Thoughts on design & collaboration
Tags: Design Thinking, Design, Design Teams, Collaboration Design, Design Systems

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

In new products and services, we, designers, aspire to create lasting value, only to find that in many cases

services struggle to create a long-lasting effect,

our intellectual outputs quickly become irrelevant,

our solutions are forgotten as soon as they are implemented, and

our engagement in collaborative projects with our customers and stakeholders does not result in long-term commitments.

While there are excellent examples of successful projects, the track record of impactful change by design does not seem to achieve the standards that designers would want.

“Organizations seem to invent but not innovating”

We subscribe to the message about user-driven co-creation and collaboration as the primary drivers of design thinking and creativity in combination with reflective reframing, divergence-convergence, future orientation, conclude from observations, and empathize.

In an effort to find potential methods and solutions that may not be readily visible in our initial level of understanding. Design Thinking is an iterative method in which we aim to understand the consumer, question assumptions, and redefine issues. At the same time, a solution-based approach to solving problems is given by Design Thinking. As well as a series of hands-on approaches, it is a way of thinking and working.

Designers also have a strong inner desire to make consumers happy, solve consumer and society issues, resolve humanity’s problems, and make the world a better place, as they feel they have the skills and instruments to do so. Service design tools, for example, are used to orchestrate brand touchpoints, optimize customer experience, and deliver variety, ease, and differentiation.

Service design is a method in which designers develop sustainable solutions and optimum interactions for both clients and any service providers participating in specific contexts. Designers divide services into parts and adapt fine-tuned solutions based on actors, location and other variables to meet the needs of all users.

Design thinking is involved in a collaborative and participatory process that can produce new concepts, experiences, and ideologies for politics and communities.

Designers may begin by researching and challenging the real meaning behind a specific project self-reflectively. We should aim to be associated with a sense of greater common meaning and a relationship with our own personal values. We need to evaluate if short-term or long-term performance metrics are the correct ones to measure the success of the design.

It's up to us to decide whether we are aligned to our design process or do we design to align.

Collaboration makes us better designers!!

Design becomes a shared value mediator and the medium by which shared value is produced and communicated. It is a joint quest — however, established — for collective success.

We need a conducive ecosystem where collaborative work is more successful and more effective than work structured around the concepts of business transactions. The default relationship tends to be based on the transaction of the business and that creating cooperation involves enabling environments.

Collaboration is the most challenging part of the design process. It brings people to work together and encourage innovation. It is a great facilitation tool that helps to get the best ideas on the table by engaging with different perspectives from different stakeholders.

A favourable ecosystem leading to a good design system would result to an increased consistency and quality making all the stakeholders adhere to and derive easily from the system.