For over 20 years design has been promoted as an approach that non-designers can utilise to help innovate and create new business value. From the British Design Council’s declaration that “design is too important to be left to designers alone” (Dumas, 1996) to the rising popularity of Design Thinking (Nussbaum, 2004, Brown, 2008, Brown 2009, Martin, 2009) designerly ways of working have been promoted as a way for non-designers to unlock creative innovation and realise new value for businesses. For all the discussion on non-designer’s use of design, there is relatively little discussion on what this experience looks like for non-designers.
In the coming weeks I’ll be using Human Centred Design methodology to examine the issue from both designers’ and non-designers’ perspectives and communicate their experiences in the context of a journey into and beyond design. If you’re a design thinker who’s come from outside traditional design practice, or if you’re a designer who’s moving into business areas like strategy design and business design, then you could help fill a big hole in existing literature. I’m looking for individuals (preferably in Melbourne, Australia) to take part in a 45 – 60 minute interview sharing their experiences, if you’re interested in participating, please message me through twitter (@notrevol) or linkedin (here) and we can discuss it in more detail.
This post was generated as part of RMIT University’s Masters of Design Futures program, you can find out more at http://designfuture.me/
REFERENCES
Brown, T., 2008. Design Thinking, Harvard Business Review, June 2008
Brown, T., 2009. Change by design, Harper Collins
Dumas, A., 1996. From icon to beacon: the new British Design Council and the global economy. Design Management Journal (Former Series), 7(3), 1996
Martin, R.L., 2009. The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage, Harvard Business Press
Nussbaum, B., 2004. The Power of Design, Business Week 17(5)
Lisa blogs here 