Design Thinking Thoughts
Ralf posted a deep one again entitled Swarms, Pipelines, Design Thinking and Heraclitus. He is really pushing the blogging part in his work and I highly recommend reading his blog. But I wanted to comment on a few things because in many I agree violently.
For one, focus on the user. Yes! Yes! Yes! Who does really bring you the money? I mean really! This is especially true for web sites. You can’t build your web site for the advertiser in mind. You need to build it for the user, because the user is the one that at the end brings in the money. Without users you are nothing. Of course, you still have a ballance between all your stakeholders, but the user is the one that counts counts counts.
Prototyping… hell yes! We are clearly running into wicked problems with innovation as the right path is not paved yet. We are walking around on a plane hoping to find fertile ground and we need to walk. This means you need to change things around, try stuff, measure, watch.
_Observation; Orientation; Decision; Action — Boyd’s OODA loop_
The wide range of influences that Ralf talks about is really more than a range of influence in one person, it is as Victor Lombardi said in his post, about collaboration. You don’t develop a product on your own and that’s what strangely often is thought with web sites.
The emotion part is really important but that is more of a management issue. You need to make people feel your emotion, pull them along and push them further out.
_Leaders don’t just make products and make decisions. Leaders make meaning. — John Seely Brown, Xerox PARC_
If your company has no meaning, then it will not build great products. You will build good ones, but there will be no emotion attached to them.
_Profits are to business as breathing is to life. Breathing is essential to life, but it is not the purpose of living. Similarly, profits are essential for the existence of the corporation, but they are not hte reason for its existence. — Dennis Bakke, CEO, AES_
Ralf currently seems to be working, with others, on setting up something he called Design Thinking Institute. Ralf, I am suggesting registered with JotSpot for a team Wiki. If it is a none profit thing I am pretty sure we can work something out. Just contact me.