...when 140 characters are not enough

To be effective in this new world, you will need to master the skills of empathy and teamwork, as well as leadership and driving change. You will need to know how to function in a world that is not a hierarchy but a kaleidoscopic global team of teams, with no boundaries between sectors and change that happens at an escalating pace.

About seven years ago I started having this sense that our world was starting to go through an unprecedented transformational change. There have only been a few periods like this in all of human history. I knew it had something to do with the internet and computers but I did not have a very clear understanding of what it is all about.

When I started in the HCI/d program at IU, some of the pieces of the puzzle started to fall in place. This semester I am taking a New Media course taught by Christian Briggs. I have been reading Marshall McLuhan's book, "Understanding Media" and Lev Manovich's "The Language of New Media". Suddenly, big pieces of the puzzle started coming together.

Along the way I developed this concept that design thinking principles could not only help me learn to be an interaction designer but they were also preparing me to be better equipped to function in this new world we are growing towards. When I read this article by Bill Drayton, the excerpt above seemed to jump off the screen.

Empathy. Teamwork. Leadership. Driving change. No hierarchy (aka - networks). No boundaries. Accelerating change.

All of these characteristics can be found in the design thinking principles we have been learning.

Empathy is at the center of everything user-centered. Knowing, understanding, and appreciating the needs, desires, and feelings of the target audience (users) is paramount to good design.

No designer can effectively work in a vacuum. Stakeholders, internal and external to an organization, need to be not only included but encouraged to be integral participants in the design process. Failure to do this almost always results in frustration and poor design.

Good designers must develop the fundamental leadership qualities found in decision making, choices, and generating enthusiastic participation of all who are involved in the process. Leadership is fundamentally about setting a course and moving in that direction. That is a good definition for "design" as well.

Design IS change. In "The Sciences of the Artificial" Herbert Simon calls it "changing existing situations into preferred ones." I would say that works for "driving and accelerating change". Oh yeah, add in a dose of Argyris and Schon's double-loop learning for organizational learning here to help out with the "accelerating" part of the change equation.

Hierarchies are top-down, directed from above, constrained, and controlling. Design does not prosper in hierarchical environments. Design thinking means that good ideas can come from anywhere inside or outside an organization. Designers consider many, many ideas and usually do not know where their design process will lead them. Horst Rittel calls these "wicked problems" - they are not clearly defined and thus, have no definite solution.

Not only does this involve non-hierarchical processes but it also addresses the need to remove boundaries between sectors. This is what Blevis refers to when he addresses the importance of transdisciplinarity in design - "transcending disciplinarity and using collections of methods and their associated domains of expertise on an as needed basis as required by the pursuit of this target broader goal."

Yes, I would say that design thinking has done a pretty good job of equipping me to be effective in this new world that Mr. Drayton is talking about.

Thank you, design thinking principles. I just want you to know how much I appreciate you.