Some interesting ideas from Tim Brown’s Ted Talk: Designers - Think Big:

  1. Integrative thinking - Integrate opposing ideas and opposing constraints to create new solutions. Desirability (what humans need), technical feasibility and economic viability.
  2. Design is human-centred. It might use technology and economics but it starts with what humans need or might need. What makes life easier and more enjoyable. What makes technology useful and usable.
  3. You need to understand culture and context before you start having ideas.
  4. Learning by making. Instead of thinking about what to build, build in order to think.
  5. Prototypes speed up innovation. Because only once you get your ideas out into the real world do you understand its strengths and weaknesses.
  6. The faster we prototype the faster our ideas evolve.
  7. Prototype your ideas early.
  8. Participatory systems - where the producers and consumers interact on a more direct basis.
  9. Everyone should design. Not just designers.
  10. In times of change we need new alternatives and new ideas.
  11. Design Thinking encourages divergent approaches. New solutions, new ideas that have not existed before.
  12. What kind of design questions should we ask ourselves today?