Business: Design Thinking

Design thinking. It’s probably something you use in your job every day to tackle thorny design problems. But have you ever thought about using it to design your life?

In their book, Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans outline a step-by-step process, using design thinking, to help people build lives in which they can find fulfillment and joy. This review highlights some techniques from the book that people have used successfully in achieving their professional and career objectives. To get a complete understanding of the Life Design process, though, you need to read the book. Read More

Shifting trends are forcing technology companies to reimagine their value proposition. IBM has chosen to create disruption through design. In embracing the future, the company is essentially invoking its past. Back in 1956, IBM was the first large company to establish a corporate-wide design program. But this time, the company’s goals are more ambitious.

Recently, we interviewed Karel Vredenburg, Director of IBM Design’s worldwide client program and head of IBM Studios in Canada, who told us, “We’ve put everything into this transformation.” The company is investing more than $100 million in becoming design centered. Read More

UX designers always strive toward providing optimal usability to users. Many have adopted design-thinking methods to help them accomplish this goal. In this article, I’ll share some circumstances in which the design-thinking process might obtain either constructive or destructive outcomes. But, first, I’ll begin with some fundamentals about maturing a design through iteration when multiple stakeholders are involved.

User Experience and UX Design

Fundamental to User Experience is keeping our primary focus on gaining a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and their limitations. But UX researchers and designers must also take into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing a project. Following the UX design best practices that Don Norman and many others defined—and NN/g, IDEO, Frog, Apple, and many practitioners of user-centered design have institutionalized—is helpful in creating user-friendly products and applications. Well-designed products and applications increase the return on investment (ROI) for product owners and business leaders. Read More