Design is a Process

How can creativity be learned and why is design a process? Interesting article about Professor Peter Robbie’s Design Thinking class in Thayer School’s MacLean Engineering Sciences Center. Shows different tools (and the thinking behind them) to improved the design thinking. While the article mainly focuses on engineering design - several key elements apply nicely to any form of design:

"Engineers often love to jump right into making things, but early in the design process it’s often preferable to focus on deeply understanding the needs of end users.”

“As with learning foreign languages, fluency and flexibility in design thinking come from repeated practice, so my design courses include multiple projects that allow for iterative practice of design processes.”

“The world is at the point where we can’t just keep doing things the same way. There’s going to have to be more emphasis on rethinking the design of everything with a focus on life-cycle analysis and searching for radical new solutions.”

Re-think the existing, do it over and over again and always start with the needs of the end user - not bad advise for making radio stations sound interesting.

The entire article about design thinking can be found here (via Core77)