MY DESIGN PROCESS
Lean & Agile Design Thinking
“Design thinking is the search for a magical balance between business and art, structure and chaos, intuition and logic, concept and execution, playfulness and formality, and control and empowerment.”
— Idris Mootee
Design Thinking is my methodology of choice when it comes to working with graphic design, especially since it can be adapted across different industries and project. Design Thinking is a innovation methodology, developed at Stanford University, used to tackle business, organisational, and social challenges in innovative ways. These challenges can include, for example, the creation of new products, services, business models, processes or systems.
The impact of design thinking is growing quickly. From its Silicon Valley origins, this practical methodology is reaching more and more people and organizations around the world, while empowering them to tap into their creative potential.
Design thinking has seeped into the culture of world-leading corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Proctor & Gamble, and SAP. It is also helping to transform the non-profit and social-enterprise sectors, where organizations like d.light, Acumen Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation use human-centered tools to tackle poverty and health challenges in the developing world.
KEY COMPONENTS OF DESIGN THINKING
Empathy & Human-Centeredness
One of the primary objectives of design thinkers is to gain a deep understanding for human needs. Design thinkers ask questions like:
-
What are the intrinsic drivers of an individual’s actions?
-
Why do people follow certain patterns?
-
How can we understand these patterns at the deepest level to offer people delightful, innovative products and services that fulfil important human needs in compassionate ways?
And as design thinkers, we use ethnographic tools to answer these questions.
Diversity & Collaboration
Design thinking depends significantly on radical collaboration and co-creation. It is through the mixing of multiple perspectives, ideas, and approaches that the creative process flourishes.
Design thinkers leverage diversity in all its forms — gender, cultural, academic, professional, etc. — or break with the status quo, and concoct impactful, transformative solutions to complex problems.
Rapid Prototyping & Iterations
Design thinkers embrace trial and error, and use low-cost, low-tech prototypes to test their assumptions as early in the innovation process as possible. Design thinkers understand that only through failure will they be able to learn what works and what doesn’t work.
“Fail early to succeed sooner” is a common design-thinking mantra. We'd also rather ask for forgiveness than for permission — even if it gets us in a bit of trouble with the higher ups once in a while.
Ambiguity & Playfulness
The innovative process is inherently ambiguous, messy, and difficult to control. Design thinkers embrace this ambiguity and chaos through open-mindedness, flexibility, and a youthful sense of experimentation and play.
We take our work very seriously — but ourselves not so seriously.
WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?
Whether you are looking to create or redesign your website, need help with user experience or printed materials like flyers, posters, brochures or roll-up banners, are having trouble with representing your brand, and even if you just need help with a letterhead or Powerpoint presentation — I’m here to help.