The Creative Hub

Overall, I found that Design Thinking is really about experimentation and testing ideas. Unlike with other creative disciplines, ideas in this field need to be explored and mashed together with research and thinking placed from other fields of interest. I found personally that during this module:

1. Strong group dynamics = high level work. 

2. Simplicity is key. Throughout the entire process.

3. A solid foundation in research is key to allowing a free creative mind.

REFERENCES:

1. Badke-Schaub, P. & Roozenburg, N. & Cardoso, Carlos (2010) Design thinking: A paradigm on its way from dilution to meaninglessness? Netherlands: Delft University of Technology

1. Hughes, R. (2010) Cult-ure. Fiell Publishing Limited. Edition 1. London, UK

1. Brown, D. (2010) Confession of a Conjuror. Transworld Publishers. London, UK

1. Cross, N. (2006) Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Integration - pp. 04

1. Norman, D. (2009) Waits That Work. MIT Sloan Management Review. Vol. 50 No. 4.

1. TED Blog. (2009) A call for design thinking. Tim Brown Available at:http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/29/a_call_for_desi/ (Accessed: 20th April 2012)

1. Oosterom, A. & others (2011) This is service design thinking. Available at:http://thisisservicedesignthinking.com/ (Acessed: 30th April 2012)

1. Norman, D. (2008) The Psychology of Waiting Lines Available at:http://www.jnd.org/ms/Norman%20The%20Psychology%20of%20Waiting%20Lines.pdf(Acessed: 24th April 2012)

1. Rolighetsteorin (2009) The Fun Theory. Available at:http://www.thefuntheory.com/(Accessed: 28th April 2012)

1. Massey, Ray. (2012) No kerbs, pavements or nanny-state signs: Britain's longest clutter-free street is unveiled to make things safer. The Daily Mail. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094939/Britains-longest-clutter-free-street-unveiled-make-things-SAFER.html (Accessed: 26th April 2012)

1. (2010). UX Design Defined. UX Design. Available at: http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined(Accessed: 28th April 2012)

1. Ettinghausen, J. (2011) Missing Texture 16. BBH Labs. Available at: http://bbh-labs.com/tag/interaction-design  (Accessed: 23rd April 2012)

1. Skibsted Ideation (2011). User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea. Fast Code Design. Available at: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663220/user-led-innovation-cant-create-breakthroughs-just-ask-apple-and-ikea (Accessed: 29th April 2012)

1. Frank, A. (2005) Don't Click It. Germany. Available at: http://dontclick.it (Accessed: 29th April 2012)

As our group moved towards idea generation and exploring inspiration, the discussions moved towards psychology and technology behind consumers experiences. From this, some well known examples came forward into how can consumer attitude and behaviour be changed and improve the consumer experience of a specific moment or place. I felt that the psychology into consumer behaviour was particularly important and a question worth exploring.

How can we change Consumer Behaviour? 

"The user is king. It's a phrase that's repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric." (Skibsted Ideation, 2011) 

Or is it? I don't necessarily believe this is true. I believe Design Thinking is without a doubt a 2 way relationship. 1 great example I felt was of particular interest to this topic was the 'Fun Theory', making everyday mundane routines or tasks more engaging through interactivity.

I felt that if this kind of psychology and attitude could be converted towards the Post Office, then we could help shift consumers perception of the brand. I felt that this could be potentially achieved by creating a better brand experience and improving the atmosphere within the branches, leaving people on a high note.

Can we alter the Consumer's mindset associated to the Post Office?

"The memory of the experience is set primarily by the ending. Here, its has been shown that if two events are exactly identitical except that one has an addition period added which is positive compared to the preceeding experience, the longer event is judged better than the shorter one." (The Psychology of Waiting Lines - Donald A. Norman, Pg. 9)" 

With this in mind towards creating our insight, it's is an interesting take on how to focus on the end of the customer journey. I personally believe that this could also suggest the consumer journey is not necessarily a linear process, but infact a full circle which continues in a fluid motion. The ending is very much connected to the beginning, depending on the line of business of course. 

Magician Derren Brown claims in his biography "Three. The Magic Number. Three gives us a beginning, middle, end; three can give us a story." (Confessions of a Conjuror 2010.) Given his line of field, I believe that playing on consumer psychology and treating the brand experience as a story, it aids us to break down the stages of service and thus try to change this mindset if queing and going to the Post Office. 

"When waits are inevitable, the research shows, the goal should be to optimze the experience for both customers and employees, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing employee stress and turnover." (Designing Waits that Work - Donald A. Norman Pg1.) 

1. Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time

2. Pre-process waits feel longer than in-process waits

3. Anxiety makes waits feel longer

4. Uncertain waits seem longer than certain waits

5. Unexplained waits seem longer than explained waits

6. Unfair waits seem longer than equitable waits

7. More valuable the service, the longer people will wait

8. Solo waiting feels longer than group waiting.

I felt that looking back on the project, this part of the process was something that was truely relevant and tied into every solution we created from it. Particularly exploring the last few points listed by Maister.

Following up from the previous post into Design Thinking, another topic I want to explore within this assignment is User Interface Design and Technology. The designing of interfaces is something of particular interest to me and I found that towards the end of this module, key words such as 'usability', 'simplicity', 'concise' came up when designing an interface. 

What importance does UX and interface design play?

"UX refer to the judicious application of certain user-centered design practices, a highly contentual design mentality, and use of certain methods and techniques that are applied through process management to procdues cohesive, predictable, and desirable effects in a specific person, or persona (archetype comprised of target audience habits and characteristics)." (UX Design Defined, 2010)

A website which I discovered a couple of years ago while researching, http://dontclick.it, was an experiment which completely fascinated me and still stands true to today's design world. The experiment is based on click-less features, a website in which you can glide through each page through scrolling. To me this is where touch screen technology, such as the iPad, will eventually lead to, once we have truely mastered the technology to do so.

During our researching phase, an experiment I tested out upon the general public was to see how many people could direct me to the Post Office without technology. Only 5/20 were able to specifically name their local branch and give me vague directions. I felt that this was a small demonstration as to the need for digital information that can be accessed easily, thus proving its neccessity in the overall concept later in the idea generation phase. BBH Labs posed the question on their blog, "when we create new digital experiences should we think about adding textured UX as well as intelligent UI" (BBH Labs, 2011). I completely agree with this statement, and I felt this logic applied directly into our Design Thinking. Intelligent UI can support a textured UX, depending on the functions of the experience and context in which it is applied. With the example above, the Post Office could utilize an app and push live queue information forward to mobile phone through a clean design.

How important is User Centered Design?

"Designers have specific abilities to produce novel unexpected solutions, tolerate uncertainty, work with incomplete information, apply imagination and forethought to practical problems and use drawings and other modeling media as means of problem solving." (Nigel Cross (2006) Systems & Design Thinking: A Conceptual Framework for Their Integration pg 4.)

I felt that this quote was particularly true in terms of Interface Design and the importance in which design plays overall into Design Thinking. The ability to problem solve and create models in which users can experience a brand I believe is an important part of the process.

Jens Martin Skibsted's design agency 'Skibsted Ideation' argue in Fastcode Design that  "The demand for something fundamentally new is completely unpredictable. Even the users themselves have no idea if they will like an entirely product before they start using it (and maybe, only after years of use). Demand for something new cannot be predicted." I personally disagree, as I feel you need imagination and ambition to move forward in this industry. To predict and dare removes stagnation and becoming the same as everyone else.

Floor Navigation / Graphics.

"We employ the symbols of the past to signpost the future"  Pg.44 What Shape Is an Idea?. (Rian Hughes, Cult-ure.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094939/Britains-longest-clutter-free...

Looking towards the final week, I'm interested to see how creatively our group can apply our findings into UX and User Centered Design towards our creative presentation. I feel from this topic, I've really begun to understand more on how design can influence behaviour, and importantly what tools we can use from this towards prototyping. 

Reflecting and evaluating our recent module into Design Thinking, our task at hand was with the client the 'Post Office' and digital agency Dare. Overall, specific areas that were of a personal interest to me revolved around consumer behaviour and the mindset that was associated to the brand, specifically in the queing aspect. The first task for us individually though was to break down Design Thinking and grasp an understanding of the term. 

 What is Design Thinking?

"Although empirical research on designing does not have a very long tradition, design thinking has gained the position of a paradigmatic concept describing design-specific cognitive acitivities that designers apply during the process of designing."  (Design Thinking: A Paradigm on its way from dilution to meaninglessness?" Dorst 2009; Visser 2006.)

I feel this quote by Visser and later Dorst reflects the fact that Design Thinking is very much about designing activities and creating an order through mashing up various disciplines. Inspiration can be found in various areas such as Psychology, Archetecture, Enrginering and many other industries, so applying and mashing together logic from these areas gives Design Thinking its foundation. I found that after reading through various sources of information such as IDEO's Tim Brown blog on Design Thinking and his Ted talk on urging designers to 'think big' really inspired my mind creatively. (The video below is 16minutes long, but I wanted to place it into this post to demonstrate the point above.) - http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang///id/646

What Makes Up Design Thinking?

To explore this question further, I researched a video by Jakob Schneider & Marc Stickdorn's, ''This is Service Design Thinking'. It sheds a light on the 5 key factors which are crucial into exploring the consumer experience through Design Thinking, and why we pick one business over another similar option. The strongest point I feel is that by making a service 'user centric', it allows us to map out the journey of the customer and work around this.

Building on this, I felt there was one main issue that I had to explore. With the blurring boundaries between the digital and non digital world making it difficult for customers to differentiate identical services, how can design thinking improve quality service while enhancing consumer satisfaction? 

Within Rian Hughes, Cult-ure, book on creativity and ideas, he suggests that "sometimes it pays to step outside your local set of assumptions and look at things from the outsider's viewpoint." (Pg 28, Sign and Signified, Rian Hughes, Cult-ure.) So by doing this we must experiment with Design Thinking and create news ways to approach the Post Office, particularly with digital technology in mind. 

How to Apply Design Thinking?

In contrast to the champions of scientific management at the beginning of the last century, design thinkers know that there is no “one best way” to move through the process … the reason for the iterative, non-linear nature of the journey is not that design thinkers are disorganized or undisciplined but that design thinking is fundamentally an exploratory process; … (Design Thinking: A Paradigm on its way from dilution to meaninglessness? Brown 2009, p.17). 

By proptotyping and iteration was a key part of our overall experience throughout the module. The benefits from testing ideas, experimenting and approaching the task as more of a toy than a finished article certainly helped our process and idea generation. Playing with the idea, making it stand on its own and bringing all our research together made me appreciate the process in which Design Thinking follows. We followed various tools to map our journey, however I felt the one tool which came to us was the one listed below. 

When approaching Design Thinking from a broadened mindset and the way in which we are all uniquely different, its clear to see how our decisions can also be preplanned out based on our own experiences and perceptions of events. Jonathon Baron explains that "thinking is important to all of us in our daily lives. The way we think affects the way we plan our lives, the personal goals we choose, and the decisions we make."(Jonathan Baron, 2008). I believe that looking forward into the next 2 weeks, this will be one key thing I will bring forward with me.