Design thinking, a creative problem-solving approach, originally created by IDEO, a design firm, represents a promising avenue for collaboratively developing solutions to human and environmental issues. Design thinking... [ view full abstract ]
Design thinking, a creative problem-solving approach, originally created by IDEO, a design firm, represents a promising avenue for collaboratively developing solutions to human and environmental issues. Design thinking emphasizes users’ needs, abduction and rapid prototyping. It takes place according to defined stages: 1. Observation-inspiration: an ethnographic survey is conducted to describe the user experience and the situation. 2. Synthesis: the information is synthesized to pose the problem in a few statements. 3. Ideation: ideas are formulated and chosen. 4. Prototyping: prototypes illustrating ideas are quickly built and evaluated. 5. Tests: the prototypes are evaluated with the users. 6. Communication: the product is communicated. Design thinking is currently being used successfully by various organizations (including IDEO.org, D.school, MindLab, Hasso Platner Institute, INDEX, Design for Change, Littoral et vie...) to implement efficient solutions for the environment, health and the economy. For example, INDEX has created the Ocean Cleanup, a floating barrier that rids the oceans of plastic and waste that accumulate there. Littoral et vie facilitated the start of a cooperative of Moroccan women who reuse food waste (to make compost) and plastic bottles (to create jewelry), in order to adapt to the large presence of local waste transported by the floods. From teaching their parents to read, stopping child marriages, fixing potholes on the street, building safe biking paths, children involved with Design for Change created some aspects of their desired future. Design thinking, as applied by these NGOs gives positive results, but researchers have not yet determined the educational and digital tools that ensure its success. Our research aimed to identify factors and intervention strategies that, during design thinking, favor the development of effective solutions to humanitarian or environmental problems. A literature review of the websites of 20 international organizations, interviews, questionnaires and analysis of a prolonged trial of design thinking helped to scrutinize the approach as applied by these NGOs. The ideal team of resolvers would be multidisciplinary and multicultural. Interviews with moderate and extreme users (at various points in the process), empathy and immersion in the milieu would encourage an expansion and clarification of the problem space. The synthesis would ideally go through a formulation of the problem starting with: How could we ...? Brainstorming and reorganizing ideas by themes would be effective in stimulating the fluidity of solutions. Rapid prototyping with simple hardware would provide a tangible picture of the "look" of new solutions. Some digital tools such as Facebook, Google Docs, Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, 3D Printers, In-Vision or Concept Board could also facilitate the exchange of information about the problem, its graphic representation, or the proposal, prototyping or evaluation of solutions. The success factors of design thinking include a mobile physical layout that is conducive to the emergence of ideas, confidence in the creativity of resolvers, effective techniques of collecting user needs and of brainstorming, adequate formulation of the challenge to overcome, rapid prototyping with simple hardware and sometimes ICTs to support the process between meetings.
5b. Design for sustainability
