Design Thinking 101: Recommended Reading Part 2
In our wonderful new digital age, sometimes the time to settle down with a leather-bound tome and a cup of tea just isn’t available and we have to settle for whatever we can read on our phone while riding the train and trying not to elbow everyone around us when they read it over our shoulder. Our last Design Thinking reading list focused on some books to give you a solid grounding in the subject, this month’s list will give you a quick and dirty understanding of Design Thinking on the run.
This list is far from comprehensive, and since this is the internet, a hundred new posts on the subject might have popped up while you were reading this sentence, but every one of them has been useful to people in Sutherland and out clients to better understand what Design Thinking is all about. A fast and dirty introduction to the subject.
What is Design Thinking?
This piece from Fast Company seems like it is going to be a simple outline of the subject but it actually lays out the basics of Design Thinking methodology quite succinctly while also highlighting its value to every industry. Most importantly it hammers home the point that Design is not about a finished product it is about a process. A never-ending process of refinement and improvement.
Design Thinking Comes of Age
Jon Kolko of The Harvard Business Review takes on the more complex subject of the ways that Design Thinking is applicable not only to products but also to services and even organisational reform. While many of the books and articles discuss methodology, he looks at guiding principles like the importance of emotion to decision making, and therefore to Design Thinking. It is a slightly longer read than the intro piece, but it gives you so much more than you might have expected.
The Power of Design Thinking
This piece from Barr Seitz, Jennifer Kilian and Hugo Sarrazin of McKinsey Digital is also available as a podcast, so if your eyes are tired after a long day at work you can let their knowledge climb in through your ears instead. It is more conversational than the other pieces, and it takes a long hard look at the limits of design and the way that the current generation are pushing against those limits to expand their remit to encompass more and more of what users experience.
UX Project Checklist
This is less of an article that you can read and more of a direct dive into what using UX Methodology in your development is like. If you find that you learn better from immersion than from hearing other people talking about a subject, then Github’s checklist for software designers is probably going to be the perfect starting point for you. From each of these little checkable boxes you can expand your learning in a different direction, and by looking at the overview you can come to learn what is really involved in adopting Design Thinking as a core principle.
We will be back with further reading on more specific areas of Design Thinking later on in the year, but this quick list should give you something to mull over in the meantime. If you want a proper crash course in Design Thinking keep an eye on our website where we announce new workshops and opportunities every other week.
Gemma Wisdom
Snr Director, Marketing & Communications
Sutherland Labs
Gemma Wisdom
Snr Director, Marketing & Communications
Editor, communicator, strategist; Gemma’s goal is to share our stories with the world, imparting insights on how to grow businesses through human centric research and design. Gemma has over 20 years’ experience of growing UX and design teams – developing talent, creative environments and company culture. At Sutherland Labs Gemma leads our thought leadership, marketing operations and strategy initiatives. She is also mother to two Jedi Knights in training.