| | Steph McAllister This past Sunday, 60 Minutes aired a segment on IDEO founder David Kelley. This global design firm, with famous clients including Steve Jobs, pioneered the use of “design thinking” to make products more responsive and intuitive for users. By beginning from a position of empathy for the user, design thinkers better define obstacles and needs, prototype, test, and retest. This process is not linear‒like a traditional design, prototype, and production process‒but iterative. |
Design thinking, however, is not simply a methodology for commercial product design. IDEO is currently working to improve access to safe drinking water in India, and build sustainable educational programs in Peru. As Kelley points out in the interview: “The big thing about design thinking is it allows people to build on the ideas of others.” At the IDEO offices, collaborative working styles are not only encouraged, but are a matter of course. The firm is even creative in its hiring practices, having anthropologists and musicians working alongside computer programmers and engineers. This mixture of backgrounds and perspectives is key to the design thinking model. This diversity is also reflected in the cohort of Kelley’s Hasso Plattner Institute for Design at Stanford University (the d.school), where 500 masters students from all disciplines learn about “design thinking as a tool for innovation”.
While watching this segment, it became clear that Kelley’s focus on empathy as the starting point to approaching any design problem resonates for those of us in the non profit sector. IDEO itself is branching off into humanitarian efforts, suggesting that the connection between design thinking and the sector is a logical progression. In my capacity as Action Research Coordinator, I am always interested in making the ways we work here at Framework, and in the sector more generally, more collaborative, transparent, and efficient. But how do we make innovation and re-evaluation a priority in a sector that often has limited resources? Can the empathy that inspires innovative thinkers like Kelley also be the starting point when testing and recommending new tools and processes to the non profit community? If empathy is a catalyst for innovation, than the non profit sector has a unique capacity.
While watching this segment, it became clear that Kelley’s focus on empathy as the starting point to approaching any design problem resonates for those of us in the non profit sector. IDEO itself is branching off into humanitarian efforts, suggesting that the connection between design thinking and the sector is a logical progression. In my capacity as Action Research Coordinator, I am always interested in making the ways we work here at Framework, and in the sector more generally, more collaborative, transparent, and efficient. But how do we make innovation and re-evaluation a priority in a sector that often has limited resources? Can the empathy that inspires innovative thinkers like Kelley also be the starting point when testing and recommending new tools and processes to the non profit community? If empathy is a catalyst for innovation, than the non profit sector has a unique capacity.
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