Book Review

Title: Change by Design

Author: Tim Brown – CEO and President of IDEO

This book is about how “design thinking” can transform organizations and Inspire innovation. Tim Brown uses a lot of examples and cases to illustrate the following ideas:

 

Design Thinking is a human centered design technique in which people (not only designers) use a set of tools to reach high levels of innovation in products, services, businesses models and almost any other problem.

This paradigm relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express ourselves in media other than words and symbols.

Design Thinking uses the approach of three spaces of innovation: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation.

-Inspiration: The problem (or design brief) or opportunity that motivates the search of solutions

-Ideation: The process of generation, developing and testing ideas

-Implementation: The path that leads from the project room to the market.

IDEO facilitates the design thinking process through dedicated spaces to liberate creativity, called “project rooms”, but to be creative, a place does not have to be crazy, kooky and located in Northern California, the prerequisite is an environment –social and special- in which people know they can experiment, take risks, and explore the full range of their faculties.

 

In the first part of the book, Brown introduces how Human Centered Design techniques –field observations, prototyping, visual storytelling- can be used not only by designers but these skills can migrate outward into all parts of organizations and upward into highest levels of leadership. The second part explains how design thinking can be used to solve problems like pollution, poverty and inequity. As Brown says: “Design Thinking can help us chart a path into the future”.