#design
By: Perry Timms
Tags: Design Thinking, Solutions, Future, Innovation, Safety

For some time now, I’ve been a practising student of Design Thinking. I think a lot of us are also practising even without knowing it.

Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Others could claim to be an expert in Design Thinking. Like Tim Brown of IDEO — I’d give him that accolade as most of what I know about and do using Design Thinking comes from the IDEO sharing philosophy.

I tend to think we’re all designers though. We design our day, lives, homes, rituals and routines. We don’t always just ‘do’ stuff. There’s a design to it.

Where Design Thinking has helped #TeamPTHR is in our work with clients. We go into organisations where people are experiencing problems or want to capitalise on an opportunity. We then consider what we can offer to them that’s additional to their own skills, experiences and insight and that’s where we often use Design Thinking.

Now, we don’t claim to be exclusive, Design Thinking experts because our clients can Google-search and get the main thrust of what’s needed to use this.

Where we add value is we’re not ‘snow-blind’ to things they wouldn’t necessarily see or sense. We’re impartial and unpolluted by the biases, norms and static that some people experience inside organisations. We’re free-thinking, liberated, and have experiences and ideas they simply don’t have.

Ideas are CRUCIAL to Design Thinking but it’s not that simple.

The Design Thinking model and application is built on this schematic.

It is not that complex a process. So why don’t more people know about it and use it? I don’t know, but often when it is used by us, it’s a new mode of thinking, ideas generating then doing that then gets adopted by our clients. We really like they’re not dependent on us and can use this to their heart's content invariably, they do so.

Anyway, this is not a blog post in the masterclass of Design Thinking. Though, we are building a new series of virtual Design Labs if anyone’s interested (perry@pthr.co.uk if you are).

No, this post is to urge us all to be designers and look at what needs to be redesigned for the coronavirus-impacted world we are part of.

Here’s a bit of a list of what I think needs to be redesigned. Seriously redesigned. If not designed again from scratch.

Commuting and travelling. Packed tubes and trains with standing room only? Forget it. Even sat but squeezed in tightly on a plane, bus or train? Forget it. Dining, drinking and communal spaces. Rammed bars and nightclubs? Tightly packed coffee-shops? Canteens and restaurants? Forget it. Office, factory, warehouse and other working spaces. Close proximity to other people? Forget it. Theme parks, leisure facilities, holiday spots. Close proximity to other people? Forget it. Queues for anything? Forget it. Schoolrooms, religious houses of worship, conference centres and sports stadiums? Forget it.

I could go on.

And maybe ‘forget it’ is too strong but I know lots of conversations I’ve had lately are of the ‘I’m not setting foot in…/endangering myself by being there…’ type.

People — it appears — are not in a rush to resume the crowded spaces of anything in a hurry.

So what are the alternatives then?

A wholescale redesign of everything. And yes, I mean everything.

We need everyone to be in a Design Thinking-mode to think hard and fast about what’s safe, feasible and efficient to everything we took for granted (and perhaps secretly despised and put up with anyway). Lots of these were already not good for our health or the environment so it may not just be pivoted or adapted solutions but radical overhauls and total redesign of experiences and venues.

I suspect it starts with transport; it next turns to communal spaces; the workplace and then leisure — probably in that order.

It may be it starts with us having to change how we dress/enter into the world. Full hazmat suits aren’t a good look, but some form of masking, gloves and kevlar-like light all-over armour maybe our interim attire as a way we now face into the world post-isolation.

It may mean we can tolerate packed trains because we’re personally protected but if we can’t even get it to our healthcare working heroes in time to save their lives, this may be as far away as a reimagined train or civic space experience.

So we’ll continue to use Design Thinking in our Business Reinvention Labs (more coming soon at pthr.co.uk) and soon expect everyone to say ‘yeah we know that use that, do that’. We’d be pleased to be usurped by a large swathe of the population having a design thinking mindset and application.

If we aren’t getting tooled up as designers that reflects our new needs for social distancing, protective equipment and reshaped routines and rituals, then we’re a long way from safety and will probably accelerate the risk of social anxiety and of course, keeping the virus going.

Until we’re far from over this pandemic in the way we could and should be, we never needed Design Thinking more than now.

I’ll leave you with this quote from the incredibly imaginative mind of Yuya Furukawa — Chief Creative Officer at Dentsu.