Remote Design Thinking. How does that work? Part 1.
In these times when a lot of people are forced to work from home, creativity sessions, design thinking workshops, focus group sessions etc. are canceled because they were normally done in RL (real life). But Real Life 2.0 is a different one. Momentarily we are confined to Zoom, Whereby, Skype and FaceTime from our home office/ dinner table.
A lot of designers & design thinkers used to say that design thinking does’t work in the online world. Since last week most design thinkers, designers, creativity facilitators have to do design thinking in an online environment. Something which I have been doing the last two years and with good results and happy clients.
A brief history……
From 2010 until late 2017 I have done my share of design thinking workshops in a lot of different places in the world and for a variety of organisations & businesses. They always involved groups of people, tools or flip over sheets and endless amounts of posits. When we moved to the Spanish Pyrenees over 2 years ago, the days of giving workshops were more or less over, so I had to come up with something else that would keep me involved in design thinking. Marce always said to me: ”You do design (thinking) in everything you do and you don’t even realise it”. I wouldn’t belief her at first, but it is probably true. Why?
Design thinking is a mindset, a way of working above all. At its core it has nothing to do with tools, workshops or post-its. They are just a means to an end. They might help people learn about design thinking or those who like to have a creativity session but it has not much to do with design thinking in itself. Jürgen Tanghe wrote a good article about how DT is not working because it has been brought back to a step by step process.
Don’t get me wrong I have taken part in the workshop, training circus pretty long. Concluding that at the end it is mindset and attitude. I can take that mindset to an online environment when I need to.
At the end I probably prefer working with people IRL. It is important not only look people in the eyes, but also smell them and feel their presence, when you are designing. Having our studio in Usana in the Spanish Pyrenees, doesn’t stop me from using all the design thinking principles when I work with clients. For Unbeaten Studio to do design thinking or design research projects we need four things, besides our sketchbooks, laptops, prototyping materials, desk and workshop (and some nice techno tunes from Cercle.)
We need to feel the connection with the person(s) we work with. It helps when we have video calls, because we like to look each other in the eyes next to hearing each other. This helps to empathise and to connect.
Trust and openness. The client and us have to trust each other fully, we need to be able to collaborate in a honest way, where we can say what we think with respect for each other. You have to communicate more clear, when you work remotely for it to work.
We all understand that we are starting a journey together, with a lot of uncertainty and that we work our ass of for a beautiful outcome. We have to find the right question during this journey and then design the answer to that question.
Gut feeling. If something doesn’t feel right, we don’t do it. It is tough sometimes, and you have to listen carefully to your gut, not to miss any signals. This takes some practice and some failing.
If these things are in place we can start working on a project. We like to work fast & focused on our projects. In a following blog I will describe 2 recent projects where we have done successful Remote Design Thinking.
Remote designing tips.
Have a look at the “4 Ways to Work Together When We Can’t Be Together” blogpost for some more interesting approaches to remote working as a designer/ design thinker. I specially like the toolkit IDEO mentions in this blog.
Author: Jeroen Spoelstra
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It doesn’t get much more remote then this