


Why bad ideas lead to good ideas: using “reverse thinking” in a design sprint at the National Gallery of Art
Imagining the worst way to solve a problem can actually help you solve the problem. Learn how we used a bad ideas brainstorm In a four-day design sprint at the National Gallery of Art to arrive at good solutions.

This is How a Museum Uses Creativity & Collaboration to Reach 200M Annually
In this interview originally published by IDEO U, Chris Flink, executive director of the Exploratorium, talks about how the museum cultivates creativity with visitors, the broader community, and within the organization.

Why play is essential to the design thinking process
Play is essential for innovation, creativity, and collaboration, and the most successful design thinkers are the ones who embrace the notion of play. In this post, I share five reasons play is critical to design thinking.

Daring greatly through human-centered design: an interview with Hannah Fox of Derby Museums
Earlier this summer, I came across the Derby Museums Human-Centred Design Handbook, developed by the Derby Museums Trust in Derby, England. I spoke with Hannah Fox, Project Director, to learn more about the Museums' use of human-centered design methodologies.

5 Reasons Why Design Thinking is Good for Organizations
This guest post is from Maureen Carroll, Ph.D., the Founder of Lime Design and a lecturer in Stanford University’s d.school and Graduate School of Education. In doing hundreds of innovation workshops, she has discovered five compelling reasons why design thinking is good for organizations.

5 critical success factors for organizational innovation: IDEAS
This article was adapted and reposted with permission from Eric W. Stein’s blog. Eric is an Associate Professor of Management Science and Information Systems at Penn State, and his areas of research and expertise […]

Design thinking at MuseumNext 2014: my five big takeaways
I recently returned from the MuseumNext conference in Newcastle, England, where I gave a talk, "From Insights to Prototypes: How Museums can Use the Design Thinking Process to Engage and Delight Visitors" and co-led a workshop titled "Designing for Happiness: Using Design Thinking to Delight Visitors." In this post, I share the five big takeaways I presented at the conference on how to integrate design thinking mindsets into museum practice.

Design ≠ design thinking
This guest post is from Molly Clare Wilson, an experience designer and teacher in San Francisco. When we confuse “design” and “design thinking,” everyone loses. Designers get their backs up at the […]

Using improv games to foster creativity and collaboration: part 1 of 3
I’ve been taking improvisational theater classes for years, mostly because I find them energizing and extremely fun, but also because I started noticing that the skills I was practicing in […]

You can’t innovate innovation
You can’t innovate in the abstract. This should be obvious by analogy: you don’t learn to bake in the abstract. You learn by baking blueberry muffins, devils food cake, popovers, meringues, sourdough bread, and cherry pie, getting better and more inventive as you start to understand how baking works. You’ll only get better and better at your innovation process, whether it’s design thinking or something else, as you try pointing it at different problems.

Stepping into the “continuum of innovation”: kicking-off design thinking in your museum
I've had numerous inquiries from colleagues at institutions around the world about how to get started with design thinking at home. To step into into this "continuum of innovation," there are some strategies and approaches you can implement to kick-off the process and start infusing the design thinking ethos into your work culture. Some of these are more attitudinal, while others are tactical.