Design Thinking with Transformational Impact
Bruce Nussbaum has started an excellent thread on the importance of design thinking and how we may need to apply it to generate transformations rather than just innovations. Transformational impacts rather than incremental innovations are required in order to meet the dire challenges we face in healthcare, management, education, global warming and other areas running on broken models. And design thinking is the key!
For me, designs that look beyond usability and sensory delight to probe deeper into how our minds naturally work to create a specific “think-and-feel” (cognition) offer one approach to transformation.
More boldly, designs that are optimized for how minds (people and machines) really work offer the best hope for transforming healthcare, management, education and our approach to global warming.
For example, imagine a healthcare system designed to reinforce an individual’s cognitive ability to manage their own health risks or an education system designed around how students really learn. Thoughts, emotions and other aspects of “mental life” drive value creation in the modern economy. We must transform our organizational, industrial and social processes and institutions to respect, enhance and even create the cognition that drives economic and social value.
It this type of design thinking – or focus on cognitive design – that will take us beyond innovation to transformation.
