Design Thinking

Chapter 10Design Thinking for Non-Designers: A Guide for Team Training and Implementation

Victor P. Seidel

Babson College

Sebastian K. Fixson

Babson College

Introduction

Design thinking provides a tremendously powerful set of tools for designers and non-designers alike. However, non-designers face the difficulty in learning the tools and mind-set of design thinking while lacking the long training period that experienced designers undertake as part of their education. For example, when General Motors began working with a design consultancy to improve their own vehicle innovation processes, they faced a challenge that some of their engineering and marketing staff were to start using design thinking methods, but these staff had little formal training in how to use design thinking techniques. The increasingly widespread training of design thinking for teams of non-designers raises questions of how relative novices can learn effective methods given realistic time constraints for training such teams.

Indeed, ambitious efforts are under way across firms to get more of their staff involved in design thinking approaches. For example, IBM has opened a 50,000-square- foot “Home of IBM Design Thinking” in Austin, Texas, that they described as part of a “new approach to reimagining how we design our products and solutions,” and Infosys has plans to train 30,000 of its employees in design thinking. While non-designers can relatively quickly learn the basic concepts behind design thinking ...