Changing my way of thinking

When I read Tim Brown’s Design Thinking article this week, it felt familiar. All my preconceived ideas regarding design were exactly what he described.

“Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in the development process — the point where designers, who have played no earlier role in the substantive work of innovation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around the idea.”

I thought that someone had an idea and invented it. Then the designers tidied it up and made it appealing to the consumer.

So in reality, in the twenty-first century, the digital age has transformed the design industry. The IDEO cycle of design has shifted. However, it is very familiar to me. In training, we use the ADDIE Model. Analyse, design, develop, implement and evaluation.

One difference I do notice is rather than starting with the end state of requirements, I start with the driving questions that push for the innovation. It builds a solution through a journey of questions and research to enable the innovative solution.

SO it is time to re-phrase my assignment 3. I still have a problem, I have an ugly and poorly accessible interface. However, I will start to ask what does the user want. How do you want to use the software and where? Not what I think they need.