DESIGN THNKING

What does design thinking mean to you?
How are you using it in your current project?
Future projects?

Design thinking honestly means quite a bit to me. For years I have been saying that the world’s most valuable resource and final frontier is the creative thought processes of the human mind. With so many advances in technology, it seems like most jobs that people have can easily be replaced by computers. Technical service calls from America are directed to operators in India. The furniture industry which used to have the majority of its roots in North Carolina are now shipped out to China. These changes have happened as the result of two main things: money and technology. These changes have shifted the way the business world operates and forces those who wish to still have a job in a local market to come up with new ways to succeed. The point I am getting at is that our generation has a new set of challenges to face if we wish to succeed as designers. With new challenges, we must come up with new solutions. This is where the importance of design thinking comes into play.
As designers we have a talent or a skill to have an eye for great color pallets, material choices, and organization of space. This is only the surface. The reason great designers can come up with great designs ultimately has to do with solid creative problem solving skills. The same creative problem solving skills and processes we use to design a hotel lobby can be applied to any other problems in life in order to achieve good results. So to tie back to what I was talking about in the beginning about the value of the creative thought processes of the brain, we must apply our knowledge and skills of design thinking to attack greater problems. This is relative to the “We Hatch Ideas” presentation we had in class on Wednesday. It is my underlying goal to use design thinking in innovative ways to develop my personal career as well as help larger social problems.
I have been using design think in my current project to help develop our concept and through every step of the process. Our group collectively worked together to complete our programming documents. We used creative thinking to account for all of the needs that Unity Village will have to provide. At this point Felicia and I are using our collective creative thought processes to come up with a floor plan and look that fulfills all of the requirements in a way that is aesthetically beautiful.
My use of design thinking will be incorporated in all work that I do from here on out. As I mentioned earlier, I plan on using my creative thought processes in innovative ways to advance my personal work, as well as to inspire change.