DESIGN-er THINKING: Propel Designers Beyond What They Already Know

I received a phone call from Garry, a designer who was eager to talk about a session I had led in which he participated with a group of 10 other designers. “Designers think they are pretty good problem solvers, but the process you used taught us how to achieve results way beyond what we thought we knew,” he said. “Designers seem to have their special way of solving problems but can’t put it into words. The process you took us through helped make design thinking more explicit and took it to a higher level.”

He told me that the way the session helped the group move forward on their big city project had made a major impact on him. He was now living in New York City and working on an advanced degree at the Pratt Institute of Design and wanted to learn more.

I didn’t know much about how designers thought but to me what we had done was simply use my applied creative problem-solving process, SIMPLEXITY, which pulls together analytical and imaginative thinking skills.

I had found that, instead of considering analytical thinking and imaginative thinking as separate skills, in the real-world, they actually fit together and simplify the innovation process: finding and defining new problems, enabling breakthrough ideas, and implementing new solutions.

In our digital age, innovation remains a mystery to many people. If they adopt this simple process, 21st-century managers have an opportunity to bring innovation to day-to-day practical work. Rather than devote their time solely to mastering routine they have a chance to differentiate themselves from their peers and accelerate their careers.