That’s what I originally titled a new article I authored for American Libraries. The editors at American Libraries renamed the article “Design Thinking” and published it in the January-February 2008 issue. Some of you may get AL, others can pick up a copy at the American Libraries Association Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia (they give out copies of the latest AL issue there), but if neither of those options works for you I have received permission from the folks at American Libraries (much appreciated!) to make a copy available on my website. I hope you enjoy the article, and look forward to any feedback or comments. I’m always open to your ideas for what I can do better to more effectively communicate about design thinking and its applications for the library profession.
Category Archives: Design Thinking
Here’s Another Design Thinking Video For You
A few weeks ago I was a guest of the Soaring to Excellence program. For those of you unfamiliar with Soaring to Excellence, it is a national library teleconference program to which many state library systems subscribe. Many thousands of librarians tune into the three programs that are held each year. This year the program theme is “Mapping the Library Landscape: Every library worker a trendspotter“. I am pleased to have had a role in developing the content for this season’s series of programs. I also had the opportunity to be a featured guest on the first program of 2007-2008 which was about “Finding the Trends That Matter: Get Your Environmental Scan On“.
One of the trends I discussed on the program, from the world of business, was design thinking. The folks at Soaring to Excellence were generous in providing me with the nine-minute video segment (you’ll see the link to the video on my design web page) from the program that covers design thinking. It includes the showing of a “vignette”, a short tele-scenario related to the topic, in which two librarians discover design thinking. Then I have the opportunity to share some more insights into design thinking, doing my best to help the viewer to grasp the basic concepts. I am not quite sure how effective this presentation was – developing sticky messages about design thinking is a work in progress. But you can decide for yourself. Please take a look at the video, and share your thoughts as a comment to DBL. Oh, and by the way, keep in mind this was live television – there are no “do overs” in that situation. So it is what it is.
I Wondered When I’d See This
Since its inception in February 2007, Designing Better Libraries has pretty much been a lone voice in the library blogosphere – or the profession itself -Â when it comes to discussing design thinking – and pretty much anything about design in any sense other than what it has traditionally been for librarians – designing buildings and interiors. As DBL readers know, our treatment of design explores it as a creative mental process that can be used to create better libraries and better user experiences for those who use libraries.
But I didn’t think that it would remain this way for long. There are more than a few ways to discover design, and I knew eventually I’d see someone else writing about it as well. That can be a good thing. Discussions of design is not the sole privilege of DBL, and it can certainly be helpful to have others sharing these ideas. So I was interested to come across an essay in Library Journal’s NetGen column that said “If we are going to look beyond librarianship for a professional model, we owe it to ourselves to study a discipline more akin to ours: design.” I think that’s just one theme we’ve been promoting here at DBL. In his essay “All Work and No Play” Terrence Fitzgerald advocates that what librarians can learn from designers is the value of play. He says that “Designers are taught to approach every problem with a sense of play.” I suppose there is some truth to that. If you’ve ever seen the Nightline segment called “The Deep Dive” you can see that there is a playful spirit at IDEO. There, toys litter the workspace.
While I agree that librarians do design things, such as instructional products, I would argue that there’s more to emulating the design profession than simply being playful. When I watch “The Deep Dive” I see some designers who are quite serious and even a bit competitive. I’m not suggesting that Fitzgerald’s take on the design profession is shallow. It may be that in the short essay he needed to dwell on just one element of the design approach, and thought that encouraging librarians to be more playful would be the best message to share about design work that would make for a sticky message. I certainly agree that we can potentially accomplish more through creativity and play, than simply following the “business as usual” methods that have been in use for…well, too long.
More Evidence That Design And Business Are Blending
I recall seeing a few BusinessWeek articles in the past about design education, but now BusinessWeek has rolled out a great special report  all about design schools, including a ranking of the world’s top design schools. It’s got articles about the schools, about the designers and about the companies that are incorporating more design thinking and practice into their business. I think my favorite read is the article “The Cross-Discipline Design Imperative.” It speaks more directly about design thinking than just about any other article in the special report. From the article:
The word “design” has different meanings in these different schools, and as these meanings intersect, design becomes bigger, something that sits well above vocational skills and techniques. Design is a set of principles and ways of thinking that help us to manage and create in the material world. It values creativity as much as analysis. It is a way of seeing and painting a new, bigger picture…Now business schools and other interdisciplinary graduate programs are entering the fray under the banner of “:design thinking.” They have recognized that the creative principles found in design can be used to develop new solutions for business—and they see this as the next cutting edge…There is a tremendous demand for design thinkers today. In industry and in consulting, those who can marry creative right-brain thinking and analytical left-brain thinking are at a premium. That’s because innovation often happens not in the center of a discipline but in the space between disciplines, and right now a lot of new value is being found at the intersection of design and business.
So grab the issue off your library shelf or take a look at what’s available online. There’s some pretty good reading here.
Design Thinking + Integrative Thinking = Better Library Decision Making
Roger Martin is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the Unviersity of Toronto. He’s been mentioned previously at DBL, particularly for his writings on the need for B-Schools to incorporate more design thinking methods into the curriculum. By way of an article in the June 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, I learned that Martin has a new book coming out titled The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. In this HBR article, “How Successful Leaders Think”, Martin provides an overview of what it means to be an integrative thinker, and how it can lead to successful accomplishments. Based on my reading of the article I find commonalities between design thinking and integrative thinking. That’s no surprise given Martin’s past writings on design thinking. So I ask myself why he now uses the term “integrative thinking” rather than “design thinking.”
To some extent it may be that from a marketing position, the phrase “integrative thinking” be more effective at grasping a reader’s attention and sending a message about the book’s content. Design thinking could be perceived as being more esoteric, and clearly you’d want your book to reach a wide audience. Many experts have described the work of design thinkers as blending multiple disciplines. I came across this most recently in a chapter on creating a symphony, from Pink’s A Whole New Mind, in which he has a chapter on design. Hemple and McConnon, in a 2006 BusinessWeek article titled “The Talent Hunt” described design thinkers as “hybrid professionals” because they combine multiple disciplinary skills into a single mind-set. To my way of thinking that could also describe an integrative thinker – and a blended librarian.
But Martin provides a slightly different perspective on what integrative thinking is, and it’s a bit more than just being a hybrid professional. He studied more than 50 business leaders to identify the characteristics of “how they think”, which Martin sees as being more essential to success than what they do.  What he discovered is that successful leaders all appear to have the ability to blend opposing ideas and to creatively resolve the tension between them. These leaders can take two very different and conflicting ideas and integrate them into a single new idea that is superior and contains elements of the two conflicting ideas – not an easy thing to do. So what can we learn from Martin’s research that could help us to add the power of integrative thinking to our design thinking?
According to Martin, integrative thinking is pretty rare. Why? Well, he says that it’s a process that requires dealing with complexity. He says “Most of us avoid complexity and ambiguity and seek out the comfort of simplicity and clarity…we simplify where we can.” While this seems to run counter to some basic design concepts, namely designing for simplicity, the problem with this according to to Martin is when it comes to decision making, and making great decisions is what makes great leaders great. To avoid complexity most decisions are reduced to a choice between right and wrong. Integrative thinkers develop more creative solutions. Martin then reviews the four stages through which integrative thinkers go on the way to making a decision. In short, integrative thinkers seek less obvious solutions keeping their eye on what is most salient, use nonlinear methods, see the totality of a given problem, and resolve the tension between opposing ideas.
And as some experts believe leadership can be learned, Martin likewise believes that integrative thinking can be learned and practiced. Unfortunately he doesn’t yield much information about how that happens, other than to say it involves developing a “habit of thought.” I suppose he wants to leave us with a reason to buy the book. I think that’s where it all comes back to design thinking. It’s about approaching challenging decisions with a different thought process, one that isn’t status quo for librarians.
Another Design Thinking Video
You’ll recall the short screencast-type video presentation that I created about design thinking. I hope you took a look at it, and that it helped you develop a better understanding of design thinking. BusinessWeek recently issued their own video about design thinking – just a little more professionally designed and developed than my own. What’s great about this video is that it features brief interview segments with some top design thinkers, such as Roger Martin. Their insights into design thinking – and about the people who use this technique – also help to provide a better understanding of what it means. Martin sumarizes this general vagueness of design thinking when he comments that business leaders know they need what designers bring to business, but that they don’t quite know what it is. If that tends to describe you as well, take a few minutes and watch the video.
And while I’m mentioning resources worth checking out, there a fairly new blog that examines innovation, creativity and design. Take a look at Campell on Branding and Innovation: Observations, insights and musing on marketing and design-centered thinking. Campbell is a design student with corporate experience. Looks like this blog is one worth following.
Instructional Design Should Be About Thinking Not Process
In past work John Shank and I have drawn parallels between some core elements of instructional design and design thinking. For example, both begin with efforts to understand users. Both involve prototyping to develop an appropriate product. And both incorporate efforts to evaluate outcomes to determine if the product, as designed, achieved the desired solution. In fact, for those with some background, prior experience with or training in instructional design, it should be a logical leap to grasp the key concepts of design thinking.
A new article about instructional design in the latest issue of Educational Technology (Sept-Oct 2007) titled “A Principle-Based Model of Instructional Design: A New Way of Thinking About and Teaching ID” is primarily about instructional design, but the author makes a case that what it is really about is not the process we’ve all come to know and love – as exemplified by ADDIE – but is really a set of principles and a way of thinking. The author, Kenneth Silber, never mentions the phrase “design thinking” but he writes:
If ID (instructional design) is problem solving (not a systematic procedure), then the real questions are how designers think, and the principles they use.
In drawing his own parallels between the two, Silber develops five principles, one of which is “The thinking process is similar to one designers in other fields use.” In other words, the commonality between the many different fields of design is the application of design thinking. “There is a great deal of similarity between the way IDers think about problems and the way designers in general do” writes Silber.
Silber’s goal is not simply to draw these parallels, but to make a case that instructional design is more about problem solving and thinking of ways to design solutions. If that is the case, and he presents a great deal of literature to support his argument, then he states that instructors of ID should rethink their methods and help learners to understand how to use design thinking to identify problems and determine their solutions. I’ll have to read this one a few more times for it all to sink in, but it was great to find an instructional design instructor whose principles can help us to further refine our thinking about the intersections between instructional design and design thinking.
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Designing A Video Presentation On Design Thinking
Whenever introducing a new idea or concept to your colleagues there’s a possibility that they might encounter some difficulty in grasping it. Then again, it’s important to develop a message or way of introducing this new idea that makes it easier to grasp. I think that’s the point of developing a “sticky” message. It’s the type of message that grabs the listener’s attention, and keeps them focused on the message. The message must also effectively communicate the core concept in a way that is simple and memorable.
So I attempted to design something that would better communicate what design thinking is, and do so in a way that offers a sticky message. I had mentioned in a previous post that I would be working on this. A colleague recently pointed me to Jing, a web-based utility for creating short screencasts. It’s easy to use and works well for short, instructional videos that can quickly be posted on the web so that students who need some instructional or research assistance can be guided to it. I thought this might be a useful tool for creating a message about design thinking.
You can see the results by going to the new design thinking page on my re-designed personal web site (it’s not done yet). On this page you’ll find the link to a 5-minute eClip presentation that serves as a brief introduction to design thinking. There’s a lot more that could be said, and the real challenge was trying to decide what to say, how to say it, and how to present it. In the spirit of design thinking I look at this video presentation (screecast) as a prototype – in fact this is about the fifth iteration so far. I look forward to your comments and suggestions that can help to improve this eClip presentation.
Explaining What Design Is Can Be A Challenge
I’ve always found it a bit of a challenge to find good, short, memorable messages that can provide a simple but powerful way of communicating the concepts behind design thinking. I’m currently reading the book Made to Stick (great read BTW – more on it later), and that’s already providing some good ideas on how to create a better way to deliver the messages that will effectively communicate why this is an important set of skills for librarians who want to design better libraries. As I develop those messages I’ll be sharing them with the readers of this blog for your feedback and opinions. Right now, I am developing some slides and messages (e.g., “design thinking is a way of solving library problems the way designers solve design problems”)- which are a good start but perhaps still too vague to quickly capture an audience’s attention and have them wanting to learn more.
Well I see I’m not the only one trying to develop better ways to, with simple and effective messages, communicate about design and design thinking so that it will stick. Take a look at Design Session 01, a video made by design student David Ngo, that tries to explain what design is. While it is somewhat amateurish and a bit corny in spots it looks like this video, which is the first in what will be a series of videos on design, has some promise. Well, take a look and see what you think. Perhaps a video on design thinking for librarians might have some possibilities?
The Power Of R-Directed Thinking
While we probably have a number of Blended Librarians among the folks who make up the regular readers of DBL, I’m going to assume that the majority of our readers have never heard of the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community (on the Learning Times Network) or participated in a Blended Librarians Webcast event. If that assumption is correct then a good number of you would likely miss a post I recently made to the discussion board at the Community. So I’m going to share it here because I think it also has value for those who are interested in using design thinking to improve their libraries, develop better user experiences for the library user and to get ready for the Conceptual Age. What’s the Conceptual Age you ask. Well, that’s covered in the post. Read on…
A couple of weeks ago Lauren Pressley shared some thoughts on a book she was reading titled “Everything is Miscellaneous” and there was a fair amount of response to her post (if you don’t have time to read the book, I left a link to a video presentation by the author).
In the same spirit of sharing what you’ve been reading I wanted to post about the book “A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel Pink. He begins by explaining how the brain works. In essence the left hemisphere and right hemisphere control different areas of the body. You probably already knew that. But when it comes to thought processes, not just body control, the two sides are very different. The left side produces what Pink refers to as “L-Directed Thinking”. L-Directed Thinking is sequential, literal, functional, textual and analytical; not bad qualities for a traditional librarian – we certainly are text-oriented. The other approach is the “R-Directed Thinking” controlled by the right side of the brain. R-Directed Thinking is simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual and synthetic. While L-Directed Thinking worked well for the knowledge age (think accountants, stockbrokers, computer programmers – and traditional librarians), Pink gives evidence that we are moving away from the knowledge age and into what he calls the “Conceptual Age.” Think of it like this. The coin of the realm in the knowledge age was an MBA. The new coin of the realm in the Conceptual Age is the MFA. To excel in the Conceptual Age, one must “become proficient in R-Directed Thinking and master aptitudes that are high concept and high touch”. After laying out this basic thesis Pink devotes a chapter to each of the specific aptitudes he says are necessary to be a success in the Conceptual Age – what he calls the “six senses”. They are: Design; Story; Symphony; Empathy; Play; and Meaning. [Note to DBL Readers – the chapter on design is inspiring but on a practical level there are a number of good ideas and resources at the end of the chapter for becoming more design oriented and thinking like a designer).
I commend you to read the book to learn more about each sense – particularly design because that’s an important skill for a Blended Librarian. But what really resonated with me when I read the book is how much of it reflected what being a Blended Librarian is all about. To my way of thinking, Pink could have subtitled his book “What You Need To Know To Be A Blended Librarian” – but then he probably wouldn’t have sold as many copies. For example, in the section on symphony, he talks about “boundary crossers”. A boundary crosser is someone who blends multiple skills into one profession. Pink says “while detailed knowledge of a single area (e.g., traditional librarianship) once guaranteed success, today the top rewards go to those who can operate with equal aplomb in starkly different realms.” Sounds to me like a good way to describe the importance of being a Blended Librarian.
So if you think of yourself as a Blended Librarian, and you really have been working to incorporate new skills from the areas of technology (computing, networking, software, teaching technology, etc) and design (instructional design, design thinking, etc.) into your traditional librarianship skill set, then you are probably also an R-Directed Thinker. You are probably ready for the Conceptual Age. But just to be on the safe side, pick up a copy of A Whole New Mind (well, the traditional librarian in me forced me to get a copy via ILL) and brush up on all six senses.
If you’ve read the book too – or when you do – please share some of your thoughts here.
I hope you enjoyed the mini-review of the book – obviously biased in some ways. But if you have in interest in Blended Librarianship you can learn more at the website (link in first paragraph). I would encourage you to join (no fee – and you can join by going to the Blended Librarians website) the Community and join us for the next Blended Librarians webcast (totally free) on Thursday Oct. 27 at 3:00 pm EST. John Shank and I will be giving a presentation on design thinking for librarians. To learn more and register (free – but you must register) join the Community and get more information on the “What’s New” page.