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.
The #FutureMuseum Project: Experience-Driven and People-Centered
The #FutureMuseum Project invites professionals from around the world to share their ideas about the future of museums. My view is that the museum of the future will be more visitor- and guest-centered than ever before in the history of museums and cultural institutions.
Minimizing the Einstellung Effect in Design Thinking: How to Arrive at Innovative Solutions by Diminishing Cognitive Bias
The Einstellung Effect—when preexisting knowledge or experience prevents us from considering alternative possibilities to a problem—can seriously impede a team’s innovation capacity. Here are some small steps to mitigate its effects.
Five mistakes of beginning design thinkers (and how to overcome them)
I’ve observed a set of common errors that practitioners new to design thinking often make when implementing the process. By leveraging the learnings of others, you can more successfully champion, utilize, and apply design thinking.
Join the conversation about design thinking and design sprints in museums
Are you curious to hear from other practitioners who are dipping their toes into the waters of design thinking and human-centered design? We've launched a new LinkedIn group and have started a Twitter hashtag for professionals to share stories, ask questions, and join the conversation.
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.
Cooking with your users: reflections on the Museum Computer Network (MCN) Keynote
The keynote speaker at the 2015 Museum Computer Network, Liz Ogpu, talked about the power of human-centered design and its potential for impact in museums.
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.
Becoming human through human-centered design: reflections from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
In this guest post, Rachel Griner, an independent strategy and innovation expert who served as an Executive On Loan to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, explores how human-centered design can be an expression of humanity.
Discovering design in every nook and cranny: the V&A Museum Residency Programme
This guest post is from doctoral candidate, Saskia Coulson, and describes her journey of using design research to explore residency programs in museums. She explains how museum residency programs can be used as a lens to think about the traditional and emerging frameworks of design. This is then explored through a recent example of research she conducted on the V&A Museum Residency Programme in London.
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.
Empathy as the starting point for innovation
One of the core principles of design thinking is its focus on human values at every stage of the process. And empathy for the people for whom you’re designing is fundamental to […]
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.
Why design thinking for museums?
When I signed up for an Executive Education course offered through Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, or the "d.school," I didn't really know much about design thinking--or how it was relevant to museums. In fact, I didn't know what I was getting into.