which led to where he is today.
[02:58] What Steve carried over from his career as a scientist to his career as a designer.
[04:21] Steve’s first projects in the healthcare space.
[07:42] How Steve finds the right people for his project teams.
[09:26] Relationships and how they make successful projects.
[12:07] Steve’s advice on what to look for when creating a design team in the healthcare organization team.
[14:35] What different qualities design teams should have to be successful.
[18:37] Bringing community work into the healthcare field and working in community projects.
[22:38] Steve’s thoughts on design thinking in relationship to design thinking and discipline formation.
[29:29] What Steve is exploring with design thinking.
[33:12] Steve’s relationship with his students and how he views the learning journey.
[37:02] An example of how Steve’s team worked on design thinking with a client and using a co-design process.
[45:54] The excitement which comes along with the initial phase of design thinking.
[49:16] Resources Steve uses with his design thinking lab.

Links and Resources

Design Thinking at Work
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Today I’m interviewing Chris McCarthy. He is the Vice President of Strategy & Design at Hopelab where he is excited to deepen its impact on the health and wellness of young people through design and systems thinking. He is also the Executive Director and Founder of the Innovation Learning Network.

Today we explore the different pathways of healthcare and the effect of design thinking on the healthcare industry, the beginnings of design thinking in the healthcare industry and why design thinking is so challenging to implement in the field of healthcare.

One of the most important factors for Chris was to not put the Innovation and Design team out front first. Putting the Innovation and design team out first “triggers the immune system of the organization” as the team is so different from the other sections of the company. He explains why he had the innovation and design team behind the scenes when working with staff members.

Chris and I talk about the subtle dance of support and help, along with people being able to tell their story with their voice for the staff to have a say and a stake in the process of development in the design innovation realm.

We’ll also dig into his projet, Hopelab which is a social innovation lab focused on designing science-based technologies to improve the health and well-being of teens and young adults.

Learn More About Today's Guest

Chris McCarthy on LinkedIn
Hopelab.org
ILN.org
mccarthychris.com

In This Episode

[01:58] We hear about Chris’s background, and how his experience in business and marketing helped to lead him to where he is today.
[03:14] The precursor to human centered design.
[04:54] Iconic IDO Shopping Cart video in 1999.
[06:30] Chris and Christi Zuber start running design projects and the company grows.
[09:21] The list of what “not to-do” when running a business inside of healthcare.
[16:58] Humility is a large factor in design thinking.
[18:48] Different types of designers and their success in implementing new design thinking models.
[20:44] The convergence in the field of design thinking and the importance of being mission driven.
[21:14] We hear Chris’s response to the setting of new, young hires in design thinking.
[26:20] Chris lists the necessary, mandated rules of sharing information within the medical field.
[28:09] Chris talks about the procedures within the team of Kaiser Permanente during the early years.
[30:12] Working within co-opting the different constraints of healthcare.
[38:53] Dawan and Chris talk about working with students at Hopelab and furthering health. and mental well-being for students.
[46:58] Good, better and best research methods for design thinking.
[51:22] Starting up and running the Innovation Learning Network.
[56:42] The challenges different industries are facing.
[61:03] Where can people learn more about Chris and his work.

Links and Resources

Design Thinking at Work
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
Innovation with Information Technologies in Healthcare
Automating Humanity
The Signals Are Talking
The Necessity of Strangers
The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation.
ReWork
Accelerating Innovation Through Coopetition
Kaiser Permanente’s Innovation on the Front Lines

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. David Dunne, Professor and Director of MBA Programs at the University of Victoria’s Gustavson School of Business, joins me today. David and I were introduced by Paolo Korre, who you may remember from an earlier episode of the show! We’ll chat today about a range of subjects, including the use of design thinking in redesigning an MBA program.

As you’ll learn today, David’s background in experience and marketing helped to lead him to design thinking. When he returned to school intending to become a professor, he found himself deeply interested in student-centered methods of teaching. He worked in design on the side, taking sabbaticals to spend time with designers and in design schools.

Design thinking is a practitioner’s art, and it takes experience with it to really make the methods your own. This applies both to my own journey and David’s, and we’ll explore the concept today in our conversation. We’ll also talk about the struggle to help students to make methods their own, rather than only learning the methods.

David and I talk about helping people to achieve the ability to think about how they’re thinking. He recommends meditation as a powerful tool to reach this space of metacognition, and suggests the book Why Buddhism Is True. David also teaches students about cognitive biases and runs exercises to help them discover which biases are most prevalent in their teams.

We’ll also dig into his book, and what designers or people on design pathways can learn from it. He’ll explain the three tensions that he sees in a design thinking process: inclusion, disruption, and perspective. We’ll also hear about the four models for how designers can respond to these tensions. Don’t miss this deeply informative episode with a wonderful guest!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

David Dunne on LinkedIn
Design Thinking at Work

In This Episode

[01:18] — We hear about David’s background, and how his experience in business and marketing helped to lead him to where he is today.
[07:13] — What was the learning curve like for David during his early projects?
[09:55] — Dawan thinks of design thinking as a practitioner’s art, he explains, and you develop your strengths and see your weaknesses through its practice and interaction.
[12:35] — How often does Dawan succeed in getting his students to make methods their own, rather than simply learn the methods?
[15:31] — An important aspect of design thinking is that the process brings you face-to-face with your own limitations, David points out.
[18:17] — David responds to Dawan’s perspective on having a “provisional mindset.”
[18:41] — What other aspects of mindset has David been exploring in his work?
[24:21] — David talks about the feedback loop that can result when you don’t do basic sketches to begin with.
[28:46] — We hear David’s response to what Dawan has been saying about the challenges involved in working with teams.
[31:01] — Is there anything that David has seen really help people move into the space of thinking about how they’re thinking?
[36:35] — David talks about the three tensions that exist in a design thinking process, and what they suggest for designers or people on design pathways.
[40:14] — The second and third tensions are disruption and perspective, David explains.
[45:17] — David talks about the four different models of ways of acting in relation to the tensions that he covers in his book.
[51:10] — One of the conversations that Dawan often has early is that these methods aren’t appropriate in all contexts, he points out.
[52:25] — David explains something that he has found universal.
[57:40] — We hear about an experience that David had early in his journey as a designer, and he points out that design becomes instinctive over time.
[61:42] — David mentions that he’s co-writing a book with Paolo Korre.
[62:07] — Where can people learn more about David and his work?

Links and Resources

David Dunne on LinkedIn
Design Thinking at Work
David Dunne’s bio at the Gustavson Brand Trust Index team leaders page
Paolo Korre
The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright
The Importance of Cognitive Errors in Diagnosis and Strategies to Minimize Them by Pat Croskerry, MD, PhD
The Total Economic Impact™ Of IBM's Design Thinking Practice
Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education: An Interview and Discussion
Roger Martin
Jeanne Liedtka on Design Thinking 101

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. I’m excited to welcome Jessica Dugan to today’s episode. Jessica is a Design Principal on the Healthcare Design team at 3M Design. She has worked in the healthcare industry for over five years. In our chat today, you’ll learn about her journey as a designer into her current role, her experience as a service designer in healthcare, and the lessons she’s learned that might serve others.

As Jess will explain today, she also comes from a non-traditional background. Her undergraduate degree is in writing and journalism, but she soon realized that wasn’t her path. She began getting into design, and realized that the part of writing that resonated with her was the ability to connect with people. She went back to graduate school for design, and joined a service design consulting firm.

Because Jess has worked in various significantly different environments, it’s fascinating to hear her perspective on how they differ, as well as what the transitions were like. She’ll also explore her experience in the healthcare industry in general, and share some of the key lessons she took away from her experience at United Health.

In addition to exploring these topics, Jess will also dive into the potential value in service design, using service design from a Scrum perspective, and what she has had to deal with in healthcare that might be invisible to people in other design fields. She’ll recommend several powerful resources that have been invaluable for her, and share some insight into topics that she recommends for future episodes.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Jessica Dugan on LinkedIn
@jess_dugan on Twitter
@3MDesign on Twitter
3M Design

In This Episode

[00:32] — Dawan introduces today’s guest, Jessica Dugan.
[01:55] — Jess starts things off by describing her journey as a designer. Like many of the guests on this show, her journey has been full of fascinating twists and turns. She also talks about her role at 3M Design now.
[10:38] — We hear more about Jess’ transitions between the various environments that she has worked in.
[16:18] — As a designer, what are some of the key lessons that Jess took away from her experience at United Health?
[18:42] — Jess shares a piece of advice that she would give to someone having their first experience doing service design inside a large healthcare organization.
[21:30] — Jess talks more about the role of language and its nuances across different roles, and as an indicator of experience.
[22:35] — We hear more about Jess’ transition into 3M.
[25:44] — How has Jess noticed her approach as a designer shift with the shift in the group of people she’s designing for?
[28:24] — Jess explains how she explains what’s possible and the potential value in service design.
[30:59] — Dawan expands on what Jess has been saying about connecting the aspirational to the operational.
[34:23] — We hear more about the early days of taking service design into a Scrum process as is used at 3M.
[37:54] — From a healthcare perspective, what kinds of things has Jess dealt with that might be invisible to designers working in other fields?
[41:42] — Jess talks about how she has seen prototyping play out differently.
[43:23] — What are some of the books and resources that have helped Jess along the way?
[48:10] — Jess talks about whether there are any open questions she’s wrestling with, or other topics that she would like to see on the show.
[52:12] — Where can listeners learn more about Jess and her work?

Links and Resources

Jessica Dugan on LinkedIn
@jess_dugan on Twitter
@3MDesign on Twitter
3M Design
Communicating the New by Kim Erwin
101 Design Methods by Vijay Kumar
Moments of Impact by Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon
Service Design Tools
Practical Service Design

Liz Chen is Design Thinking Lead at Innovate Carolina, the unit dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Liz is also a co-author of The Experimentation Field Book, a practical how-to guide on rigorously testing assumptions and concepts. We talk about teaching and applying design thinking in higher education, and learn more about The Experimentation Field Book.

Listen to learn about:
>> Innovate Carolina
>> The Experimentation Field Book
>> Design thinking and public health
>> Design thinking in strategic planning

Our Guest

Liz is Design Thinking Lead at Innovate Carolina, the unit dedicated to innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She leads the interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Innovation for the Public Good and launched her team’s recharge center that allows grad student Design Thinking and Innovation Fellows to work on staff as part-time employees to support design and innovation projects with clients inside and outside of the university. Liz is also a co-author of The Experimentation Field Book, a practical how-to guide on rigorously testing assumptions and concepts. Liz is a former high school science teacher, tech nonprofit co-founder, and public health researcher.

Show Highlights

[02:50] Getting accepted into Innovation Next as a grad student, a national innovation acceleration program.
[03:30] Completing her Ph.D. and becoming the Design Thinking Lead at Innovate Carolina.
[04:16] The changes Liz has seen in how design thinking is being used in research.
[04:54] Liz talks about a project funded by the EPA that she and her student team are working on, to reduce food waste.
[06:34] UNC’s graduate certificate program in Innovation for the Public Good.
[07:24] Divergent vs. convergent thinking.
[08:41] The challenges in using design thinking when many funding organizations ask you to pitch a “single solution.”
[11:15] Sharing what didn’t work is as important as sharing what did work.
[12:24] Innovate Carolina has consulting services, where grad students and fellows get to work on client projects.
[15:43] Liz talks about how Innovate Carolina’s infrastructure works within the infrastructure of the university.
[19:15] The Experimentation Field Book provides resources for readers to self-teach the process of testing ideas and assumptions.
[20:59] A Miro Moment.
[23:35] Some of Liz’s favorite tools from the book.
[25:45] The book’s five-step testing process.
[28:17] Using design thinking in public health.
[33:56] Three things Liz wishes people knew about teaching science at the high school level.
[39:29] The Experimentation Field Book is for anyone who is problem-solving or innovating.
[42:11] Liz and her team are helping with the work on UNC’s Carolina Next strategic plan.
45:51] Dawan shares a little about his strategy design experiences at Ohio State University.

Links
Liz on LinkedIn
Liz on UNC’s website
Liz on ResearchGate
Liz on GoogleScholar
Innovate Carolina
Carolina Graduate Certificate in Innovation for the Public Good
MyHealthEd

Want 20% off of The Experimentation Field Book?  Click here and use promo code CUP20

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

The Experimentation Field Book with Natalie Foley — DT101 E123

Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey with Karen Hold — DT101 E71

Designing Facilitation: A System for Creating and Leading Exceptional Events // ALD 006 — DT101 E73

 

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. Jess Roberts joins me today for a conversation about the designer’s role in healthcare, problem-finding with healthcare experts, the importance of the design studio in his work, and design thinking in public health. Jess leads the Culture of Health By Design initiative of the Minnesota Design Center at the University of Minnesota. He also holds faculty appointments at the University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing and School of Public Health.

After receiving a master’s in architecture, Jess found that the practice was incredibly technical and had very little to do with his education in the field. He also found that he had very little space to practice problem solving, because what he did was just responding to decisions that had already been made. He realized how much more useful what the did would be if it occurred at the beginning of the decision-making process than at the end.

Jess realized that he didn’t want to be an architecture at all, but wanted to put his valuable training to good use. He stumbled across design thinking, which put a language to what he had been doing. After landing an appointment that involved human-centered design, Jess found himself surrounded by naturally skeptical epidemiologists. Tune into the episode to learn about how this worked out for him!
In this compelling conversation, you’ll learn about the importance of using design at the right stage of the process. Jess will also explore one of the greatest fallacies of innovation: that great ideas just suddenly pop up. We’ll talk about the process of design (and why it is a process rather than a toolkit), what he’s most excited about working on right now, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Jess Roberts on LinkedIn

In This Episode

[01:44] — Jess kicks things off by talking about his journey into his design practice, and explaining his struggles with architecture.
[06:38] — About two months into Jess’ appointment at his position, the only person who knew what human-centered design is left.
[08:36] — We hear more about how Jess made what he does more relevant to his audience in this position.
[15:48] — You should always start with what is known, Jess points out, and explains that design opens the question of “what could be?”
[18:29] — Jess digs more into his experience of learning to think about design as more than just building.
[22:09] — We hear about having moved into an interconnected, virtual realm of mass customization. Jess also talks about the importance of figuring out what people want or need, and three key insights into parents.
[30:28] — At the end of the short engagement that Jess has been describing, the project was terminated.
[31:30] — Dawan takes a minute to talk about the outcome and unpack some of what Jess has been saying.
[32:09] — What was it about the new evidence that allowed for a shift and reframing of what needed to happen?
[34:51] — Jess points out that too often, design is used to sell or convince stakeholders that an approach or product is necessary.
[36:25] — Dawan chats about the problem space and the solution space. Jess then talks about one of the greatest fallacies of innovation.
[41:08] — We hear about the three key spaces that people operate in within Jess’ line of work.
[46:14] — Jess talks about the process of design.
[50:46] — Dawan brings up the topic of the role of the designer, and how that role adapts itself to the context.
[55:06] — We hear more about Jess’ thoughts on sharing the role of designer with the community.
[58:01] — In the work that Jess is currently doing in public health, what is he most excited about?
[60:22] — Where can listeners learn more? Are there any resources that Jess would recommend?
[63:44] — Jess shares some closing words of wisdom for listeners.

Links and Resources

Jess Roberts on LinkedIn
Minnesota Design Center
Design Thinking 101 Episode 6: Problem Spaces, Understanding How People Think, and Practical Empathy (with Indi Young)
Rethinking Design Thinking on Huffington Post by Thomas Fisher and Jess Roberts
Biggest Threat to Health? Solving the Wrong Problems on Huffington Post by Thomas Fisher and Jess Roberts

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. My guest today is Paolo Korre, Director of Service Design and User Insight for SE Health, a not-for-profit healthcare company in Ontario, Canada. We’ll chat today about Paolo’s transition from industrial design to design thinking in the healthcare space, challenges he faces as a designer working in healthcare, and his experience with being the lone designer on an innovation team.

Paolo reached industrial design through a love of fine arts, drawing, painting, and crafts. He did his undergraduate degree in industrial and product design. He assumed he would be working on making furniture or other “stuff,” but soon realized that this isn’t what the world really needs. As he evolved beyond traditional design, he went back to school for further education. Eventually, he was able to bring design thinking back home.

In our conversation today, he’ll dig into how his skills in design relate to his work in healthcare (and how he convinced people to give it a shot!). For example, he explains that he worked on a project around improving the experience of patients receiving private care. As a result, they ended up launching Elizz, a whole brand dedicated to supporting family caregivers.

Paolo has experienced being a lone designer as well as being part of a team of designers and part of an innovation team. It’s all part of a learning journey, he explains, and speaks of trying to figure out how much design method he can apply in these various roles. Whether you’re a solo designer, part of a team, or not sure yet where your design path will take you, don’t miss this informative and insightful episode.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Paolo Korre on LinkedIn
Paolo Korre on Twitter
Paolo Korre on Facebook
SE Health Futures

In This Episode

[01:50] — Paolo talks about his journey into design, and how he got started.
[07:35] — When Paolo went to design school, what were some of the shifts and transitions in his skillset or or approach that happened as a result?
[09:25] — Dawan shares his perspective on discipline being a gateway to creativity.
[11:46] — Paolo shares some of the experiences that helped him internalize the process as he was studying and training.
[13:57] — When Paolo moved into healthcare, what were some of the methods or skills that he had to adjust or learn?
[16:55] — What helped Paolo persuade people to give design in healthcare a shot?
[22:17] — Dawan draws out one of Paolo’s points around how the stakeholder map changes as we age.
[26:08] — Paolo mentions a trend involving being patient-centered, and the problem with this concept.
[28:07] — How has Paolo explored the different modes of (being a lone designer, part of a team of designers, or being part of an innovation team)?
[32:04] — Dawan mentions the benefits of having a futurist on a team, and his own introduction to being a futurist.
[34:49] — We hear more of Paolo’s thoughts on the “MAYA” (most advanced yet acceptable) option, and how far he can push things.
[38:07] — Paolo responds to Dawan’s point about wishing for a team to bounce ideas off of.
[42:15] — When Paolo thinks about the opportunities to connect with peers, what are his hopes?
[47:31] — Paolo recommends other resources that have been useful for him.
[50:10] — We learn that Paolo has been redefining the boundaries of his practice because he’s constantly encountering new sources of understanding.
[53:07] — How much does Dawan focus on design mindsets?
[54:53] — Paolo talks about where listeners can find him, get in touch, and learn more about his work.
[56:10] — Does Paolo have any insider scoops on Service Design Global Conference Toronto 2019?

Links and Resources

Paolo Korre on LinkedIn
Paolo Korre on Twitter
Paolo Korre on Facebook
SE Health Futures
SE Health
Elizz
Ten Types of Innovation by Larry Keeley et al.
101 Design Methods by Vijay Kumar
Design Thinking at Work by David Dunne
Daniel Kahneman
Service Design Global Conference Toronto 2019

The Better Government Movement, Amy explains today, is built for public servants. She realized that the baton (in terms of innovation and transformation in building 21st-century government) isn’t adequately being passed on. She collaborated on research on creating change and transformation in government, and the best ways to create something that is useful and scalable across government.

When Amy was getting started with the initial conversations around innovation and design in this realm, she started with the people who were leaning into the conversation. These early adopters, she explains, are the people who will help you unlock what the culture or organization should turn into. In addition to this powerful insight into getting through to the right people, Amy will dig into how to pass the torch and help to ensure that processes are passed on.

Amy will also share tips and insights into how to teach and support innovators, including focusing on learning to relieve pressure, and to get comfortable with ambiguity. She’ll dig into how and why she created her own innovation toolkit, and how it stemmed from her work at the Better Government Movement. She’ll explore her personal journey (and the tendencies that lead her toward burnout), list some resources and references that might interest listeners, and offer powerful insights that I hope will help you along your own design thinking journey!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Amy J. Wilson
Amy J. Wilson on LinkedIn
Better Government Movement

In This Episode

[01:17] — We hear about Amy’s innovation and design journey, from where she got started to how she arrived where she is today.
[06:48] — Dawan takes a moment to talk about the pathway into design thinking.
[08:24] — Amy talks about the history of the Better Government movement, where it is now, and how she’s applying her skills there.
[11:48] — We learn about the plan Amy came up with to translate the information she had found into something that many people could access.
[15:33] — How did Amy navigate the initial conversations around design and innovation to get people active?
[17:50] — Dawan talks about the sweet spot in the double diamond, and Amy discusses ways that she provided value.
[22:22] — How does Amy’s work live on today in terms of the terms and processes she used, or the impact she had?
[27:12] — Amy talks about what she learned from her first cohort about what works when supporting innovators.
[31:13] — We hear more about staying in the problem space, and a specific risk that comes along with it.
[33:10] — Amy talks about an innovation toolkit that came out of her Better Government work.
[39:32] — What are some of Amy’s recommendations for people trying to communicate around innovation with people working in government?
[42:29] — We learn about some of the things that Amy has pulled from her journey in terms of change and transformation.
[48:26] — Dawan invites listeners to close their eyes, imagine standing on a platform and not wanting to jump, but feeling the heat of the platform burning behind you. That, he points out, is the kind of urgency to go for.
[52:12] — Amy has been on her own personal journey associated with what Dawan has been talking about, she explains.
[55:58] — Dawan talks about one of the joys of prototyping.
[57:04] — Are there any resources or references that have been really useful for Amy?
[59:50] — How can people learn more about Amy and her work?

Links and Resources

Amy J. Wilson
Amy J. Wilson on LinkedIn
Better Government Movement
GitHub
Lean Startup
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
18F Methods
Design Thinking 101 episode 13: From Branding to Design + Teaching Design Teams + Leading Summer of Design with Karen Hold
Design Thinking 101 episode 14: Design Thinking for the Public Sector + Building and Training Design Thinking Teams with Stephanie Wade

Adam Royalty, founder of the Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio and long-time lecturer at the Stanford d.school, joins me today. We’ll dig into topics including reflective practices in design education, designing for learning, and connecting design thinking to change management and change leadership.

Every time I’ve had a chance to talk with Adam, I’ve come away with all sorts of thoughts and ideas. I’m excited to have him as a guest on the podcast, and hope he can spark similar inspiration for you!

One important point that Adam makes is the need for reflection. He’s been doubling down on having students reflect, and supporting that reflection in very intentional ways. In our conversation, you’ll hear how students respond to this, and how Adam uses it as a powerful tool to encourage and support creativity. Often when he’s teaching design, it’s to help teach students a creative process so that they can solve problems and become more innovative.

I’ve been wrestling lately with the mashup between design thinking and learning design, in terms of how to help learners approach creating learning experiences and learning environments in a “designerly” manner. Adam points out that the process depends on your goal, which isn’t necessarily the same in different learning environments.

In addition to all of this, Adam and I will talk about where he sees practices involving design thinking and design service going in the next several years, the ways we’ve been working with narratives and storytelling in design practice, why it’s so vital that we focus on discipline in addition to creativity, his reading recommendations for further information, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Adam Royalty on LinkedIn
Adam Royalty on Facebook
adam@dschool.stanford.edu

In This Episode

[01:38] — What are some of the themes that Adam is wrestling with in his work right now?
[04:10] — Adam talks about how he’s seen reflection play out in the classroom, in terms of how students respond.
[07:02] — Has Adam used similar practices outside the classroom, such as with teams or organizations?
[09:16] — We hear about what Adam is learning about what transfers outside the classroom into other domains.
[14:00] — Adam shares his perspective on the broader conversation of design thinking pedagogy and service design pedagogy.
[17:23] — Dawan has been wrestling with how to help learners approach creating learning experiences. Adam shares his thoughts on the subject.
[23:31] — How does designing for learning affect Adam’s thinking and approach for synthesis?
[28:22] — Adam talks about where he sees the practices involving design thinking going in the next couple of years.
[35:52] — Dawan is seeing more openness to using the designer’s lens in his work, he points out.
[37:22] — Adam responds to the points that Dawan has been making, then the two of them talk more about narratives.
[43:06] — We hear Dawan’s thoughts on what Adam has been saying about working with other disciplines.
[48:40] — Dawan talks about the role of discipline, not just creativity, in design.
[53:11] — Has anything else come to mind for Adam that hasn’t come up yet in the conversation?
[55:51] — What are some references, papers, or books that Adam has found to be particularly influential or meaningful to him or students he’s worked with?
[58:58] — Adam talks about where listeners can learn more about him or read his writing.

Links and Resources

Columbia Entrepreneurship Design Studio
Stanford d.school
“I Use It Every Day”: Pathways to Adaptive Innovation After Graduate Study in Design Thinking by Adam Royalty, Lindsay Oishi, and Bernard Roth
Acting with Creative Confidence: Developing a Creative Agency Assessment Tool by Adam Royalty, Lindsay Oishi, and Bernard Roth
Design-based Pedagogy: Investigating an emerging approach to teaching design to non-designers by Adam Royalty
Amy Edmondson on LinkedIn
David Kelley and Tom Kelley
Tim Brown
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
The Achievement Habit by Bernard Roth

Today’s guest is the remarkable Linn Vizard, currently an independent service designer based in Toronto. Linn writes and speaks frequently on service design, and has taught on the topic around the world. In today’s conversation, we’ll talk about creating customer journey maps (and other maps), implementation challenges with service design, and accessibility in service design.

Linn shares her journey today, including mentioning that she found herself more interested in people than things as she was studying design. When she started bringing together the service design community in Toronto, she encountered some confusion, and she’s enjoyed the process of illuminating the topic for people and creating connections with those interested in service design.

Maps, Linn points out, have become a ubiquitous tool and have become a compelling entry point for people. They’re also a powerful tool for getting people excited, and to visually create a shared understanding of the space you’re working in and where the opportunities might be. Linn will also share some powerful words of wisdom about why you should go ahead and create a map as a tool to reveal what we don’t know.

In our conversation, we’ll talk about diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the realm of design. In Linn’s previous work in UX, more time and attention was paid to accessibility, she explains. This exposed her to ways of thinking about how people might be using assistive technology, for example, which has influenced her more recent work. As she transitioned into doing more service and customer experience work, Linn noticed that the conversation about accessibility was almost completely absent.

Tune in to hear all about these topics, as well as the idea of double delivery, how designers can position themselves as part of a bigger team in delivering services, how to think about paying attention to soft metrics or less-tangible changes, what it means to be a leader or facilitator of a design process, which references and resources have particularly impacted Linn, and more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Linn Vizard
Linn Vizard on LinkedIn
@wittster on Twitter
@servicedesignTO on Twitter
Linn Vizard on Medium
Linn Vizard on Adobe Blog

In This Episode

[01:18] — Linn talks about her journey as a design practitioner, and how she arrived where she is today. She also discusses how she has continued to develop and expand as a practitioner.
[04:04] — What has it been like to bring together the service design community in Toronto?
[05:22] — We hear about some of the common threads that Linn has seen in the Toronto service design community.
[07:40] — What Linn has mentioned is one of the threads that flows into Dawan’s work at a very practical level, he points out.
[09:04] — Linn talks about how maps relate to the opportunities in the service design space.
[12:39] — Does Linn have any other stories of when mapping has worked particularly well in her practice?
[16:33] — We learn how Linn has helped people she’s working with to make the best use of the artefacts.
[21:37] — Linn talks about the question of how you’re enabling and inviting people to contribute. She and Dawan then talk about double delivery.
[24:21] — We hear about a huge challenge that the design practice is facing now, and the ways it’s showing up.
[27:40] — Linn discusses Paul Adams’ talk “The End of Navel Gazing.”
[29:13] — We hear more about taking measurement beyond the usual suspects as part of the role of a service designer.
[34:43] — This conversation goes back to what it means to be a leader or facilitator of a design process, Linn points out.
[38:25] — Dawan talks about the use of silence in workshops.
[40:43] — We hear about the questions and terrain that Linn is playing with in her work when it comes to the topics of diversity, inclusion, and accessibility.
[45:37] — Linn talks about going to a workshop run by Rebecca Benson, and she and Dawan talk about the daily decision about which piece of the learning mountain to attempt to climb.
[46:40] — What are some resources or references that have been particularly meaningful or useful for Linn?
[49:29] — Where can people learn more about Linn’s work or connect with her and support what she’s doing?

Links and Resources

We Are Here: Designer as Mapmaker by Linnea Vizard in Touchpoint (Vol. 8 No. 3 — February 2017)
Shifting Gears: Organisational Barriers to Integrated Service Design and UX by Linnea Vizard and Shannah Segal in Touchpoint (Vol. 6 No. 3 — December 2014)
The Relationship Model Canvas: Designing Relationships With Intention by Elina Lawrie and Linnea Vizard in Touchpoint (Vol. 9 No. 1 — July 2017)
”There’s a Map For That! The Designer’s Cartography of Complexity” video presentation by Linn Vizard from the Service Experience Conference 2016
Visual Thinking and NeuroLeadership by Dave Gray
“The End of Navel Gazing” talk by Paul Adams at UX London 2018
#a11yTOConf (accessibility conference in Toronto)
On Women and “Good” Places to Work by Nora Jenkins Townson
Rebecca Benson on Twitter
Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal
Rosenfeld Media books
Service Design by Andy Polaine, Ben Reason, and Lavrans Løvlie
The Service Experience Conference
UX Week
“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Give Service Design Away” talk by Jamin Hegeman
Service Design Paths

Today I’m joined by the remarkable Doug Powell, a Distinguished Designer at IBM who directs the global tech company’s program to scale design and design thinking. Doug is also an award-winning designer, a thought leader, and a lecturer and commentator on design issues.

In our conversation today, Doug and I will cover some tactics and strategies for growing a design practice inside your organization, thoughts on how to measure the value of design thinking and communicate that value, and talk about building design thinking capacity in design thinking studios.

When he joined IBM, Doug explains, the company’s design aspect had dwindled from its heyday when it was led by Thomas J. Watson and Eliot Noyes. For a couple decades after this design heyday, design was de-emphasized in the company. In 2012-2013, the company reinvested in and recommitted to design thinking. In our conversation, you’ll learn about some of the challenges that Doug faced during the process of reviving design thinking and creating a new class of workspaces where design could thrive.

Doug points out that design thinking has a branding problem, since the word “design” can be confusing for people outside of the industry. People think of visual design, product design, fashion design, or interior design. He then defines design thinking as, “a way of solving complex problems in a collaborative, multidisciplinary way, with a focus on the user.” It’s about collaboration and cross-disciplinary work, not making anything pretty. This, he explains, is how he would describe the value of design thinking to someone not familiar with the concept.

In addition to all of this, Doug will talk about trying to help people get the essence of design thinking in an online learning environment when design usually relies on being so hands-on. He’ll also dig into the value and impact of design thinking at IBM, including some of the less-obvious results. You’ll hear about whether Doug’s process is right for everyone, what a design studio is and why it’s valuable, how his bootcamp is structured, and much more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Doug Powell on LinkedIn
@douglaspowell1 on Twitter
IBM Design

In This Episode

[01:33] — We hear about Doug’s design career, and how he arrived at the point where he is now.
[08:00] — Doug talks about the state of design and design thinking at IBM when he arrived, and touches on the history of design thinking at the company.
[10:31] — What were some of the initial challenges that Doug and his team faced at IBM?
[15:08] — We learn more about the non-designer connection challenge that Doug mentioned a moment earlier.
[19:33] — Doug shares some thoughts on how his strategies, and the ways that he has pursued them, have developed over time.
[25:33] — What are the keys to making the online learning environment, content, and approach effective in Doug’s program?
[27:11] — We hear about Phase 4 of Doug’s process, which they’re just getting into now. He also talks about the interest being fueled by recent work around measuring the value and impact of design thinking at IBM.
[32:09] — How does Doug talk to potential clients about whether they’re ready to implement design thinking at their company in the way he’s done it at IBM?
[34:51] — Doug offers advice for how to answer the question of what design thinking is.
[36:48] — What is a design studio? And how does Doug help people find their own magic people?
[40:56] — We hear about how Doug sees the future, in terms of challenges on the horizon and how he might tackle them.
[43:17] — Doug talks about where the designers at IBM came from, and the choice to invest in emerging designers.
[46:30] — How is the boot camp experience that Doug has been describing structured?
[49:51] — We hear Doug’s thoughts on university learning experiences.
[54:00] — Dawan shares one of the reasons that he was excited about doing work at Elon University.
[55:55] — Where can listeners learn more about Doug’s work and what’s happening at IBM with design thinking?

Links and Resources

Thomas J. Watson
Eliot Noyes
Paul Rand
Charles and Ray Eames
Eero Saarinen
Doreen Lorenzo
Elon University

Julie Schell is the Executive Director of Learning Design, Effectiveness and Innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, and an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Design and the College of Education at UT Austin. Julie and I met a while back, and we did some work together at a fantastic convening at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m thrilled to have her on the show, especially given her focus on teaching and learning design thinking and human-centered design.

Design thinking has hit a peak this year based on Google searches, Julie explains, which demonstrates that there’s a lot of interest in the field. Most of the people who are making these searches are unlikely to be formally trained designers, but instead are probably individuals outside the field who are looking for opportunities to innovate.

Julie is enthusiastic about these people being able to learn design thinking, and digs into how to go about that in the right way. For example, she points out that when you’re working with someone who doesn’t have a prior knowledge basis for what they’re trying to learn, you can’t expect long-term, sustained, deep learning to occur after learning in an accelerated model. She also emphasizes the importance of humans (and human contact) in learning human-based design.

Julie also believes that we have a responsibility to democratize education and strip the elitism from design, and sees part of her role at UT Austin as being exactly that. She talks in our conversation about how she does this and her practice with self-regulated learners who don’t have the privilege of enrolling in graduate programs at the university.

Tune in to learn more about all of these topics, as well as what a self-regulated learner is (and why that matters), some ways to facilitate self-regulated design thinking, the importance and four key sources of self-efficacy, and some great resources related to all of these ideas.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Julie Schell
Julie Schell at the School of Design and Creative Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin
Julie Schell on LinkedIn
@julieschell on Twitter

In This Episode

[02:09] — What’s happening in Julie’s world in terms of teaching design to non-designers and human-centered design pedagogy?
[04:00] — Julie addresses some of the responses she’s seen and how they’re working (or falling short), as well as some ways that non-designers can learn about design thinking.
[10:36] — We hear about Julie’s thoughts on the forms that deceleration can take in learning design thinking and human-centered design.
[16:25] — What are some things we can do to satisfy the demand for a boot-camp experience but help with the problem of experiences that set people up to implement poorly?
[21:22] — Julie shares her thoughts on how we can set people up to have a deeper learning pathway and talks about self-efficacy, including its four sources.
[30:42] — What would Julie’s advice be for a faculty colleague who will be teaching in this space for the first time?
[32:35] — Dawan talks about one of the things that he stresses with new learners: the emotional moments that he’s seen, and the normalcy of those feelings.
[36:59] — Julie points out how making the struggle visible can be refreshing for students.
[37:38] — Julie shares her recommendations for someone looking to make a career shit and build skills in this area.
[40:26] — We hear about the importance of finding what the self-interested and self-transcendent purposes for learning are.
[43:53] — What are some books, links, or references that Julie recommends to learn more about design thinking pedagogy or self-regulated learning?
[46:45] — Where can people go to find out more about Julie and her work?
[47:36] — In closing, Julie points out that all design has an element of learning to it.

Links and Resources

Self-efficacy
Albert Bandura
David Yeager
Lynda
Design Thinking Has a Pedagogy Problem at SXSW EDU
Design Thinking Has a Pedagogy Problem… And a Way Forward by Julie Schell, EdD
Julie’s Design Thinking Pedagogy Reading List
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel T. Willingham
Make It Stick by Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III
Desirable Difficulties to Create Learning by Veronica Yan
Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Hidden in Plain Sight by Jan Chipchase
Change by Design by Tim Brown
Prompt by Tamie Glass
The School of Design and Creative Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin
Extended Education at the School of Design and Creative Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin

Stephanie Wade, my guest today, leads the Innovation Teams program at Bloomberg Philanthropies. She helps cities around the world develop and implement innovative approaches by using design, data analytics, and behavioral economics to deeply understand complex problems. She has applied design thinking at the federal, state, and local levels.

Stephanie is an artist in multiple mediums. She got to where she is as many designers do: via a meandering and non-traditional path. Now, she’s at a point where she sees a clear thread running through all the work that she’s done to lead her to exactly where she is now. She believes that strong designers put their whole selves into their work, and that’s what makes them good in so many ways

As a “design activist,” Stephanie believes in the power of design to be transformative. As a result, she explains, she’s also protective of design, thanks to having seen the pitfalls and consequences of doing design wrong. If you screw up design at an organization, the people there who aren’t interested in change will look for ways to fault this new thing, meaning you don’t have a lot of leeway to keep trying if you don’t do well from the beginning.

As a first step toward succeeding rather than messing up, it’s important to have a strong team. Stephanie believes that a good team should have diverse people from different backgrounds, even beyond design. At least one of the people on the ideal team should come from inside of the organization in question. In our conversation, Stephanie will also dig into what she sees as the traits of an effective team leader in the field.

Other topics we focus on in today’s episode include training design teams for projects, building design thinking capacity inside organizations, and some of the unique leadership challenges that both of these activities present. Stephanie will also talk about where she sees her work heading in the future, lessons and insights that she’s learned during her time in design, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Stephanie Wade on LinkedIn
Stephanie Wade on Twitter

In This Episode

[02:03] — Stephanie starts things off by talking about her trajectory, how she got started and learned, and what’s been fueling her passion.
[12:46] — What are some of the lessons that Stephanie has picked up along the way as she has worked in capacity-building?
[15:32] — We hear about some of the characteristics of what it looks like when capacity-building and design is done well.
[18:22] — Stephanie talks more about the kind of team she would like to see to really make things work.
[21:21] — What are some of the characteristics of a more mature successful team?
[23:43] — Stephanie talks about some of the challenges that she has faced in leading design teams in various contexts.
[27:45] — We hear more about the work that Stephanie is doing now, and how the various teams at Innovation Teams come together.
[33:32] — What are some of the things that are consistent across the different teams that Stephanie directs?
[36:32] — Stephanie talks about how she’s helping people get their heads around combining design thinking and system-level thinking.
[38:33] — Where does Stephanie see the work that she’s doing now heading in the future?
[43:48] — We hear about whether there are areas in which Stephanie would welcome ideas or support.
[45:31] — Are there any other resources that Stephanie has found particularly useful?
[47:38] — Is there anything else that Stephanie has on her mind or wants to talk about?

Links and Resources

Innovation Teams
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Michael Bloomberg
Exposing the Magic of Design by Jon Kolko
Jeanne Liedtka’s books
Observatory of Public Sector Innovation
Nesta

Tune into today’s episode to hear my conversation with my friend and colleague Karen Hold, an innovation strategist who helps individuals and organizations build cultures of creativity and collaboration using the language of design thinking. Our conversation today will cover her path from brand management at Procter & Gamble into design thinking, her leadership at Summer of Design and Design Thinking DC, how she works with individuals and teams as they learn and practice design thinking, and much more.

Karen is the daughter of a lawyer, and points out that she grew up in a home that used auditory language to communicate. She married into a family of visual communicators, and discovered that she’s more of a visual communicator than an auditory communicator. This opened up a learning journey for her about how people communicate, and how some learners can be lost in conversations because they don’t communicate in the language that is being used.

Design thinking gave Karen a framework to find an intersection where various learning styles can be optimized. She became a voracious reader on the subject, digging into books such as Designing for Growth and The Experience Economy. She has since focused her career on equipping others with the tools to do this kind of work using alternate communication styles.

In our conversation, Karen digs into the process of leading people through their first encounters with design thinking. She points out that communication and helping people to organize their thoughts clearly is a big part of the process, and explores the importance of collaboration and the role of a leader in helping to develop it.

Tune in to hear more about all of these topics, as well as the warning signs of a struggling team (and some strategies for getting them back on track), the trend toward virtual collaboration with teams, the relationship between community partners and the design teams at Design Thinking DC, the role of peer coaches, and other fascinating and valuable topics.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Karen Hold at the Design Gym
Karen Hold on LinkedIn
@KarenHold on Twitter
dckarenhold@gmail.com

In This Episode

[01:42] — We hear about Karen’s learning journey, and how design thinking has been involved in her career.
[07:31] — What were some of Karen’s aha moments in the early reading and learning that she did?
[09:27] — Karen talks about what Design Thinking DC is, and what she’s doing there.
[12:42] — Dawan takes a moment to unpack some of what Karen has been saying about design leadership. Karen then talks more about leading people and teams through their first encounter with design thinking.
[16:36] — We hear about warning signs for team dysfunctions, and ways that Karen has helped teams to get back on track.
[20:39] — Karen talks about virtual collaboration, and what you lose when you sacrifice the face-to-face experience.
[23:37] — We hear about how Karen has evolved her practice of aligning people’s expectations with what’s possible in Summer of Design.
[26:26] — What are some of the things that Karen has done to keep the relationship with community partners healthy?
[31:34] — Karen goes into more depth about what’s attractive about Summer of Design to sponsors and partners.
[34:56] — We learn more about Karen’s work for her own clients, which she explains is the same as what she offers through DT:DC.
[38:04] — What are some simplifications that Karen has done to ease the introduction to design thinking?
[41:21] — Karen talks about her workarounds when she encounters resistance with students or clients.
[45:20] — How can peers become peer coaches?
[46:29] — We hear about patterns that Karen has seen across her work that give insights into where design thinking is headed.
[50:36] — Are there any big questions that Karen is wrestling with, or challenges or ideas she wants to share with the community of listeners?
[53:18] — Karen recommends that people follow her on Twitter, or email her at dckarenhold@gmail.com.

Links and Resources

Summer of Design
Design Thinking DC
Designing for Growth by Jeanne Liedtka
The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore
The Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland

I’m joined by Martin Dominguez Ball, a graphic designer who teaches design thinking at Fordham University. He’s also the cofounder at WOMB Service Design Lab. We’ll talk about what works for students in the design thinking classroom, how Martin has helped people wrestle through working visually, and the connections between design thinking, art, and making, as a teacher and practitioner.

Martin, who hails from Uruguay, had a long path into design thinking. As an entrepreneur, he owned a business for over a decade, and mentions that he applied design thinking to this business without really knowing what it was. His passion, though, was being an artist. He eventually decided to close the company and pursue the things important to him: education and art. Tune in to the episode to learn how this process evolved into him teaching his design thinking course.

In the process of getting his degrees, Martin developed a love for academia. Design thinking gave a framework to what he had been doing intuitively, and he fell in love with the methodology and method. You’ll hear him explain how this methodology gave him a different perspective on business and allowed him to get ahead of the curve by listening to what people were saying.

Martin explains that he has observed that people often have strong assumptions of what the problem is, and getting rid of those assumptions can be a challenge and a point of frustration. He finds that teaching design thinking involves guiding students to think beyond the first or fastest idea or solution, and bringing them back to the drawing board over and over.

Tune in to hear more about all these topics, as well as the excitement of seeing students understand the reason for certain methodologies, why design thinking isn’t the ideal answer for every problem that comes up, the value in prototyping (even if students are skeptical at the beginning), and the powerful effect that Martin’s eclectic background has on his approach to teaching design thinking.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Martin Dominguez Ball
Martin Dominguez Ball on LinkedIn
Martin Dominguez Ball on Facebook
Martin Dominguez on Behance

In This Episode

[01:17] — Martin introduces himself, and talks about his background and pathway to where he is now in design.
[03:58] — We hear more about Martin’s experience of falling in love with design thinking.
[07:15] — How has Martin’s approach and understanding evolved since the first moment of connection with design thinking? Martin answers, and talks about where people struggle with problem-finding.
[11:14] — Martin talks about how people react to coming back to the original or needing to reassess their original assumptions.
[14:24] — We hear about students’ “ah-hah” moments that Martin has seen, and feedback that students have given on how the class has changed things for them.
[17:16] — How did Martin’s design thinking course come about? He answers, then elaborates on his “where does it fit?” question.
[20:10] — Martin talks about whether the conflict between service-dominant logic and goods-dominant logic is involved in the conflict that he has just described.
[23:23] — We hear about some things that have helped Martin to teach and lead people through a design process, and how the rest of the faculty has reacted to his course.
[25:22] — Martin provides more information about the design lab that he and his wife run.
[28:15] — What would Martin’s advice be to an entrepreneur who is interested in developing a new service or improving an existing service?
[30:11] — We hear about where Martin sees design thinking going in the next few years.
[33:38] — Dawan shares some of his own thoughts about explaining how design thinking works as a way of moving from problem-situation to solution-situation.
[36:42] — Martin talks about the value of prototyping.
[39:13] — We hear more about how Martin helps people work more visually and see the value in doing so.
[43:37] — What are Martin’s thoughts on how his mix of influences affects the way he approaches design thinking?
[46:54] — Martin shares some resources that he has found particularly useful.
[49:04] — Martin points out that he is constantly learning from his students, and relates this to his experience teaching guitar.
[51:39] — Where can people learn more about Martin, his work, and his practice?

Links and Resources

Service Design Network
Touchpoint
Service Design in the Business Curriculum: Dispatches From the Field by Joan Ball, PhD and Martin Dominguez (Touchpoint article)
IDEO.org
IBM Design Thinking Field Guide

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel is an Afro-Trinidadian design educator and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Design Studies at North Carolina State University. Lesley promotes greater critical awareness among designers and design students by introducing critical theory concepts and vocabulary into the design studio. We talk about questioning design practice, dreaming and prototyping, and her book, Designing Social Change.

Listen to learn about:
>> Design studies
>> Designing with non-designers and “design out in the wild”
>> Lesley’s new book, Design Social Change
>> Designing dreams together across our differences

Our Guest
Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel is an Afro-Trinidadian design educator. She is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Design Studies at North Carolina State University. She practices design through emancipatory, critical and anti-hegemonic lenses, focusing on equity, social justice and the experiences of people who are often excluded from design research. Lesley also attempts to promote greater critical awareness among designers and design students by introducing critical theory concepts and vocabulary into the design studio, for example, through The Designer’s Critical Alphabet. Her research also highlights the work of designers outside of Europe and North America as an act of decolonizing design. Her identity is shaped by her ethnic background as an Afro-Trinidadian; her experience as a daughter, sister and mother; and her lived experiences in Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Tanzania, Uganda and the USA.

Show Highlights
[02:50] Catching up with Lesley and what she’s working on now.
[03:56] Lesley’s latest book comes out November 28, 2023
[04:50] What is design studies?
[05:13] Design studies has two foci: inward on the practitioner, and outwards towards society.[06:01] A lot of Lesley’s work focuses on who designs, and who gets to define design.
[06:12] Lesley is excited by what design looks like when it’s outside of the design sphere.
[11:10] Working with non-designers has allowed Lesley to see design processes more clearly.
[12:18] Collaborating with designers globally.
[14:05] Grappling with complexity and vagueness in the design space.
[18:32] Lesley’s new book shows readers how they can change the world around them for the better.
[19:33] People need to be active citizens of the world.
[20:25] A Miro Moment
[22:34] Design Social Change is written for everyone, not just designers.
[23:38] The world is always changing and we have the power to change it for the better.
[25:48] The three big ideas of the book.
[26:07] Ask questions. Work to understand the world around you.
[26:47] Emotional intelligence, and moving beyond raw emotion into “what next?”
[27:56] Envisioning a better world, and finding a path to get there.
[28:51] Prototyping a better world.
[30:30] The challenge is: how do we dream together across our differences?
[33:53] People can dream different paths towards the same goal.
[34:57] Why Dawan loves difficult questions.

Links
Dr. Noel on LinkedIn
Dr. Noel’s website
Dr. Noel on NC State University website
A Designer’s Critical Alphabet Cards
Link to her dissertation “Teaching and Learning Design Thinking through a Critical Lens at a Primary School in Rural Trinidad and Tobago”
Article from the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Dr. Noel’s work with emancipatory research and design thinking

AIA recording of the CAE research conference call (does include images as part of the recording) with Dr. Noel where she presented her research/processes in the field of critical design thinking with an emphasis on emancipatory process. 

 

Book Recommendations

Design Social Change: Take Action, Work toward Equity, and Challenge the Status Quo by Lesley-Ann Noel

The Little Book of Designer's Existential Crises, by Emmanuel Tsekleves and Lesley-Ann Noel

The Black Experience in Design: Identity, Expression & Reflection, by Anne H. Berry (Editor), Kareem Collie (Editor), Penina Acayo Laker (Editor), Lesley-Ann Noel (Editor), Jennifer Rittner (Editor), Kelly Walters (Editor) 

 

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Critical and Emancipatory Design Thinking with Lesley-Ann Noel — DT101 E57

Tune into this episode for a fascinating conversation with Aaron Faucher, a product designer focused on design ethics and augmented reality. You’ll hear about lessons from his path into design for augmented reality and virtual reality with clients such as High Fidelity, Alpha Computing, and Designation Labs. We’ll also dig into how being a Master’s student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University builds on that experience, and where he sees his design practice going as he explores the intersection of UX design and emerging technologies.

As Aaron shares, he’s early in his design career, and has been working professionally in the field for a bit over two years. His first exposure to design thinking was when he was an undergrad, when his focus was on social impact. He became obsessed with the question of where the logical end point of emerging technologies is, and started looking at technology as a social issue. Since then, Aaron has been trying to situate himself in the design world around augmented reality.

At one point, Aaron learned about the concept of affordance, and the idea that we live in a state of action-potential in a digital world. This felt groundbreaking to him and helped him to rationalize the hyper-connected state that many people feel themselves in. He also explores the power of getting outside of the box of his own ideas.

Aaron moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in August 2016 to try to find a job there, since that’s where a lot of AR and VR developments are happening. He worked on hustling and networking there, and describes the experience as a “trial by fire” that put him in his place as a designer. The process led to a couple of freelance opportunities. One thing led to another, and he has been able to work on some VR creation tools.

Tune in to learn more about all these topics, as well as where Aaron sees his design career going in the future, questions that he wrestles with, the advice he would give to an undergraduate who is interested in his field, what resources he recommends to people who want to learn more, and much more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Aaron Faucher
Aaron Faucher on Medium
aaron.faucher@gmail.com
Aaron Faucher on LinkedIn

In This Episode

[02:01] — We hear a bit about Aaron’s background and what brought him to where he is now.
[05:16] — When Aaron made a connection between his design thinking experience and UI/UX, what in particular helped him recognize the connection?
[06:39] — Aaron talks about how he has built the skills and connections to make the leap into his design career.
[08:52] — Was there a moment or experience when Aaron’s thinking about design changed?
[11:12] — We learn more about Aaron’s road into designing for AR and VR.
[15:10] — Aaron talks about some opportunities and projects that came from his networking in the San Francisco Bay Area.
[17:03] — What are some of the challenges and workarounds that Aaron faced in the projects he has been talking about?
[20:14] — We hear more about Aaron’s thoughts on healthy versus unhealthy interactions.
[23:43] — Where does Aaron think that things will go from here for him as a designer? What are some of the questions he’s wrestling with on his design journey?
[27:03] — Aaron shares the recommendations he would give to an undergraduate who wants to enter into design in the AR/VR space.
[29:59] — Are there any online references or books that have been exceptionally helpful in Aaron’s journey so far?

Links and Resources

Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
HYPER-REALITY on Vimeo
Unity Tutorials
Kadenze
Calm Technology by Amber Case
Modern Medicine by Jonathan Harris

I’m joined by Eugene Korsunskiy. Eugene is a design thinking consultant and the Senior Coordinator of Design Initiatives at the University of Vermont. Both there and at Stanford, Eugene has taught classes like “Design Thinking” and “Designing Your Life.” In our conversation today, we’ll talk about how and why he became a designer, his insights from teaching “Designing Your Life” to Stanford students, and aspects of creating good design thinking learning experiences and design teams.

When he was in college, Eugene thought he wanted to be an architect. As he studied architecture and interned in the field, he learned that it’s a lot more about fire codes and occupancy permits than he had hoped, and his romantic notions of the field faded away. He still knew, though, that he wanted to be in an occupation that involved creating something for people while using both halves of his brain. Eventually, design replaced architecture, and Eugene went to grad school for design instead.

The most interesting part of a designer’s job, Eugene points out in an interesting case study he shares today, isn’t necessarily finding the information you were looking for; instead, it can be finding a weird discrepancy in the human condition. In another example, he explores the effect that a course on design thinking has on undergraduate students’ beliefs, especially the common belief that one’s major absolutely determines one’s career.

Eugene and I will cover a wide range of other specific topics, including concerns that students (and parents) may have about and during his courses, how to “sneak up on your future” so your future doesn’t sneak up on you, what Eugene has gotten out of teaching his classes, the traits that makes the best leaders for design projects, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Eugene Korsunskiy
Eugene Korsunskiy on LinkedIn

In This Episode

[01:26] — We hear a bit about Eugene’s background and how he arrived where he is now.
[05:45] — What were some of the early experiences in Eugene’s program that helped him make the conceptual shift from the solution side to the side of finding and solving problems for humans?
[09:25] — Eugene shares his early experiences with design in his life.
[13:36] — How did Eugene see students change from the beginning to the end of the course he has been talking about?
[18:02] — Eugene talks about how he would convince a skeptical parent of a student that a course on design thinking is a valuable activity.
[19:19] — What are some patterns where students struggle with Eugene’s courses?
[22:19] — Students often have a hard time shifting away from the idea that there is one correct path, Eugene points out.
[24:41] — What are the experiences and exercises that students go through to understand the key practices of designing your life?
[29:58] — Eugene talks about how he would help a student who’s struggling with the multiple possible pathways by focusing on only one.
[31:33] — What has teaching the class done for Eugene, and how has it affected him?
[33:58] — We learn about a class that Eugene has been teaching for the last several months.
[40:47] — Eugene talks more about design leadership, and the distinct set of skills, experiences, and methods involved in that.
[48:23] — What if Eugene’s brief was to create an experience where everyone who goes through it emerges with the basics of design leadership?
[50:59] — Eugene shares what’s going on with him and where he’s headed, including his upcoming plans to teach at Dartmouth.
[53:21] — Where can people find out more about Eugene and his work?

Links and Resources

Design Thinking (course at the University of Vermont)
Designing Your Life (course at Stanford)
Bill Burnett
Dave Evans
Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

I’m happy to announce that today’s guest is Nathan Ritter, a design researcher at IA Collaborative. We’ll talk about how his path to being a third-generation mechanical engineer turned into a design research career. We’ll also talk about transforming clients into design evangelists, before closing with a project that Nathan and his colleagues are working on to bring a design icon back to life.

As you may have guessed, Nathan came to design from an engineering perspective. Going through a project to assist a woman with rheumatoid arthritis helped Nathan discover that, for him, human-centered design is more interesting than doing mechanical analysis on a computer screen. He changed his major, and continued his studies through a masters program. He points out that he’s not departing from the work of his forefathers so much as emphasizing a different part of the same process.

In our conversation, you’ll hear about a time that Nathan was in grad school. He, along with a team of all men, were working on a project about feminine care products. He points out that having all men on the team was surprisingly not entirely a bad thing; it eliminated the often-present risk of designing for yourself. He’ll also talk about other challenges he’s faced, including the transition from academic project work to client services.

If you’re curious about the basic skills that go into Nathan’s work, you’ll love this episode, in which he digs into some of the surprising skills he uses every day. He finds himself turning into a human thesaurus, for example, and comes back to writing (and verbal communication more broadly) over and over. He also emphasizes the importance of empathy, and the associated abilities to listen closely, reinterpret, and respond to what participants tell him.

Nathan will also talk listeners through his multifaceted new client education process, the importance of having people understand who their customers are and what their customers are doing, how he moves from exploratory research into evaluative research, and more. Excitingly, you’ll also hear about his fascinating project to bring the incredible Humanscale tool back to life.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Nathan Ritter
Reissue of Humanscale on Kickstarter
@nathanritter on Twitter

In This Episode

[01:40] — What brought Nathan to design, and how did his journey take place?
[04:15] — We hear about how Nathan’s family of engineers took his career change from engineering into design.
[07:25] — Nathan talks about a time when he was pulled into a leadership role during an opportunity for design research in grad school.
[09:48] — What other kinds of leadership challenges has Nathan faced?
[13:05] — We learn more about where Nathan usually starts with new client education and the multifaceted approach that he takes.
[17:22] — How does Nathan know when the transformation that he has been talking about has occurred in someone? And how does he keep people fired up and on board, even though projects can take a while?
[20:13] — Nathan takes a moment to explain the difference between two terms he has been using: “exploratory” and “evaluative.”
[23:06] — We hear about how the relationship with a client can evolve, as well as some of the constraints and why it’s so important to engage the client in the design process.
[24:56] — As a practitioner, what are some of the basic skills that Nathan uses on a day-to-day or regular basis?
[27:42] — Nathan describes what it feels like when the design team (on his side) is humming along and functioning well.
[30:16] — Dawan pivots into another topic: Humanscale. Nathan describes what this fascinating tool is, both in terms of its historic value and its efficacy as a tool.
[35:45] — The problem with Humanscale is that it’s incredibly hard to find a set, and copies have sold on eBay for over $1,000 each, Nathan explains. He then reveals his solution: recreating the set thanks to funding from Kickstarter.
[37:27] — Nathan talks about what sparked all of this for him.
[42:52] — Where can people go to learn more about Nathan and his work?

Links and Resources

Humanscale
IA Collaborative
Henry Dreyfuss Associates

I’m excited to speak with Rebecca Horton, a designer, coach, and long-time colleague and friend. In our conversation, we’ll talk about how to coach and lead design teams, some design thinking methods she has found valuable, and how design thinking and coaching converge.

Rebecca has always been interested in design, but believed as she grew up that you had to pick a discipline within design (such as being an interior designer, graphic designer, or fashion designer). In her early teenage years, she was fascinated by fashion design, and was captivated by runway shows on TV. She later went to college for political science and public policy because it was practical and pragmatic, and picking a specific design discipline didn’t appeal to her.

After college, she discovered the design thinking field, which had the language to explain what she had been craving, and doesn’t force you to choose between disciplines. She returned to school, started her own practice, and worked in the corporate design world.

In our conversation, Rebecca will dig into a specific example of an instance in which things didn’t go according to plan, which ended up being exactly the turning point that made her work so successful. She’ll also explain how she was able to maneuver and adjust to create this positive outcome from unexpected circumstances, and explore the controversy surrounding customer personas.

As you listen, you’ll also hear powerful advice that you can apply to your own work and methods. For example, Rebecca advises clients to “welcome the stranger,” meaning that instead of telling someone unexpected to leave, invite them in and use the opportunity to understand why they might be there. Tune in to hear more about all of this, as well as Rebecca’s thoughts on blueprints, customer journey maps, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Rebecca Horton
Rebecca Horton on LinkedIn

In This Episode

[01:11] — Rebecca digs into how she got into design, what her early training was like, and how she got to where she is now.
[03:27] — What have been some of the challenges or “aha!” moments that Rebecca has faced along her path so far?
[07:59] — Rebecca talks about what ended up happening in the situation she has been describing, in which things didn’t end up going according to plan.
[11:22] — What ended up happening as a result of what Rebecca has described is that the process became much more collaborative, she explains.
[15:25] — We hear about the experiences that helped Rebecca get to a point where she was able to do the maneuvering, adjusting, and listening she has been describing?
[16:48] — In co-creating with a student team or client team, what are some of the things that help them get past the initial hurdles with working with the design process?
[18:33] — How would Rebecca describe how she approaches pulling together a set of tools that leads to solutions that stick or results that last in her work?
[24:23] — Rebecca talks about some of the adaptations she’s had to make to using tools she learned as a student as she brings them into the world.
[27:38] — We learn about Rebecca’s thoughts on customer personas.
[30:58] — How would Rebecca differentiate her in-house experiences in using those tools from the experiences she’s had in her own consultancy?
[34:21] — Rebecca discusses the resources and suggestions that she gives people who want to learn more about design thinking or how to bring it into their work.
[37:40] — What are a couple of books that Rebecca would recommend? Her suggestions include The Design of Business, Moments of Impact, and The Power of TED*.
[40:19] — Rebecca talks about how her experiences as a designer influence her as a coach.
[42:20] — Where is Rebecca headed on her design journey?
[44:58] — Rebecca talks about where people can find her to learn more about her and what she does.

Links and Resources

@southernindie on Twitter
rebecca@thetrestles.com (Rebecca Horton)
IDEO
Service Design Global Conference
Trestles
The Design of Business by Roger Martin
Moments of Impact by Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon
The Power of TED* by David Emerald

Artemio “Arty” Rivera, a former designer at 3Pillar Global and current UX Lead at Capital One as well as a leader at Design Thinking DC, joins me today to talk about the learning experiences that grew his career, his insights from applying design thinking, and much more.

When Arty was a child, he started sketching spaceships, aliens, and dresses. Later, as a teenager in 10th grade, he did a personal project in which he learned to make a website and got his first serious taste of technological design. In college at Stanford, he stumbled into the product design program at the d.school. Upon learning that he could do engineering and sketching in on major, he switched to studying product design.

After graduation, he found a job in DC working as a UX designer. In our conversation, you’ll learn about how the beginning of his career went, and some of the early challenges and achievements he experienced. His first lesson, he explains, is how hard it is to convince an organization that designers and developers need to meet with the people they’re creating software for.

Arty reveals in our conversation that if he could go back in time and give his younger self advice, it would be simply to “be more flexible.” When he first joined 3Pillar Global, he had a fixed idea of what design thinking should look like. Over time, he came to understand that it’s important to be conscious of how you apply the best practices to adapt to the client’s priorities and needs.

We’ll spend some time chatting about the incredible Meetup group Design Thinking DC (or DT:DC) and the Summer of Design, which was created by DT:DC members. Arty will also share his thoughts on key topics such as how to talk to community partners about getting involved with a design project, and what he would tell an organization hiring a designer or design firm for the first time. Tune in to learn all about this, and much more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Artemio Rivera on LinkedIn
@arty on Twitter

In This Episode

[01:20] — Arty starts off the conversation by talking a bit about his background and his path to where he is now.
[08:08] — Coming from his perspective, what were some of the early challenges that Arty had to wrestle with in his career?
[10:21] — We hear about Camellia George, a fantastic manager who Arty had early in his career.
[13:22] — Arty talks about how he grew as a designer from the point he has been describing.
[16:00] — How did Arty see the shift in the perceived value of design? He answers, then talks about where he is now.
[21:14] — Arty discusses the differences between the way he approaches design now and the way he did earlier in his career.
[26:50] — We hear Arty’s thoughts on how to get the needed level of trust and access to sensitive conversations.
[32:00] — What message would Arty send to his younger self in terms of what he should expect in terms of applying design, if he was able to?
[34:23] — Arty goes into more depth about what Design Thinking DC is. He and Dawan then chat about how they met.
[40:55] — We learn about the Summer of Design, and how it came to be.
[45:53] — What are some of the key things that Arty would tell someone to make sure they communicate to get a community partner to be involved with a design project?
[48:25] — Arty talks about some of the impact that the Summer of Design teams have had in working with community partners.
[51:46] — Dawan points out that this is a volunteer activity by the DT:DC leadership.
[53:43] — How has Arty seen non-designers or people who are new to design get to the next level?
[56:17] — If there were one message that Arty could communicate to any organization hiring a designer for the first time, what would it be?
[60:26] — Arty digs deeper into the starting point if you’re already looking at transforming your organization.
[63:18] — Where can people find out more about Arty and his work? He talks about his work at 3Pillar, as well as introducing his other project, ConSpot.

Links and Resources

3Pillar Global
Capital One
d.school
Camellia George
Design Thinking DC
Stephanie Rowe
Summer of Design
Jenn Gustetic
Nathan Ritter
Design & Thinking documentary
ConSpot

Today’s guest is the remarkable Indi Young, author of Mental Models and Practical Empathy. Indi was a founder at Adaptive Path, and is one of the design field’s leading visionaries on how we develop an understanding of what people are trying to accomplish, and how to represent it in ways that support innovation.

Indi’s background is in computer science, in which she has a degree from Cal Poly. In our conversation, she explains how her time there contributed to her learn-by-doing philosophy, as well as her interest in understanding what goes through people’s minds. She’ll also dig into what it means to research problem space, what practical empathy is and how to use it, and how to develop and maintain an understanding of how people think as an ongoing basis for

Indi is focused on the same thing she’s been focused on all her life, but with a changing vocabulary around it: understanding the problem space. As you’ll hear, she tries to pull the problem space further and further away from the solution space to create a broader understanding. Problem-space research, as she points out, is evergreen. By splitting it off from being solution-focused, Indi hopes to bring attention to what people are actually doing.

In our conversation, you’ll also hear about the ways in which empathy is more complex than sympathy or compassion. Indi compares the various aspects of empathy to a skilled worker with tools rolled up in a bundle. When the worker needs to use a tool, he or she unrolls the bundle and pulls out exactly the right tool from its individual pocket. This, Indi points out, is similar to empathy, which you use differently in different situations.

Indi also digs deeply into the important ways in which empathy is different from emotional contagion, which many people don’t realize is a separate concept. She shares how important it is to support someone as part of empathy, rather than simply to feel what another person is feeling. Tune in to learn more about all of this and much more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Indi Young
@indiyoung on Twitter
Indi Young on LinkedIn
Adaptive Path
@AdaptivePath on Twitter
Indi’s newsletter sign up

In This Episode

[01:38] — We learn more about what Indi is doing now, as well as why she focuses on the problem space instead of the solution space.
[06:02] — Indi shares some of her background and talks about how it has influenced her.
[09:10] — Indi talks about making what other people call “personas,” but which she calls “behavioral audience segments” or “thinking styles.”
[11:13] — The book Mental Models has been really important to Dawan, he reveals. We then hear about how Indi’s ideas have developed between that book and her newer one, Practical Empathy.
[15:35] — A lot of people are conflating emotional contagion with emotional empathy, Indi points out, and clarifies the difference.
[19:59] — We hear more about the support piece of emotional empathy.
[23:36] — Indi talks about her listening sessions (which she used to call “interviews”), and why she changed the vocabulary.
[27:17] — Not judging people can be difficult on the airline side, Indi explains, and talks about how one can treat others with more empathy.
[32:58] — Indi points out a phenomenon that when you’re in a position of authority, the person you’re talking to will try to please you, impress you, or tell you what you want to hear.
[35:00] — Indi talks more about behavioral audience segments.
[40:56] — The method that Indi has been discussing also emphasizes context. She offers a couple of examples of the relevance of context.
[44:07] — How do characters, in the sense that Indi has been describing, float into the separation between the problem space and the solution space?
[46:19] — Has Indi changed the way she thinks about multi-functional teams from a design standpoint?
[48:24] — We hear about Indi brings people into a unique collaborative moment or space.
[52:36] — What are some of the challenges that Indi is facing now, whether exciting or frustrating?
[55:52] — Indi shares some of the things that have helped her get her clients comfortable with the kinds of investments needed to do the work she has been describing.
[62:41] — Where can people find out more about Indi and her work? In her answer, she talks about how to get a discount on her books.

Links and Resources

Mental Models by Indi Young
Practical Empathy by Indi Young
Practical Empathy audiobook by Indi Young
Describing Personas by Indi Young (Medium article)
Liminal Thinking by Dave Gray
Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
Up (2009 film)
Brené Brown on Empathy
Inside Out (2015 film)
“Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” by Eric Meyer
Rosenfeld Media

Natalie Foley joins me to talk about her design thinking and learning journey, and how she became the VP and COO at Peer Insight. We’ll also talk about the design process, some of the key methods that drive her work, and a pathway that organizations can use when developing their own internal design thinking capacity.

Natalie talks in this conversation about what to do when you work with people who are user-centered and able to handle the ambiguity involved in design thinking. Her job as COO, she explains, is to give a guardrail or enough structure to enable people to be successful, without giving so much direction and structure as to stifle the process. She also emphasizes the value of small teams.

You’ll hear that Natalie’s emotional journey to where she is now involved coming out of her undergrad experience feeling pretty smart and thinking that with every year of experience, she would get smarter. Stumbling on design thinking opened her eyes to a new perspective: she doesn’t have to be right, because her customers or the marketplace will tell her if she isn’t. Instead, the more important angle is to know how to run a good experiment.

The design process that Natalie uses typically involves four questions. The first is “what is?” The second question, or the ideation portion, is “what if?” This second part is anchored on the first question. After this brainstorming portion, the third question is “what wows?” This involves asking people what they think about some of the ideas that came out of the brainstorming process. The final question is “what works?”

Our conversation will also cover what Natalie’s clients initially present as their desired outcomes, and how that changes during the course of their interaction with Natalie and Peer Insight. She’ll also discuss how she reframes clients’ problematic expectations into something that she can design with, as well as her workarounds for common points of struggle. Tune in to learn about all of this and much more!

Learn More About Today’s Guest

Natalie Foley on LinkedIn
Natalie Foley on Twitter
Natalie Foley at Peer Insight
Peer Insight
Peer Insight on Twitter

In This Episode

[00:33] — Dawan introduces today’s guest, Natalie Foley.
[01:21] — Natalie takes a moment to talk about her work at Peer Insight in both of her roles there, and offers a brief description of what the company does.
[03:48] — We hear more about the people piece of what Natalie does, and she explains that she’s lucky in terms of the people she works alongside.
[06:37] — How did Natalie arrive where she is at Peer Insight? She shares both the high-level practical answer as well as the emotional answer.
[11:09] — Natalie digs into how she has seen the types of problems or challenges that she’s seeing evolve over the last couple of years.
[14:08] — When people come to work with Natalie, what are they initially presenting as the outcomes they’re seeking, and how does that change during the interaction?
[17:28] — Natalie talks about reframing clients’ expectations when necessary.
[21:02] — There’s an easy way and a hard way to get a client to move through the pain of changing the way they’re used to thinking, Natalie explains.
[24:18] — Natalie digs deeper into the basics of the design process that she uses.
[29:36] — We hear about the dynamics involved for Natalie in managing both her internal team and the client team.
[32:59] — How does Natalie coach leaders in the kind of decision-making that she has been talking about?
[37:08] — Natalie talks about the areas where she typically sees points of struggle, as well as her workarounds.
[43:17] — We learn more about the dynamic involved with the peer insight side of things.
[47:28] — On the technology front, what are some of the challenges and benefits in working with a remote or distributed client?
[49:34] — Dawan asks Natalie what she would say to someone who is new to the field or wants to get into the design thinking space.
[51:44] — What are some of Natalie’s favorite books in terms of design thinking?
[55:53] — Natalie shares her advice for someone who is a CEO or running a business who is interested in making an investment in design thinking for their company.
[59:04] — Where can people learn more about Natalie, her work, and Peer Insight?

Links and Resources

Jeanne Liedtka
Jeanne Liedtka on Design Thinking 101
Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie
Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want (Strategyzer) by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Gregory Bernarda, and Alan Smith

I’m joined by Fred Leichter, the Founding Director of the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity. We’ll talk about what Fred learned and led design during his 25-year career at Fidelity Investments, how he’s applying that experience at Claremont Colleges, and the promise and potential of human-centered design and design thinking in undergraduate education.

In 1996, Fred worked on designing Fidelity’s first website, which was a huge breakthrough in the industry. He was in the right place at the right time as the industry transformed, so he was able to see a major paradigm shift happening, and observed that design was at the center of it. In 2006, Fred discovered design thinking. From there, he took on a broader role as the chief experience officer at Fidelity, and used design thinking as the essence of what he did.

In a large organization, Fred explains, the natural organization is to use the existing silos within the business. This looks something like passing something from market research to product development to detailed design to specifications to technology to legal and compliance, and finally to production. As a result, it took a fair amount of work to get into a position to prototype products and services, and use manual workarounds before building the technology.

Fred will discuss how he approached building out the Hive, which started with trying to engage students at a progression of levels. At the first level, he ensured there was an invitation to make something with a variety of crafting materials. The next level up involved workshops around design thinking, empathetic listening, or making friends with everyone. At the next level, they started offering pop-up classes usually taught by faculty. Finally, they offer semester-long courses for credit.

Tune in to hear Fred talk about resisting the urge to rush to a solution by putting alternatives in front of the customer, why we should look at a project expecting to be wrong instead of expecting to be right, the convening that he hosted, the ways in which colleges and universities can be more rigid than large organizations, and much more.

Learn More About Today’s Guest

The Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity
Fred Leichter at Harvey Mudd College
Fred Leichter on LinkedIn
The Hive at the Claremont Colleges on Facebook
hive_5c on Instagram

In This Episode

[01:10] — Fred talks about how he arrived at “the Hive,” or the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity at the Claremont Colleges. He takes a moment to describe the schools and points out how highly ranked they are.
[07:01] — What were some of the experience that helped Fred see and feel his love for teaching and design thinking?
[09:43] — When Fred did the first design on Fidelity’s website, he didn’t call himself a designer, but he realized that he was interested in the topic and trained himself as a designer.
[12:02] — Fred studied the unmet needs of people with aging parents and issues around intergenerational finance when he was at d.school.
[15:02] — At the point Fred was describing, was he still using design workshops to help people internally understand and explore the concept?
[16:35] — We hear about how Fred set up and built design teams.
[18:23] — What tips would Fred offer to someone facing a similar challenge in a large organization?
[21:50] — Fred talks about ways to resist the urge to rush to the solution. He also discusses whether he shifted the way people were rewarded organizationally for failing, finding things, and testing things.
[24:29] — We learn about Fred’s move to the Hive, and why he felt like he would be crazy not to take the opportunity.
[28:28] — Fred discusses his approach in building out the Hive, and the various levels offered to the students.
[33:17] — Dawan invites Fred to talk about the convening that Dawan attended and Fred hosted.
[36:44] — We hear two of the largest impacts that Dawan got from the convening that he and Fred have been discussing.
[40:53] — Fred talks about how he sees roles in directing or leading design thinking evolving or changing over time.
[44:06] — What are some of the resources for someone, particularly a student, interested in getting into design thinking?
[46:19] — One of the best resources that Fred gives to students is a blank notebook and a pen.
[47:17] — Where can people find out more about Fred and the Hive?

Links and Resources

Stanford d.school
Fidelity Labs
Doreen Lorenzo
Frog Design
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger L. Martin
Protobot
IDEO.org

The remarkable Jean-Louis Racine, head of the World Bank’s infoDev Climate Technology Program, joins me today to discuss how he came to apply design thinking in his work, doing design thinking in large organizations, leading design teams, and stakeholder-centered design. Before working at the World Bank, Jean-Louis earned a Ph.D. in robotics engineering and worked as an engineer. This allows him to bring a depth of experience to applying and thinking about design thinking.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, one of the things that Jean-Louis appreciates most about design thinking is that it forces you to be “solution-agnostic,” as he puts it, and encourages redefining the problem into something that doesn’t include the solution. As an example, he shares a story of how this process brought him to the surprising solution of needing many entrepreneurs to fail faster.

Many large organizations aren’t very risk-tolerant, but design thinking de-risks a project because it’s about testing hypotheses. Its rigor and evidence-based principles make it easier to create something that will actually work. Jean-Louis points out that framing the value of design thinking in these terms can be more successful for large organizations than talking about creativity, for example.

Jean-Louis points out the need for trust in learning what the design thinking cycle is and how it works. It’s something that requires someone to experience it, he explains, which makes things tricky when people aren’t inclined to trust you through the process. The solution when people don’t embrace the new technique from the beginning is to simply struggle through it.

We’ll also talk about techniques to get people to give feedback without as many ego issues, the difference between critique and criticism, what it means to design for stakeholders, some fantastic books and resources that will be useful for listeners interested in the various subjects we cover in this discussion, and much more. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

In This Episode

[01:34] — Jean-Louis starts off the conversation by telling listeners a bit about himself and his background. He also addresses how he came into design thinking and what the early journey was like for him.
[04:36] — We hear the story of the first time that Jean-Louis applied design thinking in his work at the World Bank.
[07:41] — When you don’t really know what you’re doing, you make mistakes, Jean-Louis points out. That’s how you learn.
[08:22] — What was one of Jean-Louis’ mistakes that turned out to be a useful learning experiences?
[12:01] — Jean-Louis talks about what has helped him with shaping design thinking to individual contexts.
[13:07] — Jean-Louis digs into how things have changed over time in terms of the way organizations or colleagues have responded.
[17:56] — We hear more about the ClimateLaunchpad program and how design thinking was applied there.
[21:51] — Jean-Louis describes how the teams in the ClimateLaunchpad are brought into an understanding of design thinking to the point that they can apply it to their teams and on their projects.
[25:22] — Last year, Jean-Louis was in Kenya running a small design workshop. He shares a story of an event that happened there with a team of people familiar with his design thinking methods.
[28:51] — Dawan points out that he and Jean-Louis both face the issue of dealing with people in their work who aren’t confident in the design thinking process.
[34:11] — Criticism is difficult to unlearn, Jean-Louis points out, and critique is more difficult to give than criticism.
[36:33] — How has Jean-Louis found that templates function in the work that he has done? He answers, then talks about where he sees things going in the next several years as he applies design thinking at the World Bank.
[43:26] — How does designing for the network of stakeholders change the design process
[45:58] — Jean-Louis talks about whether there are any other open questions that are interesting for him right now.
[47:48] — We hear about some resources that Jean-Louis has found useful, and that listeners may find useful as well.
[50:25] — Where can interested listeners learn more about Jean-Louis or his work?

Links and Resources

Jean-Louis Racine
infoDev Climate Technology Program
ClimateLaunchpad
Jeanne Liedtka
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo
Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie
Product Design and Development by Karl Ulrich and Steven Eppinger
Next Billion

Ela Ben-Ur joins me in this episode to talk about the work that she’s done to make design thinking accessible and easy with the Innovators’ Compass. Ela spent 13 years at IDEO, and has taught courses from product design to life design at pioneering Olin College as an assistant adjunct professor since 2007.

As you’ll discover, Ela has a breadth and depth of knowledge and experience with design thinking. She has seen its evolution over time, as well as how it functions in a variety of contexts. She’s here to share what she has learned over the last 20 years while teaching design thinking, and while working to make the Innovators’ Compass an accessible way for anyone to get started.

Ela had a lot of free time during her childhood due to family circumstances, which she’ll explain in more depth in our conversation. This led to her seeking out places where people figure out how to get through challenges, which in turn explains her choices to study at MIT and work at IDEO. Through these experiences, she arrived at her current mission: making design thinking as accessible to any person in any moment as possible.

In our conversation, Ela will talk about the five questions in the Innovators’ Compass:

• What’s happening, and why?
• What matters most?
• What ways are there to make things better?
• What’s a step to try?
• Who’s involved?

Ela will also discuss other points, including what she would address if she were going to coach a design thinking coach, why it’s often better to give people less rather than more when it comes to design thinking, where she thinks design thinking is going in the next couple of decades, where big breakthroughs can come from, and why it’s important to go slow to go fast.

In This Episode:

[01:50] - Ela starts things off by explaining her origin story, or how she came into design thinking as a practitioner and educator.
[07:18] - Since leaving IDEO six years ago, Ela has tried to tune into where design thinking feels as accessible as it should be, as well as where it isn’t accessible.
[07:55] - We hear more about Ela’s desire to bring people into the space of accessibility she has mentioned, as well as the barriers and challenges.
[09:53] - When Ela has found people who are really struggling with design thinking and the process, what has she done to help them?
[13:31] - Ela talks in more depth about the questions in the Innovator’s Compass, and how she arrived at that configuration.
[17:44] - Dawan takes a moment to mentally parse the many representations of a design process, and points out that in many ways they mask the inquiry that is the heart of seeking a pathway from the world we have to the world we want.
[21:01] - Especially if you’re involved in a challenge, it can be so hard to explore questions and admit that you don’t know what’s happening or why.
[27:04] - Dawan talks about some of the work that he has been doing with Elon University, which involves looking at ways to build out an approach to design thinking that syncs up with the university’s learning environment.
[29:32] - When working with people who are new to design thinking, or others who are experienced with human-centered design, how does leadership flow?
[35:46] - Ela talks about some of the key elements that she would address if she were in the role of coaching someone who will be the facilitator of design teams and activity inside an organization.
[40:18] - If you layer on too much too fast, it’s not just diminishing returns, it’s negative returns, Ela points out.
[44:11] - Where does Ela see design thinking, or the Innovators’ Compass, going in the next five, ten, or twenty years?
[47:06] - Ela points out that so far the conversation has involved a lot of generalizations, and offers some concrete stories in contrast.
[53:43] - Ela takes a moment to express gratitude for people who have Tweeted their stories to the #InnovatorsCompass hashtag.
[54:14] - Where can people find out more about Ela and Innovators’ Compass?
[56:19] - One of the things that Dawan ends up correcting in people is seeing design thinking as a recipe for innovation. He and Ela then discuss this concept.
[60:04] - We hear about the ways that Dawan tries to get around the recipe concept.
[60:57] - Ela responds to Dawan’s method for getting around the recipe problem, and shares some of her own patterns.
[65:25] - Dawan invites listeners to get in touch with comments, suggestions for future guests, and requests for topics. You can contact him at yes@designthinking101.com.

Links and Resources:

Ela Ben-Ur at Olin College
Ela Ben-Ur on LinkedIn
@ElaBenUr on Twitter
Innovators’ Compass
IDEO
Olin College
SXSW EDU
David Kelley>
Audrey O’Clair
Garrett Mason
#InnovatorsCompass
Valeria Rodriguez

Victor Udoewa works in the Office of Public Health Data Surveillance and Technology at the CDC. Previously, he worked at the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs at NASA, as well as at 18F and Google. We talk about his journey into design and leadership, the role of design in the civic space, radical participatory design, and orchestrating relationships in complex systems.

Listen to learn about:
>> Civic design and social impact design
>> Radical participatory design and working with the people and communities you’re serving
>> The effect of relationships on systems
>> The fallacy of problem solving

Our Guest

Victor Udoewa works in the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology (OPHDST) at the CDC. He previously served as CTO, CXO, and Service Design Lead of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at NASA. He was the Director of Strategy at 18F, a civic consultancy for the federal government inside the federal government. He led the digital strategy practice and served as a designer and strategist on projects. Previously, as a Global Education Instructional Designer and Training Development Specialist at Google, he designed learning products and services for people in low-to-middle-income countries around the world.

Show Highlights

[01:07] Victor started out in aerospace engineering, building computer models.
[03:44] How one summer in El Salvador working on composting latrines changed everything.
[06:05] Wanting his work to make a positive difference.
[06:22] Becoming a science and technology policy advisor for the government.
[06:38] Moving to the UK and designing educational products and services focused around literacy.
[06:57] Coming back to government work as a civic designer and innovator.
[08:39] Civic design and designing for social impact.
[09:19] Much of the work of the U.S. government is done by contractors.
[10:11] Civic work has numerous challenges. You must be prepared for that struggle.
[12:30] Victor talks about finding and working with good people.
[15:02] Why Victor uses the term radical participatory design to describe what he does.
[16:19] The three main characteristics of the projects Victor works on.
[17:08] Why the choice of facilitator is so important.
[17:48] Professional designers can underestimate the skills and expertise of the community they are working with.
[18:57] The process Victor uses to help community members feel comfortable with leading and facilitating.
[21:45] Shifting from problem- and need-based methodologies to asset- and place-based methodologies.
[23:30] Victor talks about a community he’s working with to create a socially-equitable and racially-just Parent-Teacher Association.
[23:42] The Sustained Dialogue methodology.
[26:53] The correlation between poverty and the absence of healthy relationships.
[27:50] How Victor defines poverty.
[28:56] A Miro Moment.
[32:18] The effect of relationships on the design space and beyond.
[36:41] Viewing school as a service.
[40:16] Going beyond human needs.
[42:17] How might we create environments that facilitate learning well?
[44:39] Making a shift from student-centered to student-led.
[45:29] Building innovation and flexibility into institutions.
[47:24] “The end of solutions.”
[49:44] Solving is not “one and done,” especially when working with complex systems.
[52:50] Books and resources Victor recommends.
[58:01] Dawan talks about Victor’s article, Radical Participatory Design (link is below).

Links
Victor on LinkedIn
Victor on the Federation of American Scientists
Victor on ResearchGate
Victor on the Service Design Network
Control the Room: Victor Udoewa: Giving Up Power In Your Space
Guest Lecture - Dr Victor Udoewa - Participatory Design: A Digital Literacy Case Study | UMD iSchool
Relating Systems Thinking and Design
Association for Community Design – Chicago conference
Life Centered Design School
Radical Participatory Design: Awareness of Participation, by Victor Udoewa

 

Book Recommendations

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, by Shawn Wilson

Thinking in Systems: A Primer, by Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright

The Non-Human Persona Guide: How to create and use personas for nature and invisible humans to respect their needs during design, by Damien Lutz

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem

Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, by Arturo Escobar

 

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Facilitation + Remote Teams + Miro with Shipra Kayan — DT101 E121

Collaboration + Facilitation + Workshops with Austin Govella — DT101 E83

Designing Facilitation: A System for Creating and Leading Exceptional Events // ALD 006 — DT101 E73

 

 

Welcome to the Design Thinking podcast! I’m Dawan Stanford, your host. In each episode, you’ll learn to apply design thinking to your goals and challenges. Our guests, who come from a wide variety of industries, will share stories, lessons, ideas, experience, and insights from practicing, leading, and teaching design thinking.

In this first episode, our guest is the incredible Jeanne Liedtka. Jeanne has been involved in the corporate strategy field for over 30 years. She’s a Harvard Business School graduate and a professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. In addition, she’s a prolific author whose works include The Catalyst: How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth, which won the Business Week best innovation books of 2009, and, most recently, Design Thinking for the Greater Good

Jeanne wandered into design thinking when she was searching for a way to be more effective in teaching managers about strategic planning. In contrast, she points out, most people think of strategic planning as a deadly, dull task of filling out paperwork that never goes anywhere. In her search for ways to make the process more interesting and to convey its importance, she hit on design. In our conversation today, she relates how she began using architecture as a metaphor for strategic thinking.

In this episode, Jeanne offers insight into how to teach design thinking. The learning experience should be project-based, she explains. The project should matter to the people who are working on it. The learning experience should also be delivered in a way that meets where these people are in that project and avoids overwhelming them. She’ll also discuss some of the challenges that are facing design thinking as it continues to evolve. Jeanne explains why it is that the more you move into designing strategy and policy, the harder it is to use some of the powerful tools of design thinking.

In This Episode

[02:17] — Jeanne kicks things off by sharing some of the journey that brought her to where she is today, and explores how she discovered and developed an interest in design thinking.
[06:48] — After spending five or six years exploring design thinking in business, it became obvious to Jeanne that a lot of the most powerful uses were happening in the social sector.
[08:08] — What were some of the surprises that Jeanne found while writing her most recent book?
[10:25] — Jeanne talks about what she would say or what advice she would give if she encountered someone at a party who was interested in bringing design thinking into what they do.
[13:07] — We hear more about Jeanne has seen the initial steps of getting out into the world (and out of the conference room) in terms of common challenges.
[16:38] — Jeanne discusses an example of what she has been talking about being done particularly well.
[20:05] — What are some of the emerging challenges facing design thinking as a methodology or toolkit?
[22:55] — Dawan takes a moment to talk about design thinking at the organizational level, in terms of reliability. Jeanne then talks about how things in design thinking are evolving on the measurement front.
[27:38] — From Dawan’s perspective, one of the benefits to having more measurement tools is related to having conversations with funders or people who need a different kind of evidence before trying a new way of solving problems.
[27:59] — In order to promulgate the method, we need to get serious about measurement, Jeanne explains.
[29:10] — Jeanne expands on the previous topic of emerging developments in the realm of strategy and design thinking by giving a specific example of the Children’s Medical Center Dallas.
[34:17] — One of the things that Jeanne is committed to is thinking about how to help people take this toolkit and accelerate the ways we’re using it toward more strategic policy-level questions.
[34:53] — What are some of the key things to keep an eye on with regard to how design thinking pushes into strategy and implementation?
[37:12] — Dawan is often asked how we prototype the intangible.
[39:41] — Jeanne talks about how design criteria factor into her approach to design thinking.
[43:51] — Jeanne offers a specific example of what she has been talking about.
[46:12] — What Jeanne has been talking about goes back to the idea of “job to be done,” she explains.
[47:22] — One of the other things that comes to mind for Dawan involves people’s first introduction to design thinking. Jeanne then talks about the relationship between design thinking and the assumptions that we carry into creating new stuff.
[51:08] — Jeanne talks more about making a good design team inside an organization.
[57:18] — We hear more about bringing people to a point where they can comfortably facilitate or lead design experiences with others.
[61:54] — What does Jeanne think about the “inside outsiders” in larger organizations?
[64:11] — Jeanne talks about what she would do if she had a magic wand she could wave and get thousands of people excited about researching a particular topic, and sharing the results with her.
[67:41] — Where can people find more about Jeanne, her work, and her books?

Links and Resources

Jeanne's website
Jeanne at the University of Virginia
Jeanne on LinkedIn
Jeanne on Twitter The Catalyst: How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth by Jeanne Liedtka
Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers by Jeanne Liedtka
The Physics of Business Growth: Mindsets, Systems, and Processes by Jeanne Liedtka
Solving Business Problems with Design Thinking: Ten Stories of What Works by Jeanne Liedtka
The Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide by Jeanne Liedtka
Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector by Jeanne Liedtka
Frank Gehry
Children’s Medical Center Dallas
Peter Senge

Pinar Guvenc is a partner at the award-winning global design studio SOUR, where she leads design innovation strategy. Pinar is also a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design, and she serves on the Board of Directors at Open Style Lab, a National Design Award-winning nonprofit organization initiated at MIT, with the purpose of making style accessible to people with disabilities. Today on the show, we talk about inclusive design, and making collaboration and co-creation meaningful.

Listen to learn about:
>> What it really means to collaborate
>> Inclusive design and designing for inclusivity
>> Teaching the next generation of designers

Our Guest
Pinar Guvenc is a Partner at SOUR — an award-winning global design studio with the mission to address social and urban problems — where she leads design innovation strategy. Prior to SOUR, Pinar co-founded various ventures where she helped set up and grow them through incubation, achieving international recognition and funding from innovation centers and accelerators such as Plug and Play and Climate KIC.

Pinar is a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design, MS in Strategic Design and Management program, author and instructor of the "Inclusive Design" course at School of Visual Arts, and the author and facilitator of the workshop series "Strategic Collaborations" at Pratt Center for Community Development. She serves on the Board of Directors at Open Style Lab, a National Design Award-winning nonprofit organization initiated at MIT, with the purpose of making style accessible to people with disabilities.

Pinar is a frequent public speaker and host of the podcast "What's Wrong With": a series of discussions with progress makers and experts to diagnose problems in industries, ideate solutions, and raise awareness among the general public.

Show Highlights
[02:25] Pinar’s design career began in industrial engineering and finance.
[02:57] Becoming an “accidental entrepreneur” and discovering design along the way.
[04:10] Pinar’s frustration with the word “collaboration.”
[05:43] Designing collaborations.
[06:50] What is collaboration?
[07:07] Start with the people, then move to process.
[10:17] Processes help us stay focused when things are rushed.
[11:02] Recognizing our biases and sharing power when collaborating.
[11:37] Fully integrating design into an organization.
[12:44] Storytelling is part of the design process.
[14:51] Our work leadership style needs a fundamental change.
[15:37] Adults need to create and learn, just like children.
[16:16] A Miro Moment.
[18:06] Knowing what you don’t know is an asset.
[20:49] How SOUR works inclusivity into the design team and project.
[22:12] Pinar gives a shout-out to David Dylan Thomas (DT101 Ep 112).
[22:19] Thomas’ Red Team-Blue Team exercise.
[22:41] SOUR’s Co-Creation Panel.
[23:51] “Design spies!” and just doing the work of co-creation.
[24:55] How Pinar brings inclusivity into her teaching.
[25:07] Guest lecturers and keeping it real.
[27:11] Inclusivity begins during the research stage.
[27:52] Generative AI is great for showing us our prejudices and biases.
[31:13] The importance of being better, active listeners.
[32:28] As designers, we always need to be mindful of our responsibility for what we’re putting out in the world.

Links
Pinar on LinkedIn
Pinar on The New School Parsons
SOUR
Open Style Lab
What’s Wrong With podcast
A SOUR Perspective on design
Bringing Design Closer: Understanding Architecture's role
in designing inclusive spaces

Book Recommendations
Design for Cognitive Bias, by David Dylan Thomas

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Cognitive Bias + Ethics + Dreaming the Future of Design with David Dylan Thomas — DT101 E112

Designing Your Team + Teams in Design Education + Coaching Design Teams with Mary Sherwin and David Sherwin — DT101 E49

Designing Facilitation: A System for Creating and Leading Exceptional Events // ALD 006 — DT101 E73

Justin is an internationally-renowned design leader, author and speaker from Chicago. You'll often find him at AIGA's speaking events, he’s been interviewed in Forbes magazine and Medium's "Forge" publication, and he writes articles for Aquent, CEO World Magazine, and A List Apart. He speaks internationally on culture and design, and today on the show, we talk about values, aligned design, nurturing teams, and design leadership.

Listen to learn about:
>> Discovering and leveraging our core values
>> Why humility is the most important trait for a designer
>> Building and nurturing teams
>> Justin’s latest book, In Fulfillment: The Designer’s Journey

Our Guest
Justin is an internationally renowned design leader, author, and speaker from Chicago. You'll find him often engaging with the AIGA's speaking events, interviewed in Forbes magazine and Medium's "Forge" publication, and penning articles for Aquent, CEO World Magazine, and A List Apart. He speaks internationally on culture and design, including keynotes at the UXPA International conference, Midwest UX, and St. Louis Design Week. Justin is also the writer of the celebrated book "Creative Culture," a former VP of Design at bswift (a CVS Health company), and the founder of design leadership consultancy Anomali.

Show Highlights
[02:11] Justin’s design “Eureka!” moment in high school.
[03:12] The Art Institute of Chicago and teaching himself how to code.
[05:24] The most important part of being a designer.
[05:50] From Me to We.
[07:10] Justin talks about the writing of his latest book, In Fulfillment.
[08:02] Transitioning from hands-on fulfillment toward mentorship and leadership.
[09:46] Identifying the core set of values that lead us to feeling fulfilled.
[10:29] Humility and design.
[11:39] How Justin helps people find their core set of values.
[12:03] Using the Make Meaningful Work platform.
[12:55] What drives us to do what we want to be doing?
[14:04] Knowing our core values helps create a healthier work environment.
[14:55] Our core values are portable, no matter where we may work throughout our career and in any field.
[15:50] Why humility is the most important trait for a designer.
[17:25] Our energy pool is a finite resource.
[19:06] How an organization’s website implicitly shines a light on what they value.
[23:11] The best teams are diverse, inclusive teams.
[23:52] Dawan talks about empathy theater and taking the next steps beyond empathy.
[26:15] A Miro Moment.
[27:44] Justin talks about nurturing teams.
[28:15] Allowing for time to pause and connect within the workspace.
[29:06] Dawan talks about the benefits of not being 100% occupied 100% of the time.
[30:43] Supporting “real life” in our work environments.
[33:26] We need to adjust how we work and our expectations about the “right” way to work.
[34:57] Justin offers thoughts on how to make the hiring and onboarding process better.
[40:05] How to design and nurture a better work culture.
[42:22] Justine talks about some of the work being done by his company, Anomali by Design.[46:43] Justin offers some last words of advice for all of us about taking time to pause with intent.

Links
Justin on Twitter
Justin on LinkedIn
Justin on Medium
Justin on Instagram
Anomali By Design
Anomali on Twitter
Practical Design Leadership podcast
The Essential Fusion of
Culture & Design with Justin Dauer
Make Meaningful Work

 

Book Recommendations

In Fulfillment: The Designer’s Journey, by Justin Dauer
Cultivating a Creative Culture, by Justin Dauer

 

Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like

Employee Experience by Design: How to Create an Effective EX for Competitive Advantage with Belinda Gannaway — DT101 E75

Designing Your Team + Teams in Design Education + Coaching Design Teams with Mary Sherwin and David Sherwin — DT101 E49 Healthcare Design Teams + Wellness + ScienceXDesign with Chris McCarthy — DT101 E24