Design Thinking and It’s relevance in Today’s World

Global Issues at hand.....

THE STORY OF STUFF

A short film thats tells us about how big corporates are emptying our resources across the globe.

We live in a finite world where the leaner system of production and consumption is a threat to our planet

We are producing trash beyond our sustainable limits we have polluted waterways forests and air.

http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-stuff/

Rising Indian Consumerism - Wealth seen as a means to create waste.

Culture of Trash - Landfills a dreadful reality and failed urban waste management systems

Media driven hype to consume - Upwardly mobile families, social pressure to live a high consumption lifestyle.

Deeper Pockets, Quick satisfaction - the vicious loop; age of instant gratification lower self discipline.

Issues of a Modern India

Design and Creative Learning

Pre Industrial era - Pragmatic approach to learning and living with ownership of the one’s life and means

Learning the Big Picture way

http://bit.ly/PnizfW

Over centuries humans have known to overcome hardships through skill of the hands combined with an innate ability to apply common sense with constant stimulation from the

natural world giving a wholesome experience of competence and well being

With the onset of Industrial revolution and the increase in the complexity of a global economy it is increasingly

difficult to apply conventional (linear) means of problem solving.

Thus the rise of Design Thinking

Design thinking at its core, I like to think, is simply an application of advanced common sense. At its core, design thinking is a different way of looking at problems, understanding problems and then going about solving them. The alternative to a linear thinking process that is taught in analytic business systems is one in which we are using simultaneous

thinking and more broadly based thinking, generating many more alternative solutions for evaluation. And doing so without all the rigid linear thinking processes. Design thinking is no better nor worse than any other kind of problem solving framework, it’s just a different one–

a new toolset.

- Clark Kellogg

Read more: http://forbesindia.com/article/ckgsb/design-thinking-demystified-an-interview-with-clark-kellogg/36967/1#ixzz2zV6IBjri

Design Thinking - Definition -1

Design Thinking - Definition 2

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” —Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO

Design Thinking Approach

Comfort with ambiguity is one of the major ones. What we know and what we learn from any professional design discipline are things like visual literacy and the capacity to be more comfortable with ambiguity. By that I mean that all problems don’t have to be neatly and tightly wrapped up and resolved rapidly. Instead there’s a broader acceptance and comfort with the unknown

Another element of design thinking is a Spirit of optimism. Positivity comes from the fact of shedding liner business practices and adding innumerable (lateral) possibilities ...So there’s a spirit of optimism about design and design thinking that helps to keep ideas fresh and the search for new ideas going forward.

Another element of design thinking is a a human centric approach to the problem. Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices.

It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional, and to express ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody wants to run an organization on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an integrated third way.

Peeling down the problem to the core....‘The Five Whys’ approach . It is the sequence of asking ‘why?’ about a problem five times. By the end of that fifth ‘why?’ you are typically at what we call a root cause. And so by peeling back the layers of the question to a deeper level, we usually find that the real issue is something quite different than the outside layer of the onion.

Local sensibilities + Global Influence

confluence of vernacular design thinking ( local myths, aesthetics, building knowledge) with

more formal body of design knowledge

Design thinking as a life skill -

Institutions and business across the indian subcontinent have realized the potentialof design thinking as a way ahead for corporate as well as non-corporate sectors.

Design Thinking - Indian Context

The age of Design Thinkers

Bridging gaps - from creation to conservation

People over product/service approach,

Design transcending All Boundaries

Open source knowledge, consumer participation (Inclusive over exclusive)

Examples

http://quicksand.co.in/?p=386

UNDP: Design Thinking and craft

Explore Rural India is a project jointly funded and managed by Ministry of Tourism of the Indian Government & the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It is an imaginative and effective project that seeks to promote rural development through the twin means of Sustainable, Rural Tourism and indigenous crafts based Livelihoods promotion.

This project, funded by International Development Enterprise (IDE) as part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sought to provide NGOs and social enterprises with the tools to do just that. IDEO, in collaboration with nonprofit groups ICRW and Heifer International, developed the HCD Toolkit to help international staff and volunteers understand a community’s needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet those needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

Arvind Gupta

Arvind Gupta is an Indian toy inventor and popularizer of science. He developed his idea of creating simple toys and educational experiments using locally available materials as well as items usually thrown as trash. These simple toys, he found, fascinated children and Gupta went on to make these as the hallmark of his movement of popularizing science.

His first book, "Matchstick Models and other Science Experiments" was reprinted in 12 languages. Gupta's website holds instructions, including short video clips on YouTube, in a number of languages, for making hundreds of improvised toys, which he makes available freely without copyright restrictions.

www.arvindguptatoys.com

Typography Design

HandpaintedType is a project that is dedicated to preserving the typographic practice of street painters around India. These painters, with the advent of local DTP (Desktop Publishers) shops, are rapidly going out of business with many of them switching to the quicker, cheaper but uglier vinyls. Many painters have given up their practice altogether.

The project involves documenting the typefaces of road side painters across India and digitizing it so that it serves as a resource for present and future generations.

www.handpaintedtype.com

Ecology ,Waste Management and Design Thinking

Puma’s Bring me back program promotes

recycling and benchmarks what all global consumer brands must look into.

Eco-friendly, disposable, reusable,

slippers for indoor

Courtesy: Design Direction, Pune

Design Thinking enables to Envision Waste

Ecolink is recycled chipboard made from Tetra Pak package waste.

www.ecolinkindia.com

ExNoRa:

Zero Waste

Management: Vellore model

ExNoRa International focusing on mobilizing and empowering communities to participate in preserving nature and preventing environmental degradation, thereby improving the quality of life of the common man.Founded in Chennai by renowned social activist and "master motivator of masses" Dr.M.B.Nirmal, Exnora International is a Non-Profit, Non-Political, Secular, Non-Governmental, Environmental Service Organisation. It was formed with the aim to realize a cleaner, greener and more enviro-friendly world. Within the 16 years of its existence it has grown into a wide spread movement covering many parts of India.

Community Management & Restoration and Design Thinking

Navadarshanam ("New Vision") is a small organization, a registered charitable Trust operating near a small village 50 km south of Bangalore

Design Thinking - Navadarshanam model

1. Eco-restoration: Merely by preventing grazing, the land has been converted from wasteland to a nascent forest.

2. Natural farming: On this improved soil, in limited and carefully selected areas, fruit saplings and a few vegetables and cereals/pulses have been planted with minimum disturbance to those trees and bushes which have come up naturally. No chemicals and pesticides are used.

3. Health and food: Food items and cooking methods have been classified according to digestibility/acidity-alkalinity. Diseases are seen as `absence of ease’, caused by undigested food, which disturb the ecology of the body. Food items developed along these principles have been made available to our network of friends in Bangalore.

4. Energy: All power requirements, including that for pumping water and for lighting, is generated through solar panels and systems, wind power and also from oil made from the seeds of honge, one of the trees that nature has brought up in a big way during the regeneration process. Gobar gas (methane from cow dung), charcoal made on the land and wood stoves are used for cooking needs.

5. Housing: All dwelling units at Navadarshanam have been constructed with the help of alternative technologies, using eco-friendly concepts (such as compressed mud blocks). The philosophy adopted has been to combine ecology with economy. Thus, least amount of cement and steel has been used, instead the stress is on locally available material and labour.

Design Thinking - Navadarshanam model

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