Greetings, everyone. In this presentation we will continue with the conversation about design thinking. In the last lecture we talked about some of the fundamentals of design thinking, and some of the components of design thinking. In today's talk, we'll look at five of these principles or components of design thinking. And what I would like you to do, as we go through this presentation, Is to start drawing a mind map or what's also referred to as a bubble diagram like you see on the image on the screen right now. So you can start with a circle in the middle which says design thinking and as we go through the first five. You can start mapping out this mind map and list in each of those bubbles the kind of design thinking principles that we will talk about. So let's get started. The first one, the first principle of design thinking is that design is empathic. And empathy is important sensibility to bring you to account because what it means is that designers need to think not just about themselves when they're designing, but also about the people they're designing for. And I would like to extend this to beyond people to a range of other organisms that we share the planet with as well. So the key thing to think about is very often people think of themselves as the apex predators. They think of themselves as being on the top of this pyramid, controlling, in charge of and above all other species on this planet. We live with millions of species on this planet, and I think a better model to think about is this. Not for us to think about us as on top of the pyramid of species but to think of us as one in a network. We share this planet with millions of other species, and they are just as important as we are in thinking of life on this planet. So what empathy means is not to think of just ourselves, but to think of all the other species that we share this planet with, that's one important thing about design thinking. Another principle of design thinking, design thinking is integrative In other words it is left and right brain. So we know that when you think of the brain and the way the brain functions. The left side of the brain is responsible for some of the functions of logic, of verbal ability, of linear thinking, of analytical thinking these are some of the key processes of the left hemisphere of the brain. You think of the right side of the brain that is considered to be more responsible for things like random thinking, imagination, creativity, emotions etc. What design thinking does is design thinking relies on both sides of the brain. So, as a designer you need to be aware, familiar with, and capable of bringing on your thinking of logic, your thinking verbal skills, linear thinking, analytics, etc. But you also need to be able to jump into a different mode and think of imagination and creativity as you're coming up with new innovations, new designs. And what's important is whole brain thinking. There are times when you need the left side of the brain and there are times when you need the right side of the brain. And design thinking is about having both functioning as and when you need them. The third one. Design thinking is iterative, it is repetitive. So what this means is that you cannot think of design as a linear process. It's not something that starts over here and ends over here. There's no single process of getting from 0 to 100 or from A to Z or A to Zed. What happened in design very frequently, you start off at one point, you come up with a solution, you discover that you need more research, you go back and do the research and you move ahead. You do some more research, you go ahead. You try something out, you move ahead. So design often is an iterative process. You start here, you're going to actually even wander a bit and do this. So it's not a single linear straight process. That's really important to keep in mind. Design is iterative. You try something, you move forward, you go back a little bit try again and move forward. So it's a step by step process that takes you from the need or the problem to a final solution or the final answer, very important think about design in these tabs. Another one design thinking is optimistic. Designers always have to, when they think of a problem or when they're tackling a problem, they always have to think that, yes, it is possible to come up with an answer. It's not the end of the world, I can come up with a solution for this problem. Designers have to think positively. We have to keep in mind that the notion that no matter what problem they face with. There is a way to find a solution. And want not just one solution, multiple solutions and that thinking positively is a critical part of design, it's really important. However, I also want to caution and say that design thinking is also skeptical. You cannot be optimistic to a fault. You have to be optimistic. But you also have to know that we have to ask the question why. And it's important to question everything. So when you see an existing situation, and you want to transfer it, change it into a preferred situation by design. The first thing you need to do is to question it. Why does it look the way it does? Why does it function the way it does? Why is it the way it is? And only when you question the existence of something, can you come up with a new solution, a new design, a new way to imagine that one solution. And therefore questioning everything around you is another really important part of design thinking. So we've talked about five key principles of design thinking. We've talked about the fact that design is empathic, it involves empathy. We've talked about the fact that it's integrative, brings together different halves of the brain. It's iterative, we go through the process over and over again. It is optimistic and it is skeptical. What you see here in this image is a design of a device that goes on the back of a wheelchair. Imagine somebody using a wheelchair, they can move forward in the wheelchair. But if they have to move back, there is no way for them to see what's behind them. Very often a person in a wheelchair might be a quadriplegic or a paraplegic it might not have the physical ability to turn the their next and look at what's behind them. So this is something that's been designed specifically for that user group. It has a camera which attaches to the back of the head rest of a wheelchair. The feed from the camera is send to an iPad or a phone that the user might have in front of them, so if you have to back up your wheelchair you can see what's behind you. The team that worked on this went through the process of bringing through the multiple disciplines of design, of engineering, of business, of sustainability in coming up with this product solution. They also went through the process of iteration, they tried something, they tried it again, they tried it again, and this was their final solution. They were very optimistic in making sure that they can solve this problem, but they also question why the wheelchair is the way it is. And so these five forms of design thinking are represented in this product which is a backup camera for wheelchairs. So I hope you learned about design thinking in this presentation and these five principles that make design thinking what it is. Thank you.
