The Best Kept Secret - Design Thinking: Deana McDonagh at TEDxUIUC 2013

Design Thinking is what we all think of as creative problem-solving but what I want to do with you today is just to take you through my vision of design thinking and how it could affect all of you so have you ever met a five-year-old that can't sing write poetry dance wiggle their fingers like nobody else on the planet that's how we begin and that's how designers have to design but something happens to us along the way and I tell you what happens we're forced to grow up we're forced to draw between color between the lines we're told there's only one right answer to any question and we're told to believe what we're told and believe what we read and with that we have a dampening of creativity designers have to see the world through a five-year-old and we have to take our industrial designers and we have to take them through a boot camp we almost have to reconstruct their childhoods we have to give them the the permission to be creative we question everything and what I want to do through taking you through this talk is realize that if you don't have a designer on your team please consider it we ask those questions that no one else has thought of asking we ask the most obvious of questions we apply design common sense which isn't that common it takes intelligence to answer a question but it really does take creativity to ask the question so what we have Daniel pink believes that the Masters in fine art is the next Masters in Business Administration so really we're looking extremes we're looking at one side that explores and we're looking at another side that exploits this really isn't the way forward because you can't have extremes extremes in anything don't result in anything worth having we have to focus on whole brain thinking so again this gets you to think about the team gets gets you to think about the people you associate with we have serious fun when people find out what industrial designers do whatever they're studying they try and find a path to us we have to imagine the world as it's never existed before and that's not easy especially when we realize that we say one thing we may do another and we may feel something else so who in this room is cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends okay another question an easier question who doesn't recycle so can you see there are some questions in life and in our culture that we're kind of under a pressure not to give the most authentic response to and so when as designers were watching people we're looking for moments that will inspire and lead to innovation I had a group of students take photographs sort of authentic human behavior this is shocking so for all the men in the room that don't wear mascara this girl is trying to deep lump mascara on the on the eye on the eyelashes this is another one of our students in Jonathan Pierce and this is the patina of life as you look at his clothing you can see where is is phone lips again for designers these are the kind of images that really inspire and we get excited by so we're looking for disconnections if you think about the user experience and you think about frustrations somewhere in the middle is white space it's what designers grab hold of and run with because this is how we can change the norm so I'm going to you full disclosure here the first photograph is of me looking at now this is a few years ago and you're all probably a lot younger than me so this is when the iPod came out this is prior to the iPhone so I got the iPod I was outside the Illinois simulation lab which is all virtual environments so it's kind of a high-tech moment and then a colleague asked me she asked me can we make a meeting and this is how I was using my iPod this is full disclosure people I am NOT a Luddite I am with it with technology but the post-its served a very good purpose now this shows you a great example of a product not being used in the intended way and again designers designers have to be aware of this ok it's not that funny people ok visit so I feel as if we bonded you're now part of my extended family so I want to show you some vacation photos how does that sound yay okay don't be so excited this these are the types of photos designers take when they're traveling this is Abraham Lincoln's toilet in Springfield I got really excited by this this is when I was the next vote the next image is when I was in Dulles being taught to walk with no vision with a stick my feet had to see the ground and that was through texture and then we have this is Philadelphia people this is a broccoli sculpture with little hands on I have no idea to this day but this is the kind of photograph that I stay away wondering and worrying about if anybody can figure out what this means on any level I will buy them a pint of beer the next image is California and this is very interesting for me I do a lot work with disabilities because there is a normality in doing things differently people that have additional struggles with the material landscape are much more innovative than the majority of people which is soon to be the minority of people that don't have physical disabilities and so this is a broken sign and this is soulfully toe near Alcatraz in California and then I went to the Galapagos in January when everybody was taking photographs of iguanas and turtles this is my photograph of some texture and this is Manchester in the UK this is an interesting photograph because I almost tippy toad past these two cars because they were spooning and having an intimate moment so when people talk about products and they don't have emotional relationships these two are having a lovefest and so it's very important that these moments you know what is it about these two little creatures snuggled up on a Sunday morning now this is interesting in the UK we don't say ATM we say hole in the wall and this is Barclays Bank this is Blackpool on the west coast of England obviously by the photograph and Barclays is not a very nice Bank and there are other words I would use to describe them but I'm being filmed and so what's interesting about hole-in-the-wall is they're deceiving everybody by using language that only friends would use so it's kind of interesting and somewhat alarming and then I was in this is obviously Portugal this is Porto where all the port comes from and this is somebody getting some money out of the hole in the wall but what's really alarming to me as a designer is that the Portuguese people are my height the perfect height anybody higher is abnormal this is the perfect time everyone so what's interesting is the Portuguese people are my height yet they have to have concrete slabs so they can get to the money let's not even talk about accessibility issues so again these are little traces that inspire stimulate get as while wound up and it's not just me what do you see in this voter clouds this is dr. Megan strike Fadden can you see that little forehead that's appearing on the bottom left this photograph was taken by her friend he has no vision whatsoever but he was traveling with her and he kept hearing clicking and he wanted to take photographs so here we have he's somebody with no vision using technology a camera and since he started taking photographs he actually has one man photography shows exhibitions so what does that mean for designers we now have to realize we have to design prepared cameras for people that can't see possibly music systems for people that can't hear so it's a total flip again this gets the creative child gets the creativity flowing when I was young this is what telephones look like I am that old people it was a hundred years ago this is what they look like this is what SLR cameras look like nothing digital in my world and I remember saying imagine wouldn't it be cool if you could have your phone in your hand and you could put it on your body somewhere and then imagine that you didn't have to carry this heavy camera around let's combine them and can you imagine the laughter and the you're crazy and that's people were walking it getting away from me because I was it was obviously contagious this creative vision look at today look at what we have so when you get creatives when you get design thinkers in your team in your group when they're making this cross-pollination of imagine if you might think they're crazy but we're imagining a world that doesn't exist yet and we don't worry that the technologies out there we're making the leap because remember it takes creativity to ask the question is it possible so I'm going to talk you through what Design Thinking looks like it's playful we are playful but it's serious fun and as most things in life you should share the experience so it's a group effort you get ideas down you consider what exists and what could exists you start to look at the process you do some storyboarding you think about the emotional connection you start to render up you start to do some sketching and then you start to think about colors textures these actually shoes for people who are wheelchair users and then you might go to CAD rendering and do some 3d prints so where I'm going to take you now is our sophomores and we have some in the audience and some of the industrial design sophomores this is hot off the press did some products for us imagine imagine a dress made of urban outfitter shopping bags this is the dress imagine a wedding dress made of discarded plastic bags something very strange is happening here this is how your wedding dress could look so anybody out there planning to get married for 10 dollars some Elmer's glue we've got you figured out we've got you sorted then imagine a tie made of can pull tacks can you imagine that in your mind how sharp does this look this is a sophomore in the second semester and here's what they look like and then we're not leaving the women out on this conversation let's throw some ribbon in there and let's have a garment and then let's think about an old soda can how could that look again we're looking at products we're looking at discarded materials and it's about transformation so what we do with our sophomores each year we have em excuse me we have something called the paper chute and we give them the ability to use paper or sorry and Elmer's glue but the thing is they have to walk in these shoes and it's an open cell base so this is how a paper shoe can look and they have to walk in these they have to jump in them they have to do a number of things and then we have a company that's actually printing out shoes on how they could be continuum design and these shoes are printed 3d printed and you can buy them on their website which i think is awesome so what we're doing isn't actually that crazy so then imagine a medicine bottle that you can read you can open you can wedge into your hand so you don't have to grip it it's color-coded there's enough surface so you can read the instructions this is out there this is at every Target pharmacy imagine what does a box cutter look like in your mind so many injuries per year is this what a box cutter looks like to you this can be held on your body ceramic knife if you if the blade touches you it doesn't cut what does a dish rack look like in your mind and now we're going to try and explain something that I can't really get my head round imagine assistant that integrates every known music format and brings it together so even if you are bringing streaming stuff off Pandora all your music system put together this is how the music system of the future looks today and then let's think about you going through a major surgery and the tools that the surgeons using are really critical and if they're difficult to identify they're slippery because it's wet in there and it's cold in surgery spaces imagine the use of materials the use of the products DNA and feel can really help you because it means you don't have to be under for as long as you need to be so this is taking time and it's saving lives this is design thinking so I'm going to conclude the future what does it look like this is my future and I'm going to embrace it but what's your future like this is what I want you to consider today I want you to consider involving designers every step of the way we're not mere stylists we ask those questions that need to be asked and there are some signs on what designers are like you can spot them yourself we are wired differently dyslexia we have a high rate of dyslexia and you know the Kauffman Foundation found 37 percent of entrepreneurs have dyslexia this is a one discipline where we embrace people with who are wired differently read differently think differently communicate differently we cross pollinate we imagine the world as no one else has imagined it before we have a childlike curiosity we are embarrassing to go shopping with because we excited by packaging and toys and look at this pastor app and why is that person wearing what they're wearing and we are fascinated by everything we want to change the world but finally the main reason you should involve designers is because we are awesome thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 99,032

Rating: 4.6876459 out of 5

Keywords: Media, Education, ted talk, Design, tedx talks, ted x, tedx, United States, TEDxUIUC, ted talks, ted, Psychology, tedx talk, English

Id: 8ccN-LmYNWQ

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2013