With the 21st century well under way, we find ourselves in a globalised, constantly changing world, in an era that has abandoned traditional ways and plunged into using new models which offer responses for business and market needs.
In general terms, this developmental change arrived accompanied by new methodologies designed to recast the information that forms the consumer/market/competition triangle, and to translate it into tangible data that can be more easily understood, worked on and revised. In concrete terms, design as a strategic work tool has insinuated its way into the managerial class, who are aware of the fact that it is a valid tool in a world of uncertainty, not only as regards the product, but also when it comes to defining business opportunities and strategic developments of a broader nature: design is understood as a work process aimed at finding and modelling the correct solution to a problem.
The usual definition of the creative process as deployed by a designer tends to describe a procedure that is ambiguous, spontaneous and chaotic. Even so, designers sometimes internally shape a workflow that they themselves are unaware of. A systemic representation of the way in which a designer works can be divided into separate steps having independent markers (the aim being to extrapolate them into further work processes and levels). This new business practice, the outcome of admiration for the heuristic process of the designer’s work, an effort to analyse, summarise and extrapolate it to other areas, is what is known as Design Thinking (henceforth, DT).
Broadly speaking, DT is defined as the use of problem exploration techniques to seek a range of solutions for a foreshadowed prototyped format and the subsequent testing of those solutions. Now that it forms a part of the management systems of businesses of any type (SMEs, start-ups), the analytical working methods of a designer make for greater leadership capacity. In other words, business problems can be approached from a wider and overarching perspective, very unlike the traditional operational paradigms, the product of the provision of similar answers based on the category of the problem. The goal of DT is achieved by endowing an individual with greater decision-making powers that encourage him to make use of new skills, attitudes or creative tools.
An extensive literature exists that covers both the processes and tool-related matters. Designpedia is, in general terms, something like a practical creativity and innovation Wikipedia that is based on the design process with the aim of placing in the readers’ hands a toolkit to tackle a range of challenges and projects in the entrepreneurial and business world.
“Design should not be understood as an activity reserved for artists. It is everybody’s privilege.”
Karl Gerstner, designer