Design Thinking Resources #1: Overall process

This collection of resources is a response to the following question I get in my Design Thinking workshop: Please suggest some articles / books / videos for us for further study. Hence, the list is biased by what I cover in my workshops. I also carry a bias for stories which highlight the iterative nature of the design thinking process and bring out learning from failures.

    1.      Stanford D-School Resources: I have been benefited by the Stanford D-school Resources site which contains a rich set of resources: For example, check out the toolkit called The Bootcamp Bootleg and also you can go through a 1-hour short introductory online course called a Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking.

2.      ABC Nightline - IDEO Shopping cart: While this 8 minutes video is more than 15 years old, I feel it gives a good overview of the overall process. For example, the importance of going on the street and talking to customers/experts in actual context, fail fast principle, prototyping, testing with real customers, etc. The video stops at 2 iterations and that’s too few to tell us more about what happened next. For example, it doesn’t tell us whether it reached a point of getting significant investment. Moreover, some of the aspects such as the diversity of the team involved and the open culture of the organization may not be replicable in your context. Despite these limitations, it is still my favorite video for a beginner. IDEO folks like Tom Kelly, David Kelly, and Tim Brown have also written books on Design Thinking which are easy to read, full of examples and pictures. E.g. The art of innovation by Tom Kelley, The ten faces of innovation by Tom Kelley, Creative confidence by Tom and David Kelley, Change by design by Tim Brown.  In case you like to listen to interviews, here is a good one from Tom Kelley on what design thinking is. 

3.      A watch for everyone including blind: Here is a good interview titled “How to build an end-user profile” of Hyungsoon Kim that highlights the importance of empathy and rapid prototyping in the journey of problem and solution discovery. In this interview, Kim gives more insights on the process he followed as the Founder of Eone in designing a watch for everyone including blind people. The interview starts around 1:42 in the video. I like the display of physical prototypes Kim created in this journey to get feedback from users at around 6:00 in the video. around You may also like Kim’s TEDx talk “Designing a watch for everyone”. Eone watch went through crowdsourcing process on kickstarter and is a successful product in the market. So if you like success stories, this is a good example. Kim has also written the product story in the article: How your product can benefit from user feedback.

4.      Husk Power Systems: In the Indian context, the story set in Bihar and narrated by Gyanesh Pandey is one of my favourites for following reasons: (1) It brings out the role of empathy in identification of a challenge area (2) It presents how the framing of challenge undergoes shifts as the awareness of the context grows – it is difficult to get the problem definition right when you are far off from the context (3) It highlights the role of experimentation in technology as well as business model (4) It shows how regulatory changes may have a huge influence on the business. The story of Husk Power is still unfolding after a decade of inception. Here is a 2015 NDTV interview of Manoj Sinha, a co-founder of HPS on how HPS is adapting to the solar energy wave in India and the creation of hybrid model.

5.      Addressing malnutrition in Vietnam: I feel that complex issues such as poverty, malnutrition, poor quality of education need an inside out approach. This means that the seeds of the solution need to come from the same context where the problem exists and the participation of the community plays a crucial role in experimenting, scaling and sustaining a change. This approach was championed by Jerry Sternin and highlighted by the story of how he and the local community addressed the malnutrition problem in Vietnam. Jerry Sternin has written a book, “The power of Positive Deviance” which presents the philosophy and the case studies.

6.      Infinite vision: “Eradicating needless blindness” may sound like an intimidating challenge especially in a country like India. However, Dr. Venkataswamy pursued this challenge for thirty years and created a world class hospital with empathy and experimentation deeply ingrained in its culture. The book “Infinite vision” by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy brings the Aravind Eye Care story to life. If you prefer a video, check out “Infinite vision: Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy”. (duration: 34:57). If you like a short introduction, check out: Aravind Eye Hospital (duration: 6:08). If you want to get an idea of how Aravind innovates, the book is the best resource.

7.      40 Design Thinking success stories: This is a collection of 40 stories related to Design Thinking collated by The Accidental Design Thinker. They are categorized into various sectors such as: Consumer packaged goods, Education, Financial Services, Heathcare, Journalism, Non-profits/NGOs, Retail, Technology, Transportation, Self-improvement. This categorization may help you find a story closer to your context. It is not clear what is the basis for calling a story successful and even if it is a success story, I would not jump to conclusion that the success was primarily due to Design Thinking. So please apply your own judgment.