Innovation and Design Thinking

Dr. Mamatha T
 Introduction
• What is Design Thinking
• Why Design thinking
• Stages of Design Thinking
• Examples of Design thinking Products
• Companies using Design Thinking
 Introduction
• Design thinking is both an ideology and a process that
seeks to solve complex problems in a user-cen
• The ideology behind design thinking states that, in
order to come up with innovative solutions, one must
adopt a designer’s mindset and approach the problem
from the user’s perspective.
• At the same time, design thinking is all about getting
hands-on;
• the aim is to turn your ideas into tangible, testable
products or processes as quickly as possible
 Why Design Thinking
• Embrace Incubator
– Problem:
– Every year approximately 20 million premature and low-birth-weight
babies are born.
– Unfortunately, 4 million babies die within the first month.
– In addition to that, 99% of the death happens in low to middle income
countries.
– Many people cant afford to save their babies life because the life saving
device ‘The infant incubator’ is highly expensive for poor people to
afford.
– It costs about $25,000 for a single unit and completely out of reach
for
poor people.
 Why Design Thinking

• Empathize to Innovate
– The Principle of Human human-centered design asks
Designers to “empathize with the end user.”
– One of the team members Linus Liang got funding for
a trip to Nepal so as deeply understand the unmet
needs associated with incubators.
• Insights from Visit
– Linus saw that Many of the hospital’s donated
incubators were empty because babies who needed it
were often born miles away.
– Consequently, making the travel impossible for a new
mom and her child in a poor village.
 Why Design Thinking
• With these insights they reframed their Design challenge
– “How might we create a baby-warming device that helps
parents in remote villages give their dying infants a chance to
survive?”
• Ideate/Solution or Reframed the existing solution
– “design an ultra low cost, portable way of maintaining babies’
temperatures without the use of electricity.”
– They created tiny sleeping bag containing a paraffin-based pouch
which once warmed up can maintain temperature for up to four
hours.
– The innovative solution was portable to be used at home to keep
baby warm at the correct temperature anywhere in the world
[1].
 Embrace Incubator
• The team took the prototype to India to
get further feedback. They spoke to many
nurses,
moms, midwives, shopkeepers and
incorporated all the feedback to further
iterate their prototype.
• After extensive clinical testing and making
over 100 prototypes, the Embrace Infant
warmer was finally born.
Incubator
Embrace Incubator
Stages of design Thinking

• https://youtu.be/-ySx-S5FcCI
Organizations that use design thinking for creating
innovative solutions:
– Toyota.
– Apple.
– Microsoft.
– Samsung Electronics.
– Bank of America Corp.
– PepsiCo.
– Nike.
 Unit -1
Process of Design

• Media Models
• Media Cascades
• Prototyping
• Tangible Media Business modeling
 Media Models
• Objective of the research was to design tool to assist
designers and business managers during product
development.
• Media Models are representation of newly developed
product
• Media Models only present slice of actual or finished
project
• Purpose of Media Model is to develop instructional
framework which improves product and service
development .
• Resolution and Abstraction are the two properties of
media Model observed by Edelman
 Media Models
• Resolution: Level of refinement or granularity of a finished product from
shared representation.
• Rough Sketches and prototypes exhibit low resolution or less details.
• The Left car as low resolution
• The right car was designed using CAD which is of high resolution
 Media Models
• Abstraction: Amplification through simplification or pulling specific characteristics
out of context.
• Sketches are more abstract than physical model in the context of designing a physical
object since 3D object is reduced to 2D sketch.
• Possibility of translating something that is familiar into something unfamiliar.
• In High Abstraction details are missed as compared to low abstraction
 Insight
• The material used in the design process of car
• Wood material- car is more abstract.
• Purpose of choosing wood as material is that designers
should not get trapped in how cars are designed
• Steel material- Less abstract and gives a
better understanding of the design of the car.
• Hence abstraction can make familiar to
unfamiliar
• Note:
• Manufactured products are not abstract they are actual things which
would have undergone number of optimization before manufacture
 Four Classes of Abstraction

• Material used in creating a prototype(wood,

steel, wax , paper , cardboard etc)
• Formal :Shape or appearance of product.
• Functional : How does it work like ?
• Mathematical :Dimensions of Product
 Media Cascades
• Media cascades represent sequence of representations through which
projects develop in the course of project development cycle.
• In the example here the media cascades used are :
– Product Brief
– Rough sketches
– Rough prototypes
– CAD models
– Functional Prototypes
– Finally actual working model
– Maps(Empathy map)

• These are different examples of representation of the same class or

product
• Each representation as different levels of resolution and
abstraction.
Need for Faculty Feedback System
Empathy Map
Media Model Cascade
Sequence of representations though which projects develop and unfold in
different media during the course of a development cycle, and which we
refer to as a media-cascade.
Brief of product
Rough sketches
Prototype
CAD model
Functional Prototype
Actual Product
 Media Model Framework
• Media is the representation of new product in
model
development through various designs and prototypes
Example of Chair using CAD Software
 Process modelling tools
• Flowchart
• Function Flow Block diagram
• Gantt Chart
• PERT diagram
• UML diagram
Flow Diagram for Login
 Gantt Chart
A Gantt chart is a graphical representation of activity against time. A Gantt
chart is a project management tool assisting in the planning and scheduling of
projects. Gantt charts are useful when the production process is fairly simple
and the activities aren’t interrelated.
Gantt Chart –Example
 PERT
Program Evaluation and Review Technique
• A PERT chart is a project management tool
that provides a graphical representation of a
project's timeline.
System Modelling Objects
 Insights from frame work
CAD Model
• CAD models are highly abstract and highly resolved.
• It leads to Convergent conversations.
• CAD model is example for parametric modelling
• In CAD specific and actual physical things are reduced
to geometric boundaries and lines which have no
specific material existence..
• CAD model represent entire class of object and not
one real object Hence they are highly abstract.
• Advantage of using CAD as Media Model
• Clearly defines features
• No ambiguity
• Reduces uncertainty.
 Insights from frame work
Rough Sketches and Prototype

• Rough Sketches and prototype show low

resolution and varying levels of abstraction.
• In designing a physical object (Like a car) sketches
are more abstract since 3D object is represented
using 2D sketch.
• Media models represent different levels of
completion since it only represents the slice of
actual or finished project and not the
manufactured product.
 Categories of Media Models
• Based on degree or level of
completeness Media models are
categories into
– Ambiguous
– Mathematized
– Hybrid
 Ambiguous Media Model
• Ambiguous Media
• Examples :Rough Sketches and
Rough prototypes
• They show divergent conversations.
• Divergent thinking is the process of devising
more than one solution for a problem
statement.
• Alternate solution to a problem
 Ambiguous Media
Not clear about the idea
 Ambiguous Media
• What does this prototype according to you?
• It is a Communication Device
Divergent Thinking
 Divergent Thinking
• Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas
by exploring many possible solutions.
• The divergent stage pushes you to explore all possible options, while the
convergent stage ensures you’ve chosen the most appropriate solutions given the
context.
• Everyone involved in this type of thinking will look for unexpected combinations
and connections between remote associations.
• Divergent thinking sparks creativity specifically because of its spontaneous.
• Divergent thinking is used in the initial stages of ideation on a project or task—
when we have a challenge to solve and we need to brainstorm or iterate on
creative solutions
• One great example of divergent thinking in action is in the early days of Twitter.
Twitter took a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach to their application.
They created an online service without a clear practical application or market,
launched it to see how people would use it, then refined it.
 Mathematized Model
• They are convergent Conversation
• They represent a complete media model
• They are more realistic and highly refined.
• Mathematized media models afford Parametric adjustment
• The fig below is example of Mathematized Model
 Convergent Thinking
• The principle aspect of convergent thinking is that it should
help us arrive at a single best answer without any room for
ambiguity.
• Convergent thinking is exactly opposite of what divergent
thinking is.
• The term ‘Convergent Thinking’ was coined by Joy Paul
Guilford in 1956
• The concept of convergent thinking requires the design
thinker to go through all the possible solutions thought
during divergent thinking and come up with a correct
solution.
• Convergent thinking requires
• Accuracy, efficiency, logical reasoning, and techniques.
 Parametric Modelling
• Parametric modelling is a modelling
process with the ability to change the shape
of model geometry as soon as the dimension
value is modified.
• Example of Parametric modelling
• CAD model, Mathematized Model
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GQHaYd

mULs (Example of parametric modelling using

Fusion 360)
 Paradigmatic Modelling
• Media that exhibits low levels of resolution
and high levels of abstraction is paradigmatic
model.
• Rough sketches and rough prototypes are
examples of paradigmatic modelling.
• Paradigmatic modelling enables big changes in
the model.
 Hybrid Media Model

• Hybrid Thinking is the ability to integrate different ways of thinking

and jump between. ... Music, dance, drama, drawings, symbols,
wood, clay, body language, play, silence, noise, presence, absence,
words, writing — they are all means of communication and each
require a different way of thinking.

• They are Flexible

• Explores how elements are related to one another
• Usage of Physical interfaces with high level frameworks
• Involves different types of medias like – Photographs, drawings and
Text
• Hybrid model affords more understanding and changes in
relationships.
 Advantage of Hybrid Thinking
• Successful design projects depends on wide
variety of media model or have broad
bandwidth of media-models employed .
• Varying kind of media model give different
perspective of thinking and enables different
kinds of exploration.
• Translating from one kind of media model to
another gives more insights in product
development.
 Cognitive Strategies
• Cognition- mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge
Is and understanding.

• It is through the agency of media-models that various kinds

of thinking occurs.
• Success of product depends on ability to employ different
cognitive strategies
• By moving the choices of representation around
the framework different kinds of thinking evolves.

• Insight into a product is gained by translating concept into

media with varying levels of resolution and abstraction.
 Understanding the Cognitive Prosthesesof a
shared team in Product development
• When Edelman team interacted with product
development team they noted down the
following behaviours of the team.
– Statement of intention – Agreeing or Not
Agreeing
– Asking process questions- how to
– Envisioning user scenarios
– Enacting user scenarios
– Experiencing eureka moments
 Statement of Intention
• If teams were not satisfied with a convergent
conversation or a single solution then they
(team) would.
– One team would agree to change the model
completely.
– Other team would not agree on discarding the
model but would like to improvise on the model.
 Asking Process Questions

• Process Questions refers to how team will

approach the problem and not focusing on
the problem itself.
• Example making assumptions on whether the
product will be used in the field or lab
• Whether the product is for mobile or web
 Envisioning User Scenarios
• Envisioning User Scenarios: Trying to understand how the user will use a product
and what are the difficulties he may face in course of using a product.

• What is the difference between use case and user scenario?

• A Use Case is a major task.
• User Scenarios are the various ways that task can play out.
• So, Every Use Case has one or more scenarios.
• The Use Case is the abstract, the User Scenarios are a catalog of all possible
instances of that abstract task.

• Enact a scenario about use of an object or product in development.

• A user scenario is from a customer's point of view, sometime it's incorrect or
incomplete. It may have no consideration on performance, on error handling, or
nothing on the backend

• And Eureka moments

 User Scenarios
• Use Case A: User authenticates with id and
password.
• User Scenarios:
1.ID is recognized, password is correct.
("sunny day" scenario)
2. ID is recognized, password is
incorrect.
3. ID is recognized, password is incorrect for
third time.
4. ID is not recognized.
 Envision User Scenario
• The Cad model may be considered to be an
anchor object when it is the single reference
point that influences the conversation.
• When teams generate several user scenarios,
they loosen the authority of the anchor object,
and the user scenarios themselves become new
anchor objects, affording new perspectives that
allow the team to make changes in the CAD
model, which is now a mutable object.
Anchor and Mutable Object
 Business Process Modelling
• BPM is a tool that organisation use evaluate their
current product.

• Media Model for BPM

– Text and Narratives
– Process Modelling Tools (Graphical Representation)
Flowchart, Gantt chart, Functional Flow Diagram
 Open and Closed Model
• Media that allows collaboration is open and
media that restricts collaboration is closed.
• Often, the modeling that is done with software
can be considered closed, as it keeps control of
the model and possible changes in the model in
the hands of a few people that are experts with
the software tool.
• Another characteristic of closed models is that
they contain little or no explicit affordance
inviting change from stakeholders.
 Insight of BPM Model
• The media of BPM has little affordance for direct
user involvement.
• Process experts own and drive the model. As a
result, domain experts are left to watch.
• This means that they have difficulty accessing the
kinds of thinking that hands-on work fosters.
• Second question became, “How can we create an
open media in order to give direct involvement to
BPM end users?”
Media model used in Development of
Tangible Business Process Modelling
• Role Playing with Legos
• Post-It Notes
• System Modelling Objects
 Role Playing using Lego
• How does Lego use design thinking?
• In this method, the design thinking group uses
the Lego bricks to build models that reflect
challenges and find solution for problems.
• Lego bricks extend their role as a play toy to
contribute to design thinking inside large
organizations through the Lego Serious Play
tool.
 Advantage of LEGO bricks
• Help generating innovative ideas and solutions.
• Building quick prototype of ideas.

• Each team member creates the core model using the basic bricks
and starts to add, enhance or modify it as creative thinking flows.

• Lego bricks can turn the discussion into a real challenge with fun
and joy.

• The Lego method encourages participants to learn and listen to

others in the group.

• Each participant has a voice and shares ideas equally with

the
whole group.
Out of Box Thinking
Post-It Media
 Pros and Cons of Post-it Media
• Excellent memory aid for domain experts in recalling the
steps of their processes.
• Even though R Notes are easily moveable
rearrangeable,
Post-It and did not seem to encourage
they
experts to express their
domain
processes in terms of parallelism or
alternatives.
• Post-It R Notes allowed domain experts to quickly
enumerate the steps of their process, but did not lead to
greater depth in their understanding.
• In respect to the media-models framework, Post-It R Notes are
less abstract and less resolved than traditional BPM media
 Referenc
e
[1].https://blog.experiencepoint.com/2010/02/

16/design-thinking-in-action-embrace-global/