I was wondering how I should describe innovations that deal with challenges of conflicting parties on an governmental, national or even international level a couple of weeks ago. Thinking of a common nominator I ended up thinking about societies.  Although it might be kind ob obvious I’m still kind of unsure if this really nails it or if it would be another fuzz/buzzword. The question is, should an area of innovation be named after the intended solution such as social - making it more open to be to applied to various fields – or after the are of the intended application/target group that it will server, such as human (centered) innovation.

From my understanding, human centered innovation clearly focuses on all things which are related to human beings and can therefore be seen as a superior group if we think of hierarchies. So the question would be if this classification would make sense. Societal Innovation in the way I thought about it, would be focused on groups of people and how there relate to each other. Therefor Societal innovation focuses on the improvement of the persistent relationships of groups of people (Wikipedia) such as tribes, political parties, states …

In contrast to human or  centered innovation, this will impact the tools that might be relevant in terms of analyzing, developing and evaluating as well as implementing new innovations. Things like a group dynamics, networks and systems have to bee taken into account in order take the interactivity into account. Areas like rules and regulations, culture and history have to be considered to really understand problems and solutions.

In regards to social innovation, which is targeted towards social needs/impact, Societal Innovation is open to target areas which don’t necessarily have a social impact, such as: policies, political actions, business regulations etc. since they all impact the way groups of people relate to each other.

These are just a couple of quick thoughts on the topic since I’m curious to see how others/you will reflect on it :)

Design’s Role in Innovation from Design Council on Vimeo.

It’s interesting what people say, that design is. Seems like it’s everything and therefore maybe nothing at the same time. And its also interesting that a lot of people put design = innovation. Maybe design is the process or craft of innovation, who knows.

Although the product itself is quite nice, the story of how they developed their business so far is much more interesting. An great example of how small products can be developed and a great showcase of how accessible production methods are at the moment.

Even financing seems simple when people believe in your ideas. Although I doubt that it was at simple and flawless as it is described, by this article  about the making of the “Glif”.

It seems so “simple” that it makes you want to do it yourself. I wonder how many people will follow this rout in the near future, especially in times with to much designers and a shortage of jobs.

PS: The time I read the article, money gathered on kickstarter was $131.000+

This presentation gives some insights about the business design process at Rotman. The presentation is done by Heather Fraser, who is the Director of Rotman Designworks™ . Since it’s not mentioned I wonder if, how and where they analyze the existing business model of a company. Further more, it seems like they are not looking at competitors, but maybe this is only due to simplicity of the presentation. Never the less, its an interesting presentation, especially the strategic business design part or, as they call it, the 3rd gear.

I just watched a video on Harvard’s “Inside the Case Method”, a method to teach business students. What seemed really interesting to me is that this method had a lot of similarities to the design thinking and seems almost as engaging.

There where a couple of quotes in the video which could have been easily originated from a design thinking documentary. Beside that, the process itself seemed striking similiar:

• Understanding / Observe : Student get all the facts and a problem, but no conclusion. Although this is done through prepared material, it wraps up the first 2 phases in design thinking.
• Define (point of view), students get into discussions about the findings to come up with a point of view.
• Ideate : based on these preparation their bring their ideas to class.
• Prototype/Test: While they’re in class students discuss and challenge themselves while taking on the role of persons which they have to make the decisions for (client, competitor, company). Although there is no real “user” involvement, people act out different positions to test their ideas. In addition students ask teachers (which could be seen as the professionals in this scenario) to comment on their ideas.

In my opinion, some similarities can also be found in the students engagement. In addition it is similar in the fact that it is not about repeating foreign knowledge but coming up with your own thoughts and learnings or, as their website put it:

“…we break the boundaries of passive learning to encourage students to become active participants in their own progress.”

And finally, students in this program seemed to have diverse backgrounds which is interpreted as an advantage by their peers.

So all in all there seam to be a lot of similarities in these two programs and I hope we will see more of these “learning by doing” approaches in education in the near future.

Since I was asked if I know a list with design methods some time ago I keep on stumbling across links more and more often. So for anyone interested in design methods, enjoy the links.

If you have any further websites on design Methods, I’m looking forward to add them to this list.

http://project.cmd.hro.nl/cmi/hci/toolkit/index2.php

http://www.transformator.net/research/index.htm

http://socialinnovation.typepad.com/silk/silk-method-deck.html

http://www.usabilitybok.org/

http://www.id.iit.edu/130/

http://www.servicedesigntools.org/

http://www.enginegroup.co.uk/index.php/service_design/methods/P0/

http://imihome.imi.uni-karlsruhe.de/map.html

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Wiki4des/Portal:Designmanagement

http://www.wikid.eu/index.php/Category:Design_methods_and_techniques

http://www.betterproductdesign.net/tools/tools-and-techniques.html

http://humanoid.bplaced.net/ideo-method-cards.pdf (Ideo Method Cards)

http://www.dennis-oswald.de/BLOG/

Bootcamp Bootleg

Silk Method Deck

IIT analytic, systemic approach to design

Nice article on sketching:
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2008/09/08/sketching-is-the-new-black-inspirations-from-the-analog-world/