Talking Design Thinking: Communicating Ideas (1)

I keep on investigating Design Thinking processes involved in communicating ideas on social media. Ideation in action. I also want to test my own DT capacities and discover some I didn't know I had.

Last year I was focused on communicating by writing about Design Thinking-in-action, and this year I 'm going to investigate and analyze the process of communicating by talking about Design Thinking related insights.
My first test goes as follow:

I defined what I wanted to communicate and wrote it down (below), and then I used this text as my talking script (on video).

My question to my design-thinking-self is: Why the result is not the same? 

My script was:

"Hi, I'm Pilar Saura, a designer focused on making ideas real. 
Last year I begun investigating design thinking processes applied to communicating ideas on social media. My creative move was to launch a blog about design thinking-in-action, where I could create my own design story...and as a platform of learning by acting and testing, observing my own theories about design thinking methods and tools involved, and most important, to push further my own limits. The CONCLUSION was meaningful to me…and it's been fun.
This year I'm going to investigate (experience) the difficulty of talking about ideas and design thinking: In this project I'm going to focus on the design thinking methods and processes involved in sharing and communicating complexity in social media, not in the outcome ….Let's see what I can learn by pushing my limits and hustler some more...This is my challenge. Let's see what happens".

I'm a hustler: I just cannot help it...

Designing A Life Part 1

My thoughts about applying design thinking principles to designing a life.

We all are designers of our lifes: We all have to develop a strategy and design our way to get where we want to go, our intimate, vital sense of purpose...and we all have to make decisions, and choose paths and iterate, and learn to fail fast, and test, and manage different contexts, and empathize and...choose a destiny-a why- from the heart when we think we are not ready to do so (need to apply intuition and instinct). 
Life happens and so does our design thinking ability.

I love metaphors as ideas made images or viceversa. Maybe this one would help to prototype the designing-a-life experience:

Designing a life is like mailing a blank letter to your future self. The most important decision is choosing the stamp.  

The stamp represents the path, your destination: Where you want to go, who you want to be, how you want to feel, what you don't want at all. In other words, the destination you choose represents the why, what and the how... of (who) YOU: They conform a person’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. 
The blank letter represent the process that would take you to your chosen destination. It is going to be written and updated by you with your findings, learnings, experiences, while you itinerate and act. The process it’s something we grow — we create and build over previous experiences and insights.


Your chosen goal or destiny
I find Viktor Frankl’s  "The meaning of life" totally inspiring:

What man actually needs is not some tension-less state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.

You hold onto to your destiny along the process, while itinerating. Your understanding of it would improve over time. 

Design Thinking principles applied 
There are a few abilities that might take you years of personal work, such as pattern recognizing in order to understand, measure, compare, predict and develop skills that will help you understand contexts, people...including you. You cannot effectively lead your life if you failed to understand you. You cannot scale your life without inner leadership. Need to learn to lead, and need to learn to follow.

You lead, you follow you. 

Life experience will increase your understanding over the years; You will change your mind a thousand times; Follow wrong paths; Failed furiously over and over again, and forget your WHY...  But you don't leave because you're the problem and the solution that you are trying to solve. 

How big of a problem it is? How much of you are you willing to pay? How painful is this problem going to be? What can you create that is going to solve this problem? Is is worthy?


Important questions

What can happen if you don't stick to your destiny?
Are you and your process sustainable?
Understanding the context?
Considering a human-centered perspective?



One more Design Thinking principle 

No situation repeats itself, but emotions do.

Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, each situation needs a different response, but it might make you feel similar to other experiences... 

Prototyping your sensations. 

Design thinking attitude
My "letter to your future self" metaphor is an idea with radical implications that it requires further and transcendent thoughts. 

Questions to myself:

• Choosing one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances is crucial.
• Setting a meaningful, honest, difficult and almost impossible goal can be a life inspiration
• The life-process is everything, and as meaningful as achieving the goal itself.

The goal defines your life, therefore, your life process, your own design. 

"And yet fulfilling work doesn’t come from the path of least resistance" Viktor Frankl

Note: "The most important decision is choosing the stamp-destination"  



Fostering Macroempathy 

Life experiences are part of our vital CV and show off our multiple selves, values and talents and also tell our personal exposure to other realities, therefore, life experiences frame our capacity of understanding others.

Why life experiences are not crucial in our professional CV?

Designer's Most Significant Ability Is Context Definition

Expanding the notion of what it means to be a designer.

Designers most significant ability is to understand multiple contexts and, therefore, identify constraints. 

Designers are strategics that translate strategy into action. Design thinking-in-action.

The most important skill needed in most design fields is context understanding.
In a problem-solving oriented practice as design,it is vital understanding the context to identifying the constraints and limitations: It is a MUST if the final goal is to take an idea and make it real. So businesses are turning to designers when they want to find something new.

"Great designers bring ideas to life that will align the right solution to the concrete problem: To come up with the adequate solution, first you need to framed the context and its constraints..."

What is a failed design? The one that doesn't  work to solve the problem or request. It might be beautiful, espectacular, super-innovative... but if it's not the right solution for this particular situation, it is a failed design.

"The realization of a mature designer is that the act of making does not matter unless it is considered within the context that it exists". John Maeda  

Design With No Constraints Is Not Design. Identifying the right constraints that would provide the right strategy is vital.  What is design with no constraints? Is art.

I would say that mature designers, as Maeda pointed, are problem solving experts in multiple contexts: To take a more holistic view of how designers work, beyond the focus on the craft and the aesthetics, it's meaningful to point out how designers think -design thinking- and methodology which helps them cope with being THROWN into a situation/context as OUTSIDERS, understand what's the problem and their capacity to catalyzed the insights gathered into creative outcomes.

Design is one of the most empathic professions by necessity, because its own practice and its sucess is about understanding other professional practices and their intrinsic problems. (And their professionals and their particular idiosincracy).


"People who know a lot about a field seldom think to question the fundamentals of their knowledge". It is by questioning the obvious that we make great progress. This is where breakthroughs come from. We need to question the obvious, to reformulate our beliefs, and to redefine existing solutions, approaches, and beliefs. That is design thinking". Don Norman  

Designers are strategists able to translate strategy into action:
So businesses are turning to designers when they want to find something new. 

Design thinking is an essential business strategy. When deciding where to play and how to win, it's totally necessary to have framed and understood the context and the constraints...therefore, its opportunities.
Designers use data, metrics, product flows, and conversion funnels to understand contexts, observe behaviors and empathize with users... and art and aesthethics...and altogether is a great help to opening up new markets, reconfiguring existing ones and envision what would come next.

[Image: "Indonesia" film poster]

Si Quieres Un Trabajo...Invéntatelo

Se necesita crear empleo en España y en Europa. En España necesitamos mucha creatividad para inventarnos más de 6 millones de empleos. Más del 50% de los desempleados son jóvenes.

España necesita creadores y emprendedores: hay que fomentar la creatividad y la innovación en la etapa educativa, en las instituciones, empresas y en la sociedad, entre otras cosas, para ser capaces como sociedad de inventarnos más de 6 millones de empleos.

También se necesita promover espacios y diseñar eventos motivantes que faciliten el intercambio de ideas: la creación implica innovar, apostar, co-crear, financiar, promocionar, colaborar, participar, improvisar y networking. Y divertirse también. Y compartirlo: ¿No os parece que los españoles somos individualmente muy creativos, pero nos cuesta más ser "socialmente creativos"?

Zinc Shower es un evento con un formato, cuanto menos, innovador y que tiene lugar en un entorno increíble de Madrid: El antiguo Matadero Municipal. Además, cuenta con el apoyo de empresas e instituciones que son, se podría decir, "socialmente innovadoras", como el ICEX, EL País, EL Matadero, ENISA, Ministerio de Cultura, Knowdle, Madrid Emprende, Heineken, entre otros.

Zinc Shower es el primer meeting-show para emprendedores, inversores y profesionales de las industrias culturales y creativas que tiene lugar en Madrid.

La creatividad es contagiosa. Y si compartes la tuya, mucho mejor. Queremos más eventos, más participación, más humanidad.

Should Business People Fear Design Thinkers?

The power of a successful collaboration.

. . . This post inspired by Brian Gillespie post titled, Should Designers Fear Design-Thinking MBA's? 

In my opinion,  business people fear design thinkers and viceversa. It is a mutual fear.

Very few business people know how to work in a creative context and with creative professionals such as designers or design thinkers. Most of them don't like to work with creative profiles because they don't understand them. Some of them distrust of creatives, and some others take them for granted: It's just a "nice to have".

This mutual distrust is caused by a historical gap full of misunderstandings, bad experiences and cultural stereotypes that can be overcome by communicating and acknowledging  each others' expertises. 

In order to be successful in creating and supporting the innovations, both (designer and business person) need to learn the language of finance and marketing and the language of creativity that  will empower both in their discussions to argue strategically and creatively. 

In your post you ask designers to educate themselves on business aspects. I agree and add: Business people must educate themselves also on the pertinent aspects of creativity.

Teaching design thinking principles to business students as MBA electives is very necessary: As you said, these courses do not enable them to develop unique capabilities that can generate business transformation by design, such as the ability to reflect the customer voice through design research and analysis, to visualize and communicate complex information, or to create, test, and evaluate advanced prototypes. This takes a design education, followed by experience, focus, and maturity but, it is a great start for business people to understand creative processes, learn creative language and overcome their fear to work with professionals that probably think (and act...) different than they do.

As you said, 

"It is not about a world where designers do their thing and MBAs do theirs, but rather where both recognize and value the power of a successful collaboration, built on solid communication, that brings the strengths of business and design thinking together to drive business innovation by design".

Thank you Brian Gillespie , great post!





[Image via http://grimper88.egloos.com/1686440]

The Search For Meaning In Professional Practice is Transforming Organizations From Within

Another unscientific conclusion from a design thinker

A culture of authenticity is flourishing and it is transforming organizations and professional practice.

People want to work on stuff that matters…and if it's not happening, they are working to find the way to transform companies and organizations.

Business as usual is not an option anymore

We need to live meaningful lifes. Creating value for more than yourself to give authenticity to your own existence is not enough: There is a need to share values and create awareness that might benefit other people besides yourself. These new social-flow is also creating a foundation and framework for people to do what is valuable for them, for their company and their community. 

It is up to each one of us to give meaning and authenticity to our own existence, including our professionals practice. We want to work on stuff that matters and be honest…and if it is not happening to you right now, you can try to find the way to make it happen. 

Coming up with ways to create meaning in whatever you do is meaningful in itself. Becoming a kind of a startup-in-searching-for-meaning, who wants to share values and authenticity from within the organization you are working for, is a nice challenge, isn't it?

Lindsey Smith commented on my post on GOOD regarding my definition of MacroEmpathy:

This definition is super interesting! I love how you noted your definition on macroempathy - especially leading to a truly empathic and human-centered world. How do we use this definition to change the world? How do we implement macroempathy into society's vocab?

I believe that this global search for meaning is another step towards a global awareness of empathy at the highest levels of leadership and commitment. 

Wisdom from the past:

* Please check Existencialism, a term that belows to our intellectual history. These are my favorite ideas about it:

• "All begins with the experience of the individual and it is up to the individual to give meaning and authenticity to their own existence"
• "What makes this current of inquiry distinct is not its concern with “existence” in general, but rather its claim that thinking about human existence requires new categories"
• "Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher. He proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely ("authentically").

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Also recommend these posts and authors:

Jennifer Pahlka  Founder & Executive Director at Code for America 
Tim O'Reilly Some Lessons for Startups (pdf with notes
Richard Branson The search for meaning. 

Video from the inspiring psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl. 

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Poster by Philographics - The work of Genis Carreras

Big ideas in simple shapes.

Design Thinking Insights | University Marketing

Experiencing and Embedding Design Thinking in Organizations

*Fostering MacroEmpathy in organizations and professional practice

When did Marketing become something else?

The American Marketing Association AMA, gives us a hint with its new 2007 definition of Marketing: Quite revealing because includes the "role and responsibility of marketing in society" and "offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".

There is a significant difference from  1985 official definition:

"Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of idea, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals".

...versus the new 2007 AMA official definition that considers the role and responsibility of marketing in society:

"Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large". (Approved October 2007)

In other words, the new rol of Marketing in society includes to "create value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large" instead of  1985' "planning and executing the conception, pricing [...]  and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals".

I couldn't agree more.

The reality is that the new human-centered business models are asking for embedding Design Thinking professionals in the new breed of Marketing teams.

University Marketing requires more than an exceptional marketing team.
University Marketing professionals need "to do work that matters to you", and they need to have a personal commitment to education,  awareness of the social value of education  and its positive impact on this generation and next.

And develop empathic skills towards the students: Their illusions, passions, fears, commitment, quests....

University Marketing requires professionals that care for the students and also are willing to seek formulas that balance business goals and the institutional commitment to the customer-students best interests.

I have developed my career in the field of Marketing and Advertising as a designer, creative director and strategist for over 25 years. I have worked on projects of varying complexity, which have enricheded me by being in contact with different sectors of society, organizations and corporations and  different customers, audiences, potential clients, targets ... After 6 years working in the education sector, I perceive the practice of my profession diferently. For instance, I don't feel that students are customers at all...They are just students.

My definition of University Marketing is:

"University Marketing is the professional activity that provides planning, strategy, communication and development of creative concepts that aim to give value to the student in the first place,  to the educational institutions and to society in general."

And my job, as a Design Thinking Strategist embedded in a Marketing team, is to create, define and manage the above ... and make it work as a sole Strategy Plan:

• The Strategy must be adequate according to the business goal and the student
• The Plannification must benefit the organization as a whole and the student
• The Communication must be transparent, effective and consistent
• The conceptualization of ideas must enable us to move forward in providing value to the student, the institution and society

The great challenge is tuning it all as a great orquestra with the sole purpose of telling the story of the student and the university.

PHOTO How NASA sees the sun: http://risd.cc/WwCPOe