When it comes to brainstorming and problem solving, Design Thinking is a new and effective method for transforming great ideas into amazing outcomes. Design Thinker Ian Kitajima shares with us why Design Thinking is such an important method for innovation. He alongside Raviraj Pare, & Natalie Waters will be teaching Design Thinking: Design Challenge Saturday, October 24, 2015 from 9:00 am- 5:00 pm.
Why is it important to understand and utilize the Design Thinking process?
Kids are natural Design Thinkers. Creative. Innovative. Unafraid. They have the beginner’s mind – where everything is new and fresh, and amazing. They question everything. “Why?” is their favorite question. But as adults, as we become more educated, more experienced, we’re less creative, innovative, and take less risks. What happened? Design Thinking is a way to bring back what we had as kids. Design Thinking is a human centered problem solving process. The key is it’s a process, an innovation process, and a process can be learned, practiced, and repeated. When someone says “Think outside the box”, the next question is HOW? Design Thinking is HOW.
The Design Thinking strategy has been adopted by numerous organizations, educators, and government agencies. Is Design Thinking something that can be adopted by any field? What can, painters, and other types of artists gain from this design strategy?
Yes, anyone and any field can use Design Thinking. For example, one of the key mindsets of Design Thinking is to embrace experimentation prototyping. The process of rapid prototyping can be transformative because you’re failing constantly, and so failing becomes part of the process but you’re also learning a lot, uncovering valuable insights, and you become more comfortable with failing. Failing is really about learning, and that builds creative confidence. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
What are some projects in Hawaii that have from Design Thinking?
We have used Design Thinking and built teams to better understand the challenges around Broadband Adoption, Tourism, Homelessness, Non-Profit/ Foundation Funding, Venture Accelerators, Climate Change, Castle Complex, Sustainability, Resiliency, and Education. Some of the biggest projects have been cultural change, i.e., organizations using Design Thinking to supercharge their organization’s ability to be more innovative and creative, and customer-centric. Organizations include private, public, government – Hawaiian Telecom, Oceanit, HECO, State of Hawaii Department of Health and other Departments via the IT Transformation initiative. One of the exciting new initiatives being consider at the University of Hawaii is to a course in Design Thinking.
What is the overall goal of Thinking? What would you say is most important to remember during the Design Thinking process?
The goal of sharing Design Thinking is to introduce a common language and common problem solving process into our communities so we have a way to work together. Think of Design Thinking as the new Pidgin English. Pidgin was a way for people from different backgrounds and cultures to communicate, connect, and work together to get things done. Design Thinking as a common language and process is a way to work together to solve Hawaii greatest challenges – education, economy, environment, energy, transportation, housing, and so on. If we could truly work together as a team, using the same language and a human centered problem solving process, what might we achieve?
(Click here to for Design Thinking, Saturday, October 24, 2015, 9:00 am- 5:00 pm.)