Design in Emerging Markets and Idiom

 As you know, Design thinking today has become a Global Phenomenon. Organisations, individuals and others are applying Design Thinking in various aspects of life and work. All the emerging markets (countries like India, Brazil, Mexico and China) however, are applying Design thinking much faster than their counter-parts in the west. Design thinking today has become an integral part of many leading organisations across the globe. Recently, Fast Company featured and article on Design Thinking in Emerging Markets. The article was written by Bruce Nussbaum who is a leading figure in the global design industry.

We, at Idiom are proud to announce the fact that Idiom as well as SPREAD (our very own offshoot) has been featured as ambassadors for design and design thinking to India. We hope to spread the message of Design and Design Thinking in India and make it an integral management tool for every industry here. What do you feel about this growing phenomenon?


You can find the original article here 


Posted By Rahul

What is Design Thinking?

What is Design Thinking?

Wikipedia defines it as "a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result. It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas.

As with design, there’s probably no one definition of design thinking everyone will agree on. The word design can refer to nouns such as designers, physical products, and style. The word can be a verb, as in process, create, and make. For example, Charles Burnette in his IDeSiGN curriculum calls it, “…a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained.”

Lately many more people are talking and writing about the application of design thinking to intangible problems, design not only as a verb but as a way of — as Herbert Simon wrote — improving situations. I felt a need to review what has been said and define the term for myself before I could put it into use. Ways of thinking are always difficult to define, but I’m reminded of how Lao Tzu said “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” yet he still managed to write a book about it.

I have synthesized for myself what I understand design thinking to be…

• Collaborative, especially with others having different and complimentary experience, to generate better work and form agreement
• Abductive, inventing new options to find new and better solutions to new problems
• Experimental, building prototypes and posing hypotheses, testing them, and iterating this activity to find what works and what doesn’t work to manage risk
• Personal, considering the unique context of each problem and the people involved
• Integrative, perceiving an entire system and its linkages
• Interpretive, devising how to frame the problem and judge the possible solutions

I’m sure one could play with the language and categorization to find more or less characteristics, but I’m happy with just those six.

-Posted by Rahul

Frank Gehry - Trendsetter, Visionary, Innovator and Legendary Architect

Frank Gehry on the popular TV show, the Simpsons

Are we going out of a job?

> For the 'some' of us who get flustered with scheduling design, drawing specs, doling out rigid "dos & don't s" & hate it - this may sound temptingly sweet!

> And the 'others' of us who seek to eliminate chaos, standardize, specify & bring in that much-needed order - an antitheses on our very fiber! A death knell to us 'determinists'!

2002 - Case Western reserve University found themselves drawn to architect Frank Gehry's controversial but widely acclaimed style, hired him, approved his design and brought in a small army of contractors to build it. The contractors duly admired, in a shocked & fretful way, the model of the God-awfully complex structure they were about to undertake, and then asked for the blueprints, to which Gehry's team replied that there weren't any. The contractors thought the group was joking, but Gehry & his associates were serious. But constructing a building without blueprints, the stunned contractors might well have sputtered, would be like putting together a television set from scratch without a wiring diagram.

Gehry's vision was....

To capture the building's intended emotional content, everyone working on the building should keep creating throughout the construction process. Withholding blueprints is a way of making sure that happens. Foregoing a detailed plan is disruptive - it creates convolution, making a neat & well-defined process messy. Every time I've given my brief to the contractors, I've had to specify every little thing...miss the slightest & I've gotten an unholy mess on my hands, crippling delays, me calling the contractor a f**%#@  moron & him calling me some equivalent choice expression. The outcome hit me like a ton of bricks....

Not only was the finished building a stunning hit, completed on time & within budget,

My first impulse was - hah! Yeah well if your project has infinite funding and all the worlds time! But sorry, not for me... I've got deadlines, cost constraints...

Then I finished the sentence...

...but most of the contractors were so pleased with the invention into which they had pushed that they ended up changing the way they do business. 

....No way! Get outta here..... 

....but is that possible? (especially when you aren't Gehry)

Did Gehry succeed because he had brainy contractors? Please find me one... for sure, we are unanimous on this one. Worse, can I trust my contractor to innovate; find a solution so far from his way of working? The answer was right there on the same page...

Freed from the constraints of a blueprint's rigid specifications & standard operating procedures, the contractors & architects were able to collaboratively rethink the design & construction techniques in a way necessary to achieve the project's goals. That led to an eruption of innovation.

Somewhere between extremes of rigid spec docs + schedules of columns, footings, steel members, rebars, concrete mix, etc, etc .....and...... a squiggle & a sketch showing a germ of an idea where we have no clue  how to build it........lies a sweet-spot which is all-inclusive, very gratifying & "happy design". Or so I gather......

I don’t think I have found it as yet . When we are striving to achieve standardization & conformity in our work (please, I'm not a control freak), going by 'Gehry's vision' would mean we might as well mothball our drafters....scary!!

                                                               

  Some of Gehry's Work 

PS - Text in blue - "A Perfect Mess" - Eric Abrahamson & David H Freedman,

        Text in black - my take on things.

Posted by Kiran