“It is not about the world of design, it is about the design of the world.”
– Bruce Mau
Are you a designer? If you were a teacher or office assistant, you might shake your head and laugh, no. But if you have ever created a unique system for grading homework, or made an emergency doorstop out of a chopped eraser, you have probably engaged in some design thinking. Creative problem-solvers and innovators will be gathering at the Design Thinking unConference (DTUC) on August 19-20 at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design on Granville Island.
“Design Thinking” is the creative, no-holds-barred thinking process used by designers when solving a challenge, according to a definition by The Economist. The new idea in this field is that methods and approaches taken by designers are more widely applicable, and can be used by people other than designers.
The unconference is expected to draw not only design industry professionals and members of the over 7,000-member strong Linkedin group on Design Thinking, but also people from diverse fields including health, business, education and urban planning.
Why design thinking?
The Design Thinking unConference was conceived by Vancouverite Steven Forth, CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations in Cambridge, Massachussetts. A former Japanese-language translator who currently works on software solutions on value-based pricing out of Vancouver, Forth embodies the multi-disciplinary, global-scale thinking that characterizes many people in the design community.
“This specific unconference is just one small act in my long-term aspiration to make Vancouver a much more design-centric city,” Forth said. “I want design to be encoded into the way people interact with each other, how they make decisions, and what kind of companies they create.”
“Everyone is a bit of a designer,” he added. Online technologies and manufacturing have evolved to allow people to have more input into the way things are designed and manufactured on a smaller scale closer to home. Already, people are in the habit of designing and customizing their own T-shirts, personal websites and consumer products. The shift from passive consumer to active participant in design can have an enormous impact when more people start to take an active interest in designing their city, their political institutions and economy.
“The more we're able to critically think about design, the more effective we're going to be as citizens,” he said.
Photo sourced from Change by Design
The unConference
The format of the “unconference” itself is a prime example of how design thinking was used to change the traditional “conference” into a more interactive format that emphasizes issues over the celebrity status of speakers.
At the Design Thinking unConference event, participants can “pitch” discussion sessions, verbally presenting their ideas, then having these proposals mounted on a wall grid, arranged in time slots, where people can choose to join whatever sessions pique their interest throughout the day.
“An unconference is much better for people attending,” said Forth. “I’ve heard it said many times by people who had a real unconference experience, that they can never sit in a dark room, waiting for the Q&A period, listening to a PowerPoint presenter drone on and on… I don't want to go to a conference and listen to some guy speak to me. But I do like to go to places where new ideas come out of conversations.”
According to the schedule, Friday will kick off with a design thinker's tour of Vancouver, led by Trevor Boddy, a local design thinker and prominent architecture critic (his riveting speech on the historical forces that have shaped Vancouver and its current influence on other cities, Vancouverism and its discontents, can be accessed here ).
The unConference starts in the afternoon with a series of round table discussions to explore core issues of design thinking, led by active Design Thinking LinkedIn group members and drawing upon some of the most active online group discussions. A full-day “pure” unconference experience is planned for Saturday.
It’s through these discussion sessions, Forth said, that unconference participants can exchange ideas with Vancouver’s finest design thinkers. “The really successful sessions at unconferences are the ones that turn into conversations." He hopes that a lot of city planners will turn up for the event so that they can put current city design issues up for discussion.
The unconference would be an excellent way to highlight big design problems in Vancouver such as homelessness and increasing density of the downtown core, and everyone is invited to propose their own discussion topic at the events, he said.
Design Thinking and solving social problems on the DTES
So who uses design thinking? Why should people concern themselves with it?
While the issue is still hotly debated, Forth said that design thinking isn’t just a niche interest for design industry professionals, but an essential skill from which people on all levels of society can benefit.
“All of us shape our built environment,” he said. “Many of us take the built environment (our designed world) as if it is a given, not realizing how much of it is the result of human choice and historical accident, and how much of it can be changed.”
Judi Piggott, a co-organizer of DTUC, asserts that she is not a part of the “traditional” design community. But as indicated by the name she’s given her business, Synergy by Design, Piggott sees that design thinking is applicable in any field that requires innovative problem solving. Or, rather, "generative solution-finding," as she put it.
“People working in social change may not label themselves design thinkers,” she said. “But when you explain what it is, they say, oh that's what I do. That’s why I was immediately drawn to the Design Thinking group on Linkedin. It was the Thinking part of the concept that made the connection with me.”
Although it can be intimidating to read through the Linkedin discussions and see people debating about “design kata” and “model-based thinking,” the basic aim of design, according to Piggott, is fairly clear.
“Design happens when creativity meets constraint (I think I’m paraphrasing Clay Shirky here),” she said. “You can have all kinds of creativity going on, but it is the challenge of meeting serious constraints that requires the designing mindset. It’s the process that was used to save the lives of Apollo 13 astronauts, by prototyping on Earth with only the materials available on the spacecraft.”
“Creative ideas can’t succeed if you don't have resources, but design thinkers tend to see resources where others don’t. Perhaps this is the greatest identifier of design thinkers: we tend to see limitations as challenges and in some way this offers hope, where that may be in short supply, particularly with longstanding problems or entrenched issues.”
As a concrete example, she pointed to the WaterWheel, a simple, low-cost solution which allows women and children in developing countries to push up to 90 litres of water in a rolling container, rather than making multiple trips, carrying heavy jugs on their heads.
Design Thinking, she said, was the thinking process of coming up with innovative solutions for challenges like this. Design thinking is what enables us to accommodate pre-existing constraints such as the number of lanes needed for x amount of cars in Vancouver, and still provide alternatives that fit with changing needs.
The high rate of poverty and addiction in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, according to Trevor Boddy, is a direct result of the concentration of bars and social housing projects in that one area of the city. If design played a large part of the problem, it could be by design changes that the community can begin to heal.
Bike lanes photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
As an example of recent design changes that could impact the city, Forth points to separated bike lanes: how do they affect peoples' experience of a city? Should Vancouver continue to build separated bike lanes like Amsterdam, or follow the model of Copenhagen, where pedestrians, cars and bikes are all share the same road? Is it possible to mix the two in the same city? Without judging one solution to be better than the other, Forth suggested that people should be more engaged in exploring the options for design decisions that would impact their city’s future.
Customization, local production and Local Motors
Whether we realize it or not, Forth argues, design thinking is becoming increasingly important in the 21st century. After an age in which people defined themselves by consumption, he said, people are on the cusp of entering one in which they define themselves through social networks and by how they engage in design.
Signs of this shift are subtle, yet everywhere. He pointed to the increasing shift toward customization and local production, led by companies such as Local Motors, an Arizona-based company which allows users to design their own cars, built in the U.S. The cars not only more environmentally friendly, being built in regional microfactories, but also put the power of designing into the hands of people who use the products.
“We need to make much more control over the design of our built environment but we can't do that, unless we talk about it. We need a language that we share,” he said.
For Forth and for many of the design thinkers around the world, sustainability will be a key focus of using design thinking to change and affect the built environment.
“We need to find modes of economic growth that does not require vase increase usage of resources,” he said. “Our future economy depends on it.”
The Design Thinking unConference in Vancouver will take place on August 19-20 at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design on Granville Island.
To become part of the conversation, see http://dtuc.org/