Thinking About ‘Design Thinking’

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has more than 250,000 objects in its permanent collection. And for its current exhibition — the sixth installment in a series of one-gallery shows — the museum called in IDEO, one of the leading international design firms, to act as the curator.Typically, the museum’s exhibitions are curated by one or two individuals. This exhibit, however, represents the first time the Cooper-Hewitt has invited an entire organization to present its point of view through the collection. For if anyone can explain what design is and how it impacts our lives, IDEO can.“By organizing the works under the rubric of ‘design thinking,’ the exhibition explains what we mean by design and how designers actually think and work,” the museum’s director, Paul Warwick Thompson, said.But what exactly is “design thinking”? In the words of the firm, the phrase reflects their work to “help organizations in the business, government, education and social sectors innovate and grow in three ways: identify new ways to serve and support people, visualize new directions for companies and brands, and enable organizations to change their cultures and build the capabilities required to sustain innovation.”That translates to a long list of real-life objects that are seemingly everywhere. The firm contributed to the design of the first mouse for Apple and the world’s first notebook computer for GRID. They were involved in the design of the Palm V, the Handspring Treo, and the Leap adjustable office chair for Steelcase. They designed the children’s Oral-B gripper toothbrush, Miele’s S4 vacuum cleaner, Bank of America’s ‘Keep the Change’ program, and the dressing rooms at the Prada store in Soho.IDEO approached this exhibit — aptly titled “IDEO Selects” — in much the same way they would a typical project: with observation, brainstorming, prototyping, and implementation. They selected two teams of four people and created a framework for observing the works in the Cooper-Hewitt’s collection. That framework was based on communicating the practice of design thinking to a larger audience.The first team selected a group of objects that physically and visually communicate the idea of design thinking. Through those objects, they refined the framework into three lenses: Inspiration, Empathy, and Intuition. The second team then used those lenses to further edit the objects.The teams narrowed the exhibit down to about 30 objects. Half of them are related to the design of information such as the World Atlas and the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire, which is the largest reference to date for the mechanical arts and sciences. The other half are examples of product design, such as the Child’s Chair by Charles and Ray Eames and the Valentine portable typewriter and cover by Ettore Sottsass, Jr.In design, as in art, context matters. The objects in the show range from the 16th century to the present. And the IDEO teams made an effort to show that while some items might seem simply clever or catchy design, they might have been, at the time of inception, inspired by newly available materials or new needs.According to an IDEO industrial designer, Stephen Wahl, who was part of the first team, the Silver Streak — an iron made of glass — is a classic example. Upon first glance it seems unusual and appears to be an interesting, if impractical, design.But the Silver Streak is much more than a nifty design. It was manufactured between 1942 and 1946 as a result of metal shortages due to World War II. Corning Glass Works applied design thinking to create new versions of existing products with less metal. The result was an iron made out of one of their new materials: Pyrex. With its resistance to thermal shock and expansion, this material had almost the same properties as steel. Much more than a clever object, the Silver Streak illustrates how designers apply intuition by responding to the materials, technology, and social and cultural contexts of their time.It’s pieces like that that help articulate the somewhat inscrutable idea of design and design thinking. The museum offers other ways to clarify the concept. A video that plays in the exhibition shows a series of still photographs that demonstrate impromptu examples of everyday design thinking. These include chairs in a library with tennis balls on their feet allowing for quieter scooting, as well as instructions painted on the ground at intersections for pedestrians.The idea here is to engage visitors in looking for their own examples of everyday design thinking. That is further encouraged with a section on the Cooper Hewitt’s Web site that invites guests to post photographs of their own observations of design thinking.“The hope is to provide a new way of helping people to look at the world and see it differently,” the head of IDEO’s New York office, Tom Eich, said.

Thinking About ‘Design Thinking’

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