Blog #1: What is Design Thinking?

From reading carefully and taking the article into great consideration, design thinking, to me, is how a designer methodically creates a system, where his product meets his customers’ needs in a personal scale, so that the end result benefits his customers in different ways. Putting this in a different phase, the designer has an empathy to his consumers in his design.

In the reading, Tim Brown argues that a designer should be involved in the process of developing early ideas, and that he should collaborate with his customers doing so. The process heavily emphasizes on the use of human-centered methodology to achieve significant results. And that is called design thinking. Design thinking, to what Brown thinks, is not defined by steps but more as 3 spaces of different small steps combined in them. The 3 spaces are Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. The process of design thinking should adapt to cultural differences as well. Brown concludes the reading by giving one last point, that despite innovation goes beyond the appeals, design thinking should lead innovation to something that appear pleasing to customers. When one can attach himself to a product emotionally, the product succeeds in selling itself to the customer.

A point in the reading that really fascinates me is how Brown argues innovation could not be restricted by constraints like poverty, technology underdevelopment or cultural differences. This point really relates to me personally. I originally come from a country where all of the mentioned constraints still exist. But despite all that, I can still observe youths like myself coming up with innovation that drastically changes the living conditions that we currently have.

The example of Aravind reminds me of Foldscope- a creation made by Manu Prakash- a biophysicist at Stanford. Foldscope is a 1$ microscope, using minimal technology, to give children in underdeveloped countries a chance to study about bacteria and biology without the need of expensive microscopes. Foldscope, to what I think, has really set its vision way before the process and succeeded in applying empathy in its design. Attached below is a video explained by Prakash on his creation.