Design Thinking

Debate: How to Brainstorm Effectively

In my recent post Susan Cain: The pow­er of intro­verts, I men­tioned that I agreed with Cain’s view on brain­storm­ing — that it is ben­e­fi­cial to allow par­tic­i­pants to brain­storm on their own before dis­cussing ideas in a group set­ting. Then last week I came across more arti­cles dis­cussing the pro­ce­dure of brain­storm­ing.

Susan Cain: The power of introverts | Video on TED.com

Susan Cain: The pow­er of intro­verts | Video on TED.com. As some­one who would describe her­self as nat­u­ral­ly more intro­vert­ed, I real­ly love this video high­light­ing the pow­er of intro­verts in a cul­ture that tends to val­ue extro­ver­sion. This video goes along with a long list of arti­cles I’ve read over the past few months […]

5 Rules for a Creative Culture

5 Rules for a Cre­ative Cul­ture Ben Chest­nut, CEO of MailChimp Avoid rules. Avoid order. Don’t just embrace chaos, but cre­ate a lit­tle bit of it. Con­stant change, from the top-down, keeps peo­ple nim­ble and flex­i­ble (and shows that you want con­stant change). Give your­self and your team per­mis­sion to be cre­ative. Per­mis­sion to try […]

Synectics & Pughsion™

Synec­tics Class Exer­cise As I’m fin­ish­ing up with an online Finan­cial Man­age­ment class that is all num­bers, I was just think­ing how I’d rather be facil­i­tat­ing cre­ative think­ing right now. Then I start­ed think­ing back about a pre­sen­ta­tion my for­mer class­mate Rebec­ca Mahl and I did on the prob­lem solv­ing method­ol­o­gy synec­tics, as well as […]

Designing A Difference: Part 2

Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence — Small­bean Part 2 on Vimeo Almost one year ago, I wrote about a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Design Muse­um Boston and Small­bean to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of Smallbean’s solar suit­case in a post titled Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence: Smallbean’s Solar Suit­case. Here is phase two of the project, which focused on refin­ing con­cepts […]

The Human Factor: Design Thinking

This intro­duc­to­ry class helped me under­stand the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al human fac­tors that need to be con­sid­ered with every design project — from ergonom­ics and usabil­i­ty to light­ing and col­or. Com­ing from a graph­ic design back­ground, the phys­i­cal fac­tors were espe­cial­ly new to me. I learned how to find and use anthro­po­met­ric data as well […]

Tippy Tap: Save Water, Save Lives

I found this video via World Water Day: Tip­py Tap keeps it sim­ple + saves water — Core77. I love how sim­ple the solu­tion is. To learn more vis­it www.tippytap.org/.

Sir Ken Robinson + RSA Animate

This is a great visu­al­iza­tion of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk from my pre­vi­ous post Bring on the Learn­ing Rev­o­lu­tion!

Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

Today I final­ly fin­ished read­ing Tim Brown’s Change by Design, after start­ing the book at the end of April and tak­ing a long break. I was too dis­tract­ed by my future plans— fig­ur­ing out where I would be mov­ing this fall and how I would get there— so I just put the book aside. I’m […]

Designing A Difference: Smallbean’s Solar Suitcase

Design­ing A Dif­fer­ence: Small­bean Part 1 from Design Muse­um Boston on Vimeo. A team at Design Muse­um Boston is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Small­bean, a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion based in Boston, to devel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of Smallbean’s solar suit­case. This video doc­u­ments phase one of the redesign, which is still in progress. Phase one focused on under­stand­ing […]