Design Thinking and Design Activating: What’s the Difference?

For years, we’ve thought about design in a very particular way. People created things that either they wanted or saw a need for, but often fell back on their own opinions as to what was good and what wasn’t. Then came something called “design thinking,” and now we’ve got “design activating.”

Wait. What are those now?

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is taking a user-centric approach to finding answers for issues using problem-solving techniques. It’s really about finding solutions, and that’s the big difference. And while that doesn’t sound revolutionary, it really is.

The person who popularized the concept, Tim Brown, wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review back in 2008, but it’s been around for much longer. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Design thinking has these distinct phases:

1. Empathize

Everything starts by looking at the people involved in the problem and getting to really know them. I’m talking about a deep, fundamental learning stage where you toss all of your assumptions out the window and figure out what’s really going on.

2. Define

With all of your data gathered, it’s time to figure out what the best problem statement is so that you’ll ensure the results will be spot on. You’re looking at this from a human perspective, not from what’s best for the business, so keep that in mind, too.

3. Ideate

Test out thoughts. Journal. Sketch. Brainstorm different concepts, throw out some ideas, both good and bad, and play around with them until the pieces click together just right.

4. Prototype

Just like any excellent idea, you’re going to refine it. You can do this however you want, but you’re basically trying to find a solution that works and then fine-tune it. The outcome isn’t necessarily going to be the end solution, but you’re putting some of your ideas into action to see what sticks.

5. Implement

Now you’re actually building these solutions, whatever they may be, to see what’s going to work and what isn’t. This involves both user testing and many iterations, but the end result is a solution that’s based on the needs of the user, and that’s pretty cool.

What Is Design Activating?

Design activating is how I look at the proverbial sixth step in the process. In this case, design activation is going past implementation. We’re taking this solution worldwide. Go big. Get people to move forward without sitting idle. Activate the changes.

Right now, particularly when it comes to the global supply chain, one problem is that we’re looking at things from a human-centered business perspective. We try to determine what applications or bits of software will solve our problems for any one particular side of a transaction, but they all operate independently, on separate business processes and technologies.

We need middleware or other tools to connect everything so they can communicate, but it rarely works as needed. It’s a mess, frankly.

But that’s where we stop short.

What needs to happen is a shift to human-centric ecosystems. This is design thinking to the Nth degree. Instead of software that runs independently, we have ecosystems packed with applications that all work in harmony. Employees won’t have to open up a special tool to take notes, but an AI tool will automatically take and summarize them for you.

But how do you do all that?

By following the process, obviously.

Reframing the Issues

Activating changes is about making sure these solutions actually happen, but oftentimes, they don’t because the issue has been framed as a business problem, which is precisely what design thinking is … ahem … designed to thwart. We need this reframing to not only be human-centric but also one that’s carried out globally.

The reframe in the case of the global supply chain is going from “systems” to “ecosystems.” You don’t live in a system. But you do live in an ecosystem, and it’s made of multiple layers that all combine to form a Voltron of functionality. We need to build around humans, not businesses, and create the ecosystem itself.

Look, this journey isn’t going to be easy. I mean, I wrote a whole book about the topic, so there’s a lot to discuss. However, I want to emphasize that our path forward involves design activation. Only by getting things done will we actually make progress. And isn’t that what we all want?

This is just one of the many topics I speak about regularly at various conferences and the like. If you’d like me to speak at your event, reach out here.