Some pointers that I've got are:
1. What is a design-centric culture?
- Focus on users' experiences, especially their emotional ones. To build empathy with users, a design-centric organisation empowers employees to observe behaviour and draw conclusions about what people want and need. Those conclusions are tremendously hard to express in quantitative language. Instead, organisations that "get" design use emotional language (words that concern desires, aspiration, engagement and experience) to describe products and users. Team members discuss the emotional resonance of a value proposition as much as they discuss utility and product requirements.
- Create models to examine complex problems. Design thinking, first used to make physical objects, is increasingly being applied to complex, intangible issues, such as how a customer experience a service. Regardless of the context, design thinkers tend to use physical models, also known as design artifacts, to explore, define, and communicate. Those models - primarily diagrams and sketches, supplement and in some cases replace the spreadsheets, specifications and other documents that have come to define the traditional organisational environment. They add a fluid dimension to the exploration of complexity, allowing for nonlinear thought when tackling nonlinear problems.
- Use prototypes to explore potential solutions. In design-centric organisations, you'll typically see prototypes of new ideas, new products, and new services scattered throughout offices and meeting rooms. Whereas diagrams such as customer journey maps explore the problem space, prototypes explore the solution space. They may be digital, physical, or diagrammatic, but in all cases they are a way to communicate ideas. The habit of publicly displaying rough prototypes hints at an open-minded culture, one that values exploration and experimentation. Design-centric companies aren't shy about tinkering with ideas in a public forum and tend to iterate quickly on prototypes.
- Tolerate failure. A design culture is nurturing. It doesn't encourage failure, but the iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it's rare to get things the first time. Employees in every aspect of the business must realize that they can take social risks - putting forth half baked ideas, for instance, without losing face or experiencing punitive repercussions.
- Exhibit thoughtful restraint. Many products built on an emotional value proposition are simpler than competitors' offerings. This restraint grows out of deliberate decisions about what the product should do and, just as important, what it should not do. By removing features, a company offers customers a clear, simple experience.
- Accepting more ambiguity. Design doesn't conform easily to estimates. It is difficult if not impossible to understand how much value will be delivered through a better experience or to calculate the return on an investment in creativity.
- Embracing risk. Transformative innovation is inherently risky. It involves inferences and leaps of faith. If something's hasn't been done before, there's no way to guarantee its outcome. Leaders need to create a culture that allows people to take chances and move forward without a complete, logical understanding of a problem.
- Resetting expectations. As corporate leaders become aware of the power of design, many view design thinking as a solution to all their woes. Designers, enjoying their new level of strategic influence, often reinforce that impression. Design, however, do not solve all problems. It helps people and organisations cut through complexity. It is great for innovation and works extremely well for imaging the future. But it's not the right set of tools for optimizing, streamlining, or otherwise operating a stable business. Additionally, even if expectations are set appropriately, they must be aligned around a realistic timeline - culture changes slowly in large organizations.
Yours,
Something Small Thinking Big
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