Project Description

Project Description

DESIGN THINKING

You’re heading into 100 days of challenge, delight, chaos and triumph. That’s the design process in a nutshell. If you want to be a rock star product designer, then you’ll have to adopt a growth mindset and allow yourself to get messy, to experiment, to try new thing, to make mistakes, and to fail.

 

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Steve Jobs, Apple

What it is.

Design thinking is an approach to problem solving. We’re not here to make pretty pictures or pick the perfect palette. We’re here to find problems and solve them. To invent and create — and yes, to make pretty pictures and pick the perfect palette, but after we’ve solved the problems.

design thinking

The design process is chaotic, until it’s not.

Design thinking is a squiggly line of chaos and confusion as you sort through options, solutions and better solutions and finally come up with the single best solution.

How it’s used.

Designers use it as a way to make space for them to experiment and play. To give themselves permission to try something crazy without worrying whether anyone will like it. It’s an iterative approach to design.

”Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Discussion.

Good product designers work iteratively. That means we try one thing, hate it and throw it away, try something else, hate that too. Then realize that the first thing we tried was the right thing.

We don’t expect to have all the correct answers on the first day.

We do get started immediately, with pen to paper. Or stylus to tablet; cursor to screen. Because we know that nothing is more terrible than that blank screen. Once we have something to work with, we can adapt, change, amend, tweak and edit to our heart’s delight. Getting started is the real task.

Design is in the doing, not the pondering. So don’t ponder too long. Get started NOW. And embrace your imperfections.

”Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein

Objectives

  • Understand design thinking

  • Play, create, experiment

  • Share your work with others

Tips & Tricks

Think about
  • Letting go of your ego – ego destroys creativity.
  • Getting started. The blank screen is the hardest part.
  • Share your work. If you can’t show it to the world, you are not a designer.

Resources

Your Assignment

Use design thinking to invent something new.

 

It can be anything you want, as long as you’ve written it down somehow.

  • It could be a new way to get to school
  • It could be a time travel machine
  • It could be an app that finds people to socialize with in your neighborhood
  • It could be a personal jetpack that fits in a backpack <—somebody please invent this

Be as detailed as you can. Make sketches, include the user interface, try to think of ways it can really work.

 

Deliverables

Share as a pdf, website or picture in the comments and/or on Dribbble and Twitter #100daysdesign.