If you are a librarian who is embracing design as a methodology or strategy for giving your community members a better library experience, you owe it to yourself to spend sometime exploring IDEO’s Design Kit. This totally free package of resources mixes text and video to deliver support and instruction to non-designers who want to incorporate design practices into their work. There are also ample case studies to help you understand how the design techniques are put into action.

I just finished reading Tom and David Kelley’s latest book Creative Confidence – lots of great ideas and insight into what contributes to creativity – so I was curious to see what David Kelley had to say about creative confidence in under two minutes. Kelley’s video introduction into methods for building your confidence in your own ability to be creative, did a fine job of sharing the book’s key points – quickly. Every design kit video I watched was under two minutes.

One of the design processes that serves as the core of the kit is HCD – Human Centered Design – defined as a creative approach to problem solving that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions that meet their needs. It means designing from the perspective of the people you are trying to help. HCD consists of three phases: Inspiration; Ideation; Implementation.Libraries are getting into “making” activities in a big way and that’s an important part of the HCD process because you have to make things – that’s where prototyping comes in – to find out if the inspired ideas can lead to workable solutions. Above all, the people with the problem are the ones who have to embrace the solution. The important thing to know about HCD is that anyone can practice it. You don’t need to be a designer. You just need to start with the people.

There’s a lot to the toolkit site and you learn how to navigate it by poking around and exploring different areas. You might find it easiest to start with the three main areas: mindsets; methods; case studies. Drill down and explore in each one. This will give you a better idea of what the kit has to offer and how it’s delivered. But no matter how you tackle it, you can’t go wrong. No matter what path you follow in the toolkit you’ll be gaining lots of new ideas to share with colleagues.

And if your HCD process takes you into some ethnographic research, well there’s a new and free “Simple Introduction to the Practice of Ethnography and Guide to Ethnographic Field Notes It’s a good starting point for familizing yourself with the practice of ethnography.