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Applying The Mindsets Of Design Thinking To Fund My Book Project

Posted on: 26 ago 2013


"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think" Edwin Schlossberg 

Being passion driven by an idea is an amazing feeling. And if you are a design thinker passion driven by an idea is even better, because you know the procedures and skills needed to try to make your idea real.

Furthermore, What if you google-it and find no conversation...nothing? Well, it's even greater, because it means that you've come out with a worldwide NEW IDEA...It's the final kick off: You know that you HAVE TO DO SOMETHING.

My idea is a VISION I want to share, because it is not only mine: It came out to me through amazing synchronicity, spontaneous co-creation and self understanding...I only had to connect the dots.

My challenge is to make my idea real by applying the skills and mindsets of design thinking to come up with a solution.
Prototype of my book


My idea, my vision

-->Background:
My mode of thinking involves images. I image-think. I literally envision my thoughts, ideas and I also elaborate what I think, how I write and talk and communicate through images. Since this is how I operate since I can remember, so I have analyzed and found the pattern of my image-thinking mode, and developed my own techniques and processes.

On the other hand, I work as Marketing Communications Strategist: I had learned to adjust my image-thinking to a rationalistic mode of thinking context, since that is how the world interacts. I'm  a hub between the two ways of thinking, at the intersection of two worlds.

I also embrace design thinking (created my own definition)  

Design Thinking (wikipedia): As a style of thinking, design thinking is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. [...] its broader use in describing a particular style of creative thinking-in-action is having an increasing influence on twenty-first century education across disciplines.

A question that was bugging me lately: WHY Design Thinking now? 

Connecting Dots

By reflecting on "Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking" by Yuasa Yauso, I had a kind of epyphany:


Yuasa Yauso, i(湯浅 泰雄 1925 – 2005) was a Japanese philosopher who wrote "Overcoming Modernity: Synchronicity and Image-Thinking": Yuasa's last writings reconsider the modern Western paradigm of thinking and in its place proposes a more holistic worldview. Many topics are examined, including the relationships between language, being, psychology, and logic, synchronicity, the Yijing (Book of Changes);  mind and body... This new paradigm involves what Yuasa calls "image-thinking," a mode of thinking that incorporates image-experience". 

I wanted (needed) to start a book project: 

-->My book Title: "Image-thinkingThe Why of Design Thinking" 

"Inspired by Yuasa Yauso, I will share with you my own thoughts and connections found between Image-Thinking, Design Thinking and Synchronicity. As well as my image-thinking techniques and processes".

I need to investigate the following insights:
  • Image-Thinking: A new language, a new philosophy?
  • Image-thinking as the previous step to Design thinking?
  • Is Design Thinking spreading Image-thinking? (Overcoming Modernity)
  • Design Thinking as a collective response to centuries of rationalist supremacy?
  • Could Design Thinking be categorized as a discipline of this new philosophy?
  • Image-Writing, Image-talking, Image-Communicating and Co-creation
  • Is social media the paradigm of Synchcronicity as "world of the collective unconscious"?
But...How Am I going to fund my project?

And then (again), it occurs one of those amazing synchronicity-situations
For professional reasons, I 'm enrolled at Stanford’s Design Thinking Action Lab by Leticia Britos Cavagnaro (I recommend it to you). In this course, Leticia and her team break down the roadmap of a challenge: Identifying a problem, generating ideas and testing them.
While preparing the different assignments proposed by Leticia during the last 5 weeks, I was inspired to create a roadmap adapted to my own challenge:


My Book Project is 100% driven by Design Thinking mindsets:


Problem Statement

  • I'm not a famous author
  • I need to do some research: I might need to travel to a couple of places 
  • I write in English but I’m not native: I'm definetely going to need an English Editor...A good one 
  • I want my book published in English and Spanish 
  • And a MUST: I need my book beautifully designed and printed!!! 
  • And I need time. Time=money 
I need 30.000€ to fund my project.


Ideate, Pretotype and Test

My special thanks to:
-Leticia Britos Cavagnaro and team. Stanford’s Design Thinking Action Lab Novoed 2013
-My colleges at Google+Design Thinking Action Lab - Diverse Team



A Visualization of My Writing Process

Posted on: 11 ago 2013

Sooner or later, everything comes together. 


I haven't written a blog post since July 12th: Last 3 weeks I have disconnected completely from my personal threat of thinking: Let's call it a "refresh-and-reframe-me" period.
Now that I'm back to my beloved routine, I feel a little overwhelmed: I have plenty of ideas that I want to write about, but I like them all! Which idea I choose? So what I do is a kind of image-thinking that I call "be inspired by the eyes": Instead of "thinking", what I do is "imaging" by recalling recent images that have made a great impact in me: I know that this process will point me to the idea I'm going to start writing about...and then I have another idea... 


What if I shared with you how I design-think-write through images?

This is a visualization of my Inspiration: This is an example of how I apply DESIGN THINKING AS DECONSTRUCTIVE THINKING PROCESS to my blog post writing, and how I relate images to my thoughts:


Image nº1 {  Andrew Wyeth The Helga Pictures}


My primary inspiration: This book made a great impact in me for many reasons, but I don't know how to connected it to any of the ideas I have in mind...yet. 

--> Design Thinking Attitude: Patient. Confidence based in gut instinct. I know I'll find the connection. Persevere.
Next step to follow the threat: A question Can I relate this image to an emotion I have felt recently?



The Helga Pictures are a series of more than 240 paintings and drawings of German model Helga Testorf created by Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) between 1971 and 1985. Testorf was a neighbor of Wyeth's in Chadds FordPennsylvania, and over the course of fifteen years posed in secret, for Wyeth indoors and out of doors, nude and clothed, in attitudes that reminded writers of figures painted by Botticelli and Édouard Manet

Image nº2 {  A photo of me in the train, looking through the window }


Following the thread:  The picture was taken while I was concentrated observing. It's a kind of meditation to me. A moment of quiet stillness. Need these moments in my every day life. Inspired by the eyes. I remember myself thinking for a moment in Andrew Wyeth and his fifteen years of secretive painting of Helga...It fascinated the story and loved his quiet art... and then I remember Wyeth words about loneliness (had to googled for the quote):
"Then I remember that I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.“I think anything like that — which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone — people always feel is sad. 
Is it because we’ve lost the art of being alone?”

--> Design Thinking Attitude: Concentration, observation, empathy, connecting dots...and more patience.

Next step to follow the threat: I can feel I am very close to elaborate an idea that I'm going to like...so I leave it there and think of something else. 
I check my network.



Image nº3 {  @MarkBradford retweet  }

My network as inspiration and co-creation:  I have an AHA moment when I read this tweet and follow the thread





{ Everything I had in mind comes to me like this }:


{ ...And I know that I want to write about the importance of creating moments of solitude and stillness to connect the dots...in my next post.} Instead, 

I'm going to dedicate this post to this unusual, bizarre, beautiful and inspiring video titled "Le Pigeon" — a pigeon-centered design by   


--> Design Thinking Attitude: Solitude and stillness are essential to any Design Thinking processes and so is flexibility.


[ Please watch this! ]













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