What kind of deep-rooted habits can the designer’s talents work together to turn the original idea into a new creation?
What can business people learn from studying how designers can successfully solve problems and create innovations? At the most fundamental level, they can learn to ask questions, follow, connect and take action. With these four of the most important things, designers can make extraordinary breakthroughs.
In the past two years, I have surveyed more than 100 top designers from all walks of life (research for a book), and found some common habits that have almost become second nature to many designers.
These deep-rooted habits are intrinsically linked with the designer’s talents, successfully turning original ideas into real creations. All this shows that they are worth checking out.
Questions: No matter when you are with designers, you will quickly find that they will ask and ask many questions. Usually, questioning is the starting point of the design phase and will have a profound impact on what follows. From Bruce Mao to Richard Warman to Xue Boland, many designers I have surveyed talked about the importance of asking “idiot questions.” The “idiot problem” will challenge the existing implementation and vision of a particular industry or sector. From the jokes that designers talk about themselves, we can see their tendency to keep asking “idiot questions”. How much designer does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is: is it a light bulb?
In a business environment, asking basic “why” questions will make the questioner seem naive, while at the same time making others resist (for example, we have done this for 20 years, you ask “why do we do this” What does it mean? However, by encouraging people to step back and rethink old problems or long-established practices, designers can begin to restructure the surrounding challenges and guide thinking in new directions. What kind of business do we want? Today’s What do customers really need? What do they want from us? In today’s rapidly changing business, the ability to question and rethink these basic principles has never been more important.
Attention: It’s easy to talk about caring about customers’ needs. But to really understand, you have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: get out of the company bubble and really immerse yourself in the daily lives of the people you serve. What impresses me is the dedication of design researchers like Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO to observe and pay attention to the crowd, because this is usually to find people’s deep, unexpressed needs. Focus groups and questionnaires cannot handle this. Designers know that you must pay enough attention and truly integrate into people’s lives.
Connection: I found that designers have a comprehensive trick-collect existing elements or ideas, and combine them in a whole new way. Because it means you don’t have to invent and create from scratch, it can be a valuable shortcut to innovation. Through “intelligent reorganization” (using the vocabulary coined by designer John Shakra), Apple has produced some of the most successful hybrid products; Nike has cleverly linked a running shoe and iPod to create a breakthrough Nike Plus production line ( Allow users to control running by themselves). These great combinations have not come easily. Designers know that they must “think laterally”—think about ideas and influences broadly, and they must be willing to try to connect some ideas that seem impossible to be together. This way of thinking can also be absorbed by non-designers.
Putting it into action: Utopian creativity is just a small step. Let these ideas take shape, designers can quickly bring them out of the realm of imagination. Whether the designer often creates a napkin sketch, a prototype carved from foam rubber, a digital simulator, or a rough model, these are all key components of creation. Because when you shape an idea, you start to make it a reality
Of course, it’s also good to say that. When an idea is still naive and imperfect, but you put it into action early and integrate it into the world, you will increase the possibility 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 very useful because they can tell the designer what is feasible and what needs to be improved. In the era of instant change, the designer’s ability to “learn from failure” is particularly valuable. Nowadays, 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 way.
