Ideating in Design Thinking.

According to legend …  or at least to the d school , the next two steps in design thinking is to ideate and prototype under the Exploration phase.

let’s try to understand what does ideate means.

To visualize, is to have a vision of your desired outcome. To ideate, is to come up with as many images in your mind in relation to the issue at hand. The problem that many people face when ideating is they become overly concerned about how their ideas will be perceived. Most ideas never leave the thinker’s mind because of the internal calculations and scrutinizing. This has many reasons, it could be to save face and not seem ridiculous, not feeling confident in own idea, or not trusting the receiving end. Sadly, it is everybody’s loss as well.

To overcome such situation, an important concept needs to be in place: that is separating divergent and convergent thinking when addressing issues at hand. The balance between both is so central that I will focus on each separately while explaining the design thinking model at hand.

Puccio, Murdock and Mance in their book “Creative leadership” (2007) explained how Guilford identified four basic characteristics of divergent thinking: fluency, flexibility, elaboration and originality. I won’t go into detail in each one of them but the idea is when we ideate, we don’t squelsh the ideas made by us or by others and we come up with as many from our minds as well as building on others.

Many tools have been used for ideating. For example, in brainstorming we come up with numerous point of views that are directly or indirectly related to our subject matter. The trick is not to give any idea more than few seconds of our time when it is stated and documented, then we move on to other ideas until we are ready to converge or evaluate. brainstorming has many variations, such as brain writing, brain walking, or SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to Other Uses, Eliminate, Rearrange).  You can find out more about conducing a good brainstorming session from this short article titled “10 guidelines for effective brainstorming“.

On a wilder side, you can use tools such as “Forced Connections” by using objects that are unrelated to the situation. This ability to borrow ideas from one context to solve a problem in other context. here’s how:

1. Identify a challenge. Offer it as a question to be answered. i.e. How might we address the pollution in the city?

2. Select an object unrelated to the challenge. Anything! a chair, a lamp, a an office building.

3. Note the characteristics of the object. What’s the size, shape, color, uses, texture, smell, etc.

4. Force a connection between the object and the challenge. Ask “what ideas do I get for addressing pollution from my jeans?

5. Repeat with additional objects. keep selecting new ones and connecting new ideas.

6. Use other senses and modalities. explore listening, touching, etc.

7. Let us know how did it go

While this tool requires effort only the first few times (after that it will be second to nature, believe me!), there are other tools that are less innovative in that sense but have the same effect such as the Random Word. Here’s how: Get a dictionary or open any book on any page and place your finger on any word, then force a connection between that word and your challenge and enjoy the rich texture of your new ideas.

In this step of design thinking, I have not connected directly with social innovation since ideational thinking is a skill applied to everything we do on a daily basis. Using stories to come up with scenarios and visualizing our solutions in very colorful mind images are very powerful tools that if one has, one can accomplish much.

Happy imagination.

Randah

Creating a Point of View (step 3)

When we want to decide on a positive change in our lives..  we look at what we have, what we are missing and somehow figure out a way to solve the missing piece.

When we want to change a system, we have to look at what the system has (from the specific lens we are focusing on), what it is missing and figure out a way to bring back the missing.

One way of understanding systems is by using principles of ethnography.

When we try to understand a point of view that is different from us, we go to the person’s (or subject) natural environment. There we are able to look, listen and ask questions… taking notes of all details. In explaining interaction design, Preece, Rogers and Sharp gives an understanding of what user-centered approaches may feel like. Ethnography in this sense can help with some tools and approaches. ٍSome examples of user-centered approaches are: Coherence (questions that guides towards issues of systems development), Contextual Design (gathering data and presenting practical design), and PICTIVE and CARD methods (participatory design techniques that empower users to take an active part in design decisions). There are millions of ways to do things.. the trick is to find one way that fits both the issue at hand and the styles of those who are tackling it. David Hurst, in talking about the challenges of organizational change, pointed out that in order to change the structure of something, you need to change the dynamics that supports it. Same thing goes to bigger innovations that involves a complex connections of systems and their dynamics.

When we go about finding data… we often misunderstand the task by looking only for facts and figures. If we really want to understand different points of views we need to dig deeper. we need to understand the emotions and the real reasons that make people (or system) do the things the way they do.  It helps to have more than one ethnographer studying the issue because we often note some salient features that are sometimes only visible to us (because of our background, experience and attached emotions). Design thinking is built on multidisciplinary teams where each one brings his/her own salient features of the issue, in which allows a better picture of all point of views.

In researching the issue of design thinking, in her studies, Helene Cahen attempted to answer the question that many of us will start wondering very soon: what are we observing??

** Behavior. for one. We want to see the rituals, roles, activities, play and diversions that people undertake when they mix with the issue we are studing.

** Meaning: what do those symbols, signs, beliefs, gestures, values, attitudes and opinion mean? what is the language used? (both practically and figuratively).

**Tools: space, technology, rules, techniques are only limited examples of what tools maybe. what is being used for communication? for progress? for play?

Observing and understanding others Points of View is something that requires some practice. The untrained eye will watch and connect what it sees with readily available patterns in the head. We are built that way and that’s the easiest way to understand our surroundings. But with practice, we can start looking at things in a new interesting (sometimes unusual) ways. Looking at things as if we don’t understand what’s going on and we’re trying to figure out this new piece of information.

Kids do it all the time. because of their limited background information, they treat all new information with an open mind and an interest to try things. The rules of the world (and us adults) stand in their way of this discovery by telling them what it is (very narrowly), warning them from danger, or asking them to do what we say.

that said, it takes time and much energy to allow ourselves to wander freely when we create many points of views, that may or may not, be in accordance of our own.

Happy wandering.

Randah

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