Design Thinking

www.hbr.org

Design Thinking

by Tim Brown

Thinking like a designer can

transform the way you

develop products, services,

processes—and even strategy.

Reprint R0806EPurchased by: John Bennett [email protected] on June 25, 2013

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Design Thinking

by Tim Brown

harvard business review • june 2008 page 1

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Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products,

services, processes—and even strategy.

Thomas Edison created the electric lightbulband then wrapped an entire industry aroundit. The lightbulb is most often thought of as hissignature invention, but Edison understoodthat the bulb was little more than a parlortrick without a system of electric power gener-ation and transmission to make it truly useful.So he created that, too.

Thus Edison’s genius lay in his ability to con-ceive of a fully developed marketplace, notsimply a discrete device. He was able to envi-sion how people would want to use what hemade, and he engineered toward that insight.He wasn’t always prescient (he originally be-lieved the phonograph would be used mainlyas a business machine for recording and replay-ing dictation), but he invariably gave great con-sideration to users’ needs and preferences.

Edison’s approach was an early example ofwhat is now called “design thinking”—a meth-odology that imbues the full spectrum of inno-vation activities with a human-centered designethos. By this I mean that innovation is pow-ered by a thorough understanding, through di-

rect observation, of what people want andneed in their lives and what they like or dislikeabout the way particular products are made,packaged, marketed, sold, and supported.

Many people believe that Edison’s greatestinvention was the modern R&D laboratoryand methods of experimental investigation.Edison wasn’t a narrowly specialized scientistbut a broad generalist with a shrewd businesssense. In his Menlo Park, New Jersey, labora-tory he surrounded himself with gifted tinker-ers, improvisers, and experimenters. Indeed,he broke the mold of the “lone genius inven-tor” by creating a team-based approach to in-novation. Although Edison biographers writeof the camaraderie enjoyed by this merryband, the process also featured endlessrounds of trial and error—the “99% perspira-tion” in Edison’s famous definition of genius.His approach was intended not to validatepreconceived hypotheses but to help experi-menters learn something new from each iter-ative stab. Innovation is hard work; Edisonmade it a profession that blended art, craft,

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Design Thinking


science, business savvy, and an astute under-standing of customers and markets.

Design thinking is a lineal descendant ofthat tradition. Put simply, it is a disciplinethat uses the designer’s sensibility andmethods to match people’s needs with whatis technologically feasible and what a viablebusiness strategy can convert into customervalue and market opportunity. Like Edison’spainstaking innovation process, it often en-tails a great deal of perspiration.

I believe that design thinking has much tooffer a business world in which most manage-ment ideas and best practices are freely avail-able to be copied and exploited. Leaders nowlook to innovation as a principal source of dif-ferentiation and competitive advantage; theywould do well to incorporate design thinkinginto all phases of the process.

Getting Beneath the Surface

Historically, design has been treated as adownstream step in the development process—the point where designers, who have playedno earlier role in the substantive work of inno-vation, come along and put a beautiful wrap-per around the idea. To be sure, this approachhas stimulated market growth in many areasby making new products and technologiesaesthetically attractive and therefore more de-sirable to consumers or by enhancing brandperception through smart, evocative advertis-ing and communication strategies. During thelatter half of the twentieth century design be-came an increasingly valuable competitiveasset in, for example, the consumer electron-ics, automotive, and consumer packagedgoods industries. But in most others it re-mained a late-stage add-on.

Now, however, rather than asking designersto make an already developed idea more at-tractive to consumers, companies are askingthem to create ideas that better meet consum-ers’ needs and desires. The former role is tacti-cal, and results in limited value creation; thelatter is strategic, and leads to dramatic newforms of value.

Moreover, as economies in the developedworld shift from industrial manufacturing toknowledge work and service delivery, innova-tion’s terrain is expanding. Its objectives areno longer just physical products; they are newsorts of processes, services, IT-powered inter-actions, entertainments, and ways of commu-

nicating and collaborating—exactly the kindsof human-centered activities in which designthinking can make a decisive difference. (Seethe sidebar “A Design Thinker’s PersonalityProfile.”)

Consider the large health care provider Kai-ser Permanente, which sought to improve theoverall quality of both patients’ and medicalpractitioners’ experiences. Businesses in theservice sector can often make significant inno-vations on the front lines of service creationand delivery. By teaching design thinking tech-niques to nurses, doctors, and administrators,Kaiser hoped to inspire its practitioners to con-tribute new ideas. Over the course of severalmonths Kaiser teams participated in work-shops with the help of my firm, IDEO, and agroup of Kaiser coaches. These workshops ledto a portfolio of innovations, many of whichare being rolled out across the company.

One of them—a project to reengineernursing-staff shift changes at four Kaiser hospi-tals—perfectly illustrates both the broadernature of innovation “products” and the valueof a holistic design approach. The core projectteam included a strategist (formerly a nurse),an organizational-development specialist, atechnology expert, a process designer, a unionrepresentative, and designers from IDEO. Thisgroup worked with innovation teams of front-line practitioners in each of the four hospitals.

During the earliest phase of the project, thecore team collaborated with nurses to identifya number of problems in the way shift changesoccurred. Chief among these was the fact thatnurses routinely spent the first 45 minutes ofeach shift at the nurses’ station debriefing thedeparting shift about the status of patients.Their methods of information exchange weredifferent in every hospital, ranging from re-corded dictation to face-to-face conversations.And they compiled the information theyneeded to serve patients in a variety of ways—scrawling quick notes on the back of any avail-able scrap of paper, for example, or even ontheir scrubs. Despite a significant investmentof time, the nurses often failed to learn someof the things that mattered most to patients,such as how they had fared during the previousshift, which family members were with them,and whether or not certain tests or therapieshad been administered. For many patients, theteam learned, each shift change felt like a holein their care. Using the insights gleaned from

Tim Brown

([email protected]) is the CEO and president of IDEO, an innova-tion and design firm with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. His designs have won numerous awards and been ex-hibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, and the Design Museum in London.


mailto:[email protected]

Design Thinking


observing these important times of transition,the innovation teams explored potential solu-tions through brainstorming and rapid proto-typing. (Prototypes of a service innovation willof course not be physical, but they must be tan-gible. Because pictures help us understandwhat is learned through prototyping, we oftenvideotape the performance of prototyped ser-vices, as we did at Kaiser.)

Prototyping doesn’t have to be complex andexpensive. In another health care project,IDEO helped a group of surgeons develop anew device for sinus surgery. As the surgeonsdescribed the ideal physical characteristics ofthe instrument, one of the designers grabbeda whiteboard marker, a film canister, and aclothespin and taped them together. “Do youmean like this?” he asked. With his rudimen-tary prototype in hand, the surgeons were ableto be much more precise about what theultimate design should accomplish.

Prototypes should command only as muchtime, effort, and investment as are needed togenerate useful feedback and evolve an idea.The more “finished” a prototype seems, theless likely its creators will be to pay attentionto and profit from feedback. The goal of proto-typing isn’t to finish. It is to learn about thestrengths and weaknesses of the idea and toidentify new directions that further proto-types might take.

The design that emerged for shift changeshad nurses passing on information in front of

the patient rather than at the nurses’ station.In only a week the team built a working proto-type that included new procedures and somesimple software with which nurses could callup previous shift-change notes and add newones. They could input patient informationthroughout a shift rather than scrambling atthe end to pass it on. The software collated thedata in a simple format customized for eachnurse at the start of a shift. The result was bothhigher-quality knowledge transfer and reducedprep time, permitting much earlier and better-informed contact with patients.

As Kaiser measured the impact of thischange over time, it learned that the mean in-terval between a nurse’s arrival and first inter-action with a patient had been more thanhalved, adding a huge amount of nursing timeacross the four hospitals. Perhaps just as im-portant was the effect on the quality of thenurses’ work experience. One nurse com-mented, “I’m an hour ahead, and I’ve onlybeen here 45 minutes.” Another said, “[This isthe] first time I’ve ever made it out of here atthe end of my shift.”

Thus did a group of nurses significantlyimprove their patients’ experience while alsoimproving their own job satisfaction and pro-ductivity. By applying a human-centered de-sign methodology, they were able to create arelatively small process innovation that pro-duced an outsize impact. The new shiftchanges are being rolled out across the Kaiser

A Design Thinker’s Personality Profile

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a de-sign thinker. Nor are design thinkers neces-sarily created only by design schools, even though most professionals have had some kind of design training. My experience is that many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right development and experi-ences can unlock. Here, as a starting point, are some of the characteristics to look for in design thinkers:

Empathy.

They can imagine the world from multiple perspectives—those of col-leagues, clients, end users, and customers (current and prospective). By taking a “peo-ple first” approach, design thinkers can imag-

ine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. Great de-sign thinkers observe the world in minute de-tail. They notice things that others do not and use their insights to inspire innovation.

Integrative thinking.

They not only rely on analytical processes (those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient—and sometimes contradictory—aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives. (See Roger Martin’s

The Opposable Mind: How Successful

Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking

.)

Optimism.

They assume that no matter how challenging the constraints of a given problem, at least one potential solution is

better than the existing alternatives.

Experimentalism.

Significant innovations don’t come from incremental tweaks. Design thinkers pose questions and explore con-straints in creative ways that proceed in en-tirely new directions.

Collaboration.

The increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has re-placed the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of the enthusiastic interdisci-plinary collaborator. The best design thinkers don’t simply work alongside other disciplines; many of them have significant experience in more than one. At IDEO we employ people who are engineers

and

marketers, anthropolo-gists

and

industrial designers, architects

and

psychologists.


Design Thinking


system, and the capacity to reliably recordcritical patient information is being inte-grated into an electronic medical records ini-tiative at the company.

What might happen at Kaiser if every nurse,doctor, and administrator in every hospital feltempowered to tackle problems the way thisgroup did? To find out, Kaiser has created theGarfield Innovation Center, which is run byKaiser’s original core team and acts as a consul-tancy to the entire organization. The center’smission is to pursue innovation that enhancesthe patient experience and, more broadly, toenvision Kaiser’s “hospital of the future.” It isintroducing tools for design thinking acrossthe Kaiser system.

How Design Thinking Happens

The myth of creative genius is resilient: We be-lieve that great ideas pop fully formed out ofbrilliant minds, in feats of imagination wellbeyond the abilities of mere mortals. But whatthe Kaiser nursing team accomplished was nei-ther a sudden breakthrough nor the lightningstrike of genius; it was the result of hard workaugmented by a creative human-centered dis-covery process and followed by iterative cyclesof prototyping, testing, and refinement.

The design process is best described meta-phorically as a system of spaces rather than apredefined series of orderly steps. The spacesdemarcate different sorts of related activitiesthat together form the continuum of innova-tion. Design thinking can feel chaotic to thoseexperiencing it for the first time. But over thelife of a project participants come to see—asthey did at Kaiser—that the process makessense and achieves results, even though itsarchitecture differs from the linear, milestone-based processes typical of other kinds ofbusiness activities.

Design projects must ultimately passthrough three spaces (see the exhibit “Inspira-tion, Ideation, Implementation”). We labelthese “inspiration,” for the circumstances (bethey a problem, an opportunity, or both) thatmotivate the search for solutions; “ideation,”for the process of generating, developing, andtesting ideas that may lead to solutions; and“implementation,” for the charting of a pathto market. Projects will loop back throughthese spaces—particularly the first two—more than once as ideas are refined and newdirections taken.

Sometimes the trigger for a project is leader-ship’s recognition of a serious change in busi-ness fortunes. In 2004 Shimano, a Japanesemanufacturer of bicycle components, facedflattening growth in its traditional high-endroad-racing and mountain-bike segments inthe United States. The company had always re-lied on technology innovations to drive itsgrowth and naturally tried to predict wherethe next one might come from. This time Shi-mano thought a high-end casual bike that ap-pealed to boomers would be an interestingarea to explore. IDEO was invited to collabo-rate on the project.

During the inspiration phase, an interdisci-plinary team of IDEO and Shimano people—designers, behavioral scientists, marketers,and engineers—worked to identify appropri-ate constraints for the project. The teambegan with a hunch that it should focus morebroadly than on the high-end market, whichmight prove to be neither the only nor eventhe best source of new growth. So it set out tolearn why 90% of American adults don’t ridebikes. Looking for new ways to think aboutthe problem, the team members spent timewith all kinds of consumers. They discoveredthat nearly everyone they met rode a bike as achild and had happy memories of doing so.They also discovered that many Americansare intimidated by cycling today—by the re-tail experience (including the young, Lycra-clad athletes who serve as sales staff in mostindependent bike stores); by the complexityand cost of the bikes, accessories, and special-ized clothing; by the danger of cycling onroads not designed for bicycles; and by the de-mands of maintaining a technically sophisti-cated bike that is ridden infrequently.

This human-centered exploration—whichtook its insights from people outside Shi-mano’s core customer base—led to the real-ization that a whole new category of bicyclingmight be able to reconnect American con-sumers to their experiences as children whilealso dealing with the root causes of their feel-ings of intimidation—thus revealing a largeuntapped market.

The design team, responsible for every as-pect of what was envisioned as a holistic expe-rience, came up with the concept of “Coasting.”Coasting would aim to entice lapsed bikersinto an activity that was simple, straightfor-ward, and fun. Coasting bikes, built more for


Design Thinking


Inspiration

Have a project room where you can share insights, tell stories

What are the business con-straints (time, lack of resources, impoverished customer base, shrinking market)?

Involve many disciplines from the start (e.g., engi-neering & marketing)

Are valuable ideas, as-sets, and expertise hiding inside the business?

How can new technology help?

Organize information and synthesize possibilities (tell more stories!)

Pay close attention to “extreme” users such as children or the elderly

Put customers in the midst of every-thing; describe their journeys

Tell more stories (they keep ideas alive)

Communicate internally – don’t work in the dark!

Build creative frameworks (order out of chaos)

Apply integrative thinking

Make many sketches, concoct scenarios

Brainstorm

Build implementation resources into your plan

Expect Success

What’s the business prob-lem? Where’s the oppor-tunity? What has changed (or soon may change)?

Prototype, test, prototype, test…

Look at the world: Observe what people do, how they think, what they need and want

Move on to the next project – repeat

Make the case to the business – spread the word

Help marketing design a communi-cation strategy

Execute the VisionEngineer the experience

Ideation

Prototype some more, test with users, test internally

Imple

mentation 1

3

2

Images copyright © IDEO


Design Thinking


pleasure than for sport, would have no con-trols on the handlebars, no cables snakingalong the frame. As on the earliest bikes manyof us rode, the brakes would be applied bybackpedaling. With the help of an onboardcomputer, a minimalist three gears would shiftautomatically as the bicycle gained speed orslowed. The bikes would feature comfortablypadded seats, be easy to operate, and requirerelatively little maintenance.

Three major manufacturers—Trek, Raleigh,and Giant—developed new bikes incorporat-ing innovative components from Shimano.But the design team didn’t stop with the bikeitself. In-store retailing strategies were createdfor independent bike dealers, in part to allevi-ate the discomfort that biking novices felt instores designed to serve enthusiasts. The teamdeveloped a brand that identified Coasting asa way to enjoy life. (“Chill. Explore. Dawdle.Lollygag. First one there’s a rotten egg.”) Andit designed a public relations campaign—in collaboration with local governments andcycling organizations—that identified safeplaces to ride.

Although many others became involved inthe project when it reached the implementa-tion phase, the application of design thinkingin the earliest stages of innovation is what ledto this complete solution. Indeed, the singlething one would have expected the designteam to be responsible for—the look of thebikes—was intentionally deferred to later inthe development process, when the team cre-ated a reference design to inspire the bikecompanies’ own design teams. After a success-ful launch in 2007, seven more bicycle manu-

facturers signed up to produce Coasting bikesin 2008.

Taking a Systems View

Many of the world’s most successful brandscreate breakthrough ideas that are inspired bya deep understanding of consumers’ lives anduse the principles of design to innovate andbuild value. Sometimes innovation has to ac-count for vast differences in cultural and socio-economic conditions. In such cases designthinking can suggest creative alternatives tothe assumptions made in developed societies.

India’s Aravind Eye Care System is probablythe world’s largest provider of eye care. FromApril 2006 to March 2007 Aravind servedmore than 2.3 million patients and performedmore than 270,000 surgeries. Founded in 1976by Dr. G. Venkataswamy, Aravind has as itsmission nothing less than the eradication ofneedless blindness among India’s population,including the rural poor, through the effectivedelivery of superior ophthalmic care. (One ofthe company’s slogans is “Quality is for every-one.”) From 11 beds in Dr. Venkataswamy’shome, Aravind has grown to encompass fivehospitals (three others are under Aravindmanagement), a plant that manufacturesophthalmic products, a research foundation,and a training center.

Aravind’s execution of its mission andmodel is in some respects reminiscent ofEdison’s holistic concept of electric powerdelivery. The challenge the company facesis logistic: how best to deliver eye care topopulations far removed from the urban cen-ters where Aravind’s hospitals are located.

Coasting

A

sketch

(left, seat plus helmet storage) and a

prototype

(middle) show elements of Coasting bicycles. Shimano’s Coasting

website

(right) points users to safe bike paths.


Design Thinking


Aravind calls itself an “eye care system” for areason: Its business goes beyond ophthalmiccare per se to transmit expert practice to pop-ulations that have historically lacked access.The company saw its network of hospitals as abeginning rather than an end.

Much of its innovative energy has focusedon bringing both preventive care and diagnos-tic screening to the countryside. Since 1990Aravind has held “eye camps” in India’s ruralareas, in an effort to register patients, admin-ister eye exams, teach eye care, and identifypeople who may require surgery or advanceddiagnostic services or who have conditionsthat warrant monitoring.

In 2006 and early 2007 Aravind eye campsscreened more than 500,000 patients, ofwhom nearly 113,000 required surgery. Accessto transportation is a common problem inrural areas, so the company provides buses thattake patients needing further treatment to oneof its urban facilities and then home again.Over the years it has bolstered its diagnostic ca-pabilities in the field with telemedicine trucks,which enable doctors back at Aravind’s hospi-tals to participate in care decisions. In recentyears Aravind’s analysis of its screening datahas led to specialized eye camps for certain de-mographic groups, such as school-age childrenand industrial and government workers; thecompany also holds camps specifically toscreen for eye diseases associated with diabe-tes. All these services are free for the roughly60% of patients who cannot afford to pay.

In developing its system of care, Aravind hasconsistently exhibited many characteristics ofdesign thinking. It has used as a creative

springboard two constraints: the poverty andremoteness of its clientele and its own lack ofaccess to expensive solutions. For example, apair of intraocular lenses made in the Westcosts $200, which severely limited the numberof patients Aravind could help. Rather than tryto persuade suppliers to change the way theydid things, Aravind built its own solution: amanufacturing plant in the basement of oneof its hospitals. It eventually discovered that itcould use relatively inexpensive technology toproduce lenses for $4 a pair.

Throughout its history—defined by theconstraints of poverty, ignorance, and anenormous unmet need—Aravind has built asystemic solution to a complex social andmedical problem.

Getting Back to the Surface

I argued earlier that design thinking can leadto innovation that goes beyond aesthetics, butthat doesn’t mean that form and aesthetics areunimportant. Magazines like to publish pho-tographs of the newest, coolest products for areason: They are sexy and appeal to our emo-tions. Great design satisfies both our needsand our desires. Often the emotional connec-tion to a product or an image is what engagesus in the first place. Time and again we see suc-cessful products that were not necessarily thefirst to market but were the first to appealto us emotionally and functionally. In otherwords, they do the job and we love them. TheiPod was not the first MP3 player, but it wasthe first to be delightful. Target’s products ap-peal emotionally through design and func-tionally through price—simultaneously.

Aravind

Aravind’s

outreach to rural patients frequently brings basic

diagnostic tools

(left and center) and an advanced satellite-linked

telemedicine

truck

(right) to remote areas of India.


Design Thinking


This idea will grow ever more important in thefuture. As Daniel Pink writes in his book

AWhole New Mind

, “Abundance has satisfied,and even over-satisfied, the material needs ofmillions—boosting the significance of beautyand emotion and accelerating individuals’search for meaning.” As more of our basicneeds are met, we increasingly expect sophisti-cated experiences that are emotionally satisfy-ing and meaningful. These experiences willnot be simple products. They will be complexcombinations of products, services, spaces,and information. They will be the ways we geteducated, the ways we are entertained, theways we stay healthy, the ways we share andcommunicate. Design thinking is a tool forimagining these experiences as well as givingthem a desirable form.

One example of experiential innovationcomes from a financial services company. Inlate 2005 Bank of America launched a newsavings account service called “Keep theChange.” IDEO, working with a team fromthe bank, helped identify a consumer behav-ior that many people will recognize: Afterpaying cash for something, we put the coinswe received in change into a jar at home.Once the jar is full, we take the coins to thebank and deposit them in a savings account.For many people, it’s an easy way of saving.

Bank of America’s innovation was to buildthis behavior into a debit card account. Cus-tomers who use their debit cards to make pur-chases can now choose to have the totalrounded up to the nearest dollar and the dif-ference deposited in their savings accounts.

The success of this innovation lay in its ap-peal to an instinctive desire we have to putmoney aside in a painless and invisible way.Keep the Change creates an experience thatfeels natural because it models behavior thatmany of us already exhibit. To be sure, Bankof America sweetens the deal by matching100% of the change saved in the first threemonths and 5% of annual totals (up to $250)thereafter. This encourages customers to try itout. But the real payoff is emotional: the grat-ification that comes with monthly statementsshowing customers they’ve saved money with-out even trying.

In less than a year the program attracted2.5 million customers. It is credited with700,000 new checking accounts and a millionnew savings accounts. Enrollment now totalsmore than 5 million people who togetherhave saved more than $500 million. Keep theChange demonstrates that design thinkingcan identify an aspect of human behavior andthen convert it into both a customer benefitand a business value.

How to Make Design Thinking Part of the Innovation Drill

Begin at the beginning.

Involve design thinkers at the very start of the innovation process, before any direction has been set. Design thinking will help you explore more ideas more quickly than you could otherwise.

Take a human-centered approach.

Along with business and technology considerations, innovation should factor in human behavior, needs, and preferences. Human-centered design thinking—especially when it includes research based on direct observation—will capture unexpected insights and produce in-novation that more precisely reflects what consumers want.

Try early and often.

Create an expectation of rapid experimentation and prototyping. En-courage teams to create a prototype in the first week of a project. Measure progress with a metric such as average time to first proto-

type or number of consumers exposed to pro-totypes during the life of a program.

Seek outside help.

Expand the innovation ecosystem by looking for opportunities to co-create with customers and consumers. Exploit Web 2.0 networks to enlarge the effective scale of your innovation team.

Blend big and small projects.

Manage a portfolio of innovation that stretches from shorter-term incremental ideas to longer-term revolutionary ones. Expect business units to drive and fund incremental innovation, but be willing to initiate revolutionary innovation from the top.

Budget to the pace of innovation.

Design thinking happens quickly, yet the route to market can be unpredictable. Don’t constrain the pace at which you can innovate by relying on cumbersome budgeting cycles. Be pre-pared to rethink your funding approach as

projects proceed and teams learn more about opportunities.

Find talent any way you can.

Look to hire from interdisciplinary programs like the new Institute of Design at Stanford and progres-sive business schools like Rotman, in Toronto. People with more-conventional design back-grounds can push solutions far beyond your expectations. You may even be able to train nondesigners with the right attributes to excel in design-thinking roles.

Design for the cycle.

In many businesses people move every 12 to 18 months. But de-sign projects may take longer than that to get from day one through implementation. Plan assignments so that design thinkers go from inspiration to ideation to implementation. Experiencing the full cycle builds better judg-ment and creates great long-term benefits for the organization.


Design Thinking


Thomas Edison represents what many ofus think of as a golden age of Americaninnovation—a time when new ideas trans-formed every aspect of our lives. The need fortransformation is, if anything, greater nowthan ever before. No matter where we look, wesee problems that can be solved only throughinnovation: unaffordable or unavailable healthcare, billions of people trying to live on just afew dollars a day, energy usage that outpacesthe planet’s ability to support it, educationsystems that fail many students, companies

whose traditional markets are disrupted bynew technologies or demographic shifts. Theseproblems all have people at their heart. Theyrequire a human-centered, creative, iterative,and practical approach to finding the bestideas and ultimate solutions. Design thinkingis just such an approach to innovation.

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