lanehalley

I've been thinking recently about the idea of "designer as facilitator" and how design consciousness is an important quality that needs to be present many places throughout the organization. Of course, interaction design specialists are an important part of the puzzle, but increasing awareness of design skills and techniques in a way that's accessible to everyone on the team can only help in the long run.

In a recent article, Fast Company talks about how the Stanford d.school helped The Takeaway team define their a new radio show using this simple recipe: Observe. Brainstorm. Prototype. Implement. Repeat as necessary.

In June 2007, 15 producers and executives from WNYC and PRI met with Kembel and d.school instructors in a ring of red sofas on the platform at Palo Alto's Caltrain station, a nod to the school's "user-centered experience" ethos. "The exercise got us thinking about how to remake mornings," says John Keefe, WNYC's news director. "So we're sitting at the train station during the morning commute, and all these people are rushing past. It was this beautiful moment." ...

A three-day crash course taught the producers the basic steps of d.school innovation: observe, brainstorm, prototype, and implement; repeat as necessary. When they went back to Manhattan, everything was up for debate. Instead of hiring from the usual pool of public-radio producers, they sifted through 1,700 résumés collected from such eclectic sources as Craigslist and the Native American Journalist Association. The usual media brainstorming sessions also shifted. "Here's how idea meetings work in TV news: 'We did that, I saw that, I hate that!'" Hockenberry says, his voice rising. Instead, following the design firm Ideo's guidelines, the team encouraged wild ideas while deferring judgment.The result of all that foment debuted at the end of April.

It's interesting to observe that thinking this way not only changed the way people made decisions, it changed the way they worked with each other. Better process, better result. Nice.