Stanford d.School’s training gave me the confidence to facilitate design thinking sessions in my workplace although my first few attempts were awkward and rocky. I was pleasantly surprised however, with how quickly I was able to improve in both planning and facilitating design thinking workshops. As I became more comfortable with applying the d.School’s methods, I naturally became more interested in finding new ways to master each phase of design thinking.
It didn’t taking long for me to become acquainted with IDEO, a Palo Alto based design and consulting firm co-created by David Kelley, one of the founders of the d.School. Similar to Stanford d.School, IDEO is incredibly generous in sharing its methodology and tools to the public. I’ve found their views and methodologies for design thinking to be quite similar and complimentary.
One amazing (and free!) tool that I found is IDEO’s ‘Field Guide to Human-Centered Design’.
Free 192 page pdf toolkit from IDEO – http://www.designkit.org/resources/1
I discovered this toolkit as I was seeking best practices for becoming a stronger facilitator of ideation and rapid prototyping sessions. The toolkit includes a variety of strategies for adopting a human centered designer mindset, driving inspiration, ideating and implementing solutions.
A few of the tactics I’ve immediately incorporated include “mash-up” ideations and adding a “creating insights statements” component to my ideations to help synthesize information. The toolkit is filled with many other ideas for gleaning insights and thoughtfully navigating through the stages of design thinking.
In addition to IDEO’s Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, I’ve discovered many other fantastic design thinking resources (https://theaccidentaldesignthinker.com/tools-resources/). As I’ve continued to learn from multiple design thinking practitioners and firms, I’ve been impressed and inspired by how willing they are to share their expertise and introduce others to the power of human-centered design. I seek to do the same with The Accidental Design Thinker website.
Would love to hear any thoughts, ideas, questions as I continue to build the site!
