Four stages of design thought formation

What deep-rooted habits does the designer's talent combine to turn the original idea into a new creation?

What can business people learn from the successful http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/7432.html of research designers "> Solving problems and creating innovations?" At its most fundamental level, they can learn to ask questions, pay attention, connect and act. With these four of the most important things, designers are able to make significant breakthroughs.

Over the past two years, I've surveyed more than 100 top designers in all walks of life (for a book) and found some common habits that have almost become the second nature of many designers.

These deep-rooted habits are intrinsically linked to the designer's ability to successfully transform the original idea into a realistic creation. All this suggests that they are worth exploring.

Question: Whenever you are with a designer, you will soon find out that they are asking and raising a lot of questions. Often, questioning is the starting point of the design phase and will have a profound impact on the next thing. From Brousse Mau to Richard Woman to Shire Bolin, many of the designers I surveyed talked about the importance of asking "idiot questions." The "idiot Problem" will challenge the implementation and assumptions that are present in specific industries or sectors. From the designers ' jokes about themselves, they can get a glimpse of their persistent tendency to mention "idiotic questions". How many designers will it take to change a light bulb? The answer is: does it have to be a light bulb?

In a business environment, asking basic "why" questions makes the questioner look naïve and puts others in a defensive position (for example, we've been doing this for 20 years, and you're asking, "Why are we doing this?" But to encourage people to take a step back and rethink old problems or long-standing practices, designers can begin to redesign the challenges around them and steer their thinking in new directions. What kind of business do we want? What do customers really need today? What do you want from us? In today's fast-moving business, the ability to question and think about these basic principles has never been more important.

Concern: Care about the needs of customers, it is easy to say. But to really understand, you have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: Get out of the corporate bubble and literally immerse yourself in the daily lives of the people you serve. I was impressed by the fact that design researchers such as Ideo Jane Fulton Suri have the true observation and focus on the people, because it is often to find the deep, unspoken needs of people. Focus groups and questionnaires are not going to deal with this, and designers know that you have to be concerned enough to really fit into people's lives.

Contact: I've found that designers have a combination of tricks--gathering existing elements or ideas and fusing them in a new way. Because it means you don't have to invent from scratch, so it can be a valuable shortcut to innovation. Apple has made some of the most successful hybrids by "ingenious reorganization" (using the words coined by designer John Chacrat), and Nike cleverly linked a running shoe to an ipod to create a breakthrough Nike plus production line (allowing users to control their runs). These great combinations are hard-won. Designers know that they have to "think laterally"-think about ideas and effects, and they must be willing to try to concatenate ideas that seem impossible to be together. This way of thinking can also be absorbed by non designers.

Action: Fantasy creativity is just one small step. Let these ideas take shape, and designers can quickly bring them out of the realm of imagination. Whether a designer often creates a napkin sketch, a foam-rubber-carved prototype, or a digital simulator, or a ballpark model, this is all about creating a key component. Because when you make an idea take shape, you start making it happen.

Of course, we say this is also good, when an idea is still immature, imperfect, you are early to put into action, to integrate it into the world, you will increase the likelihood of short-term failure. Designers tend to enjoy this risk more than most of us. They know that innovation often involves a tortuous process, and those small failures are actually useful because they tell the designer what works and what needs to be improved. In an era of instant change, the designer's ability to "learn from failure" is particularly valuable. Today, many companies find themselves in a business environment of experimentation and learning, requiring rapid prototyping. In this way, we have more reason to pay attention to those who have been doing their work in this manner.

Source: http://article.yeeyan.org/view/127822/122821