 Good morning everybody. So, my name's Mark. I'm going to talk about design thinking this morning. You guys have probably, maybe many of you have already heard of this concept. It's been around for a long time. And it's a fun subject to talk about. There's a little process I'm going to go through to help anybody interested to focus on how to use design thinking in their lives. Just because I'm nervous I'm going to talk super fast. I'm put in a filler slide so you could find me later and ask questions and get ahold of me. I like to think about design because design is really about thinking. It's something that we do daily in our lives and we're not just about making things look pretty as designers but really thinking through solutions. So I thought about thoughtful design and began to design what others were expecting and thus thoughts of expected designs were thought through as users expected them to be. So I just, I love playing with words and so that might come through a little bit. But what it is, what it is. So design thinking is really another approach on problems, for solving problems that we come across with. It requires like questions, especially the question why. And it uses empathy. So we need to learn to be empathetic towards our users, towards others in life and I'll talk that through. So the question why though, why is a big one to ask. In fact so big that it's recommended to ask it five times when you're presented with a problem. It's called the Five Wise actually. And it's developed by a man named Sakichi Toyoda who founded Toyoda Industries and he used this process to get to the bottom of any manufacturing issues that he had. And so he would use this process of Five Wise and he implemented it and while back ago and it became a huge quality control process for Toyoda and that's one of the reasons Toyoda at the time became a very good vehicle because they really practiced this concept. And the point of it is don't stop when you find an initial answer. You want to keep asking why because that's going to lead you to something further. So here's an example. There aren't any new accounts created today. Why? Because the submit button isn't working. Why? Because a bug was introduced last night in the release. Why? Because there was no testing done. Why? Because we didn't have time. Why? Because management demands too much and doesn't give enough time to complete the tasks. You got it. So you got to the root of the problem. So the five steps are empathize, define the problem, ideate, build a prototype and test. So we're going to go over through these steps today. People like steps. Research has proven this. So it tells them how long the process is. Gives them an idea of where you are in the process and what to look forward to when the end is coming, like the end of my talk. So I empathize with you and you get five steps. Empathize. So to empathize is really to understand and share the feelings of another. It requires a lot of observation. You have to know the people you're working with, your users. And there's a method called ethnography. And this is taking people and sending them out into the field to really sit down with your users, people using your products, and see what they're doing in their own environment. It's an essential key point to this. You could create personas, become a user of your own stuff. But empathy. Empathy overall, I feel, is one of the greatest traits of humanity. If we can empathize with each other, then that's a huge building block for where we can go in the future. I often, I have three little kids, and so I like to read books to them at night before they go to sleep. And I find myself tearing up at like little cartoon books that I just get my empathy for these characters in the book is ridiculous. So I thought one day, I want to take an empathy test. I took an empathy test online. Out of 80 questions, I scored 48. I got 60%. That's kind of like a D on empathy. So surprisingly enough, and there was a little note there that said, if you scored above 30, then you're not likely to be autistic. So luckily, I'm not autistic, but empathy. So this man, Justin Keller, he posted something on his blog, on an open letter to the mayor and chief of police in San Francisco. And it was quite an upset in the interwebs when he did it. This was back in February, I think. But in it, he says, I shouldn't have to see the pain, struggle and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day. That is not empathy, just to be clear. So let's look at an example, real life example. This beautiful beast right here, the 1990 Ford Mustang. When they built this, they found that their driver, the people buying this car were not experiencing the horsepower that they expected from the predecessors. And so Ford sent out a crew of ethnographers. These are people who watched the users in their own environment. So they sat down and they drove these cars with them and they asked some questions and talked with them. And they found that the drivers experienced horsepower viscerally. It wasn't just a number on the sheet, on the buyer sheet. Even though this Ford Mustang had more horsepower than the predecessors, the drivers didn't realize it. So the ethnographers came back, they spoke with the company, and they decided, well, let's see, they decided that, okay, the drivers are not getting the power that they want. So what are we going to do to fix this? In 1994, they came out with the revised Ford Mustang. And this vehicle, when you revved the engine, it vibrated more. It sounded louder than the predecessor. And it was built to look faster. So when this came out, I know I had plenty of friends who bought this car, they loved it. Me not so much, especially nowadays, but it was a popular car at the time. Number two in the process is defining the problem. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, if I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem in one minute solving it. That should show us how important it is, this process, this step in the process. Defining the problem is huge for us. And so this is where the five whys fits in, that concept. It's a difficult, probably the most difficult step here. Why? Because we often don't have all the information. Why? Because we don't provide enough resources and time and learning about our users. Can anyone guess what's next? Why? Because when challenged to solve an issue, the correct path is often backwards into a study about the problem itself. Managers don't like this. Why? Because they want to see forward momentum. Because that's the nature of the business. People want us as designers, as problem solvers, to create solutions right away. They present a problem or something that they think is the problem, and they want us to build the solution. Come up with an idea, start solving right away. But that's the problem, is we need to stop, we need to go back and discover, is that really the problem? We need to start asking those questions. So it's a lot of whys. Let's look at another example as Lego. In 1980, Lego started losing market share. And so they were concerned. There was a new breed of children coming out. These were called digital natives. So Lego thought, you know what, these new children, they don't have the time or the patience to build awesome things with Legos. So they really wanted to start exploring things. They branched out into theme parks, built larger Lego pieces, children's clothing line, you name it. They were trying to build this stuff up in any way they can. Turns out it was the wrong problem. They sent out ethnographers, and some of them went to these kids' homes. They asked this one boy, they said, what is the most prized possession in your room? And this boy pointed to a pair of worn out sneakers. That was his trophy. And they realized, why? Because those sneakers were a sign of his mastery in the skill of skateboarding. So they went back to the drawing board, and they realized that they redefined the problem, and they re-engineered smaller pieces, and more intricate building structures, and they branded Lego as a master skill. And you guys saw this in the Lego movie, right? What was the Lego movie about? The prophecy of the master builder. They are marketing this to the T right now. And so Lego became a mastery. And bam, they took on these themes, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, whatever, and these kids loved it. And building these intricate, detailed Lego structures was huge for them. So ID8 is the next step. ID8, let's brainstorm, make lists, write stuff down. You want to generate ideas as much as possible, concepts. Don't worry about restraints, be creative, and question everything still. This is still just an evolving process right now. There's ways to do that. I have a notebook. This is my notebook. You don't have to know how to draw. You can draw shapes. This is primarily squares, arrows, and circles. And you just get these ideas out there on paper. I was at a meet-up with my team the other while back and we used post-its and we stuck them all over the windows and dry erase markers. But use these tools to get your ideas onto paper, onto something so that others can see it and you can talk about it. Building a prototype is the fourth step. You want to build something. Draw stuff, post-its, rapid prototype. The whole point of this is providing scenarios through which users can interact. You want people to start messing around with your ideas because they're going to tell you what's working, what's not working. They're going to give you feedback however it may be, whether it's through facial expressions or just looks of confusion. On the left side there, the vertical arrow is the visual fidelity against the functional fidelity at the bottom. Of course sketches are in the bottom, right? Or bottom left there. But the idea is to kind of improve upon these things. Build out wireframes. Go further and build out interactive wireframes, prototypes. Work your way up to a production-ready prototype until you're ready to go live. This is an example of paper prototypes right here. Just cut out an iPhone shape, draw a bunch of wireframes, roll it over as people tell you where they're going, what they're clicking, and then you could move them to the next one. There's things like Envision app that's out there. It's a great tool for your mock-ups. Throw them up there. Interact with them. Share them with others. And number five, you want to test. You want to test the thing. You want to get it into users' hands. Watch them use it. Watching them use it will tell you what they do. And talking to them will tell you why they did it. The thing, though, is not done yet. Number six. I said five signs. This is number six. I remember my empathy level is pretty low, so you guys get six. Reiterate, though. You want to cycle through all these steps. Reiterating is revising upon what you have until you nail down what you need. So when you go through empathy, defining the problem, IDA, building a prototype, testing, your reiteration cycle is going to be big at first. You might go all the way back up to the empathize phase. And then you might work through it again. And then next time around, you might reiterate and hit the define the problem phase because maybe you got the problem wrong. And then building the prototype. But this cycle will get smaller and smaller as you continue to reiterate until you nail down what exactly you're going for. This process is also called the double diamond model. You guys have probably seen this before. It's pretty popular. The point about this is start on the left-hand side and you want to find the problem, the right problem. And on the right side, you want to find the right solution. So you start out with empathy and then defining the problem. You start exploring everything, right? Or am I going this way? And then you narrow that down until you define the problem. And then from there, you branch out again. You start exploring ideas and solutions until you come back together with a solution that you can test or get out there. The five steps are empathize, define the problem, ideate, build a prototype, test. And because my empathy is low, reiterate. So this is design thinking. Design thinking equals a thoughtful designer. And that's what we're trying to be. Now there's many ways that design thinking can be packaged and shared. I chose the number two way to kind of explain it to everybody. I thought it worked for me, my understanding best. But these are other phrases that people use when explaining design thinking. Eric Erickson, he's a product designer at Facebook. He says, if you look at your product designer, someone that makes your solution look presentable, look again. Product designer helps you identify, investigate and validate the problem and ultimately craft design test and ship the solution. That's design thinking. A designer's job is not just to come in when everything's done and make it look good, but to be utilized at the beginning of the stages and to really help the process go through in every way possible. So it's not only about design as well. It can be applied to your life. So it could be relationships. We need to empathize by putting ourselves in the other shoes. We define any problems that might exist in our relationships by being aware, mindful, honest. We IDA and we examine ourselves. We explore ways in which we can improve things ourselves. Building a prototype is by implementing ways in which solutions can be achieved. And then test in real life. Be the change you want to see. We've heard that quote many times. Traffic, because I hit a lot of traffic on the way down. You want to empathize with drivers. You want to observe the frequency of traffic. IDA solutions such as working from home, working different hours outside of rush hour, implement communication practices that allow for this. And test in real life. And this design thinking is really applicable across the board in your life. And it's been around the block. It's been tried and tested and it works. In the past it was initially brought up in 1969 in the book Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert Simon. 1987 it found its expression design thinking in Peter Rose book Design Thinking. And then in 1991 David Kelly at IDA adopted the practice for business purposes. So it's been around. And yes, it's on par with this freaking scientific method. There are articles about this out there that they take the scientific method and design thinking and they utilize them hand in hand now. And it's helping to broaden solutions, come up with other ideas. The future. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. So that means break the rules. I gave you five steps, but they don't have to be those five steps. Break the rules, okay? Be creative. Don't get trapped in with something, especially with what I gave you. But explore these ideas. Find out what works for you. What is the proper solution to implement with your clients, with your users. And bonus. I'll be putting up these slides and probably tweet about it on my Twitter account. But I have some links and everything to some of the research that I did. And you can read the articles yourself and discover all the ideas out there and the ways in which design thinking is used. But that's it. Thank you very much. I think we have a few minutes for questions. And is there a mic or anything that people are walking up to? Okay, we can bring it. Anybody have questions? So I'll link to it from my Twitter account at MAPK. It's actually Mark, but spelled in Russian. If any of you know Russian. So MAPK on Twitter. Yes, yes. I am Russian, yes. Starova. Yeah, true. No, no, I'm here. I'm born here in America though. So, yeah. Any other questions? Anybody? Because I'm way too nervous. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, mic. So yeah, so we as designers, I'm speaking on the designer point of view. Oftentimes we get put in a room to come up with solutions and we love to just create solutions right away, right? We like to just start brainstorming ideas. And that can be, while that's great and good solutions are found, bad solutions come across too, which is awesome. But oftentimes when we get to that phase, we're already defined. We feel the problem's already been defined, so we're just going forward. I think in group settings, we need to sit back and explore if that's the right problem. If you're doing this by yourself, I mean it's just good to be cognant of this and try to work through those phases and bounce ideas off others. I think bringing in others in your processes is definitely a benefit, I would say. Yes, for sure. So, okay, yes, I'll repeat the question. The question was an example in my life where I've used this process. Right now, I'm on the Apollo team at Automatic. We're looking at the plugin directory, revising the plugin directory on .org. And in that, I had a great opportunity to sit down with some other designers and we went through to really figure out what the problems are on the current plugin directory. We started exploring ideas and we're still in this process right now. So, we're still kind of working through building prototypes now and coming up with this and getting feedback from users. We like to post a lot on .org and get everybody's comments on where we are in the process, what we're doing. I think I have some wireframes up there right now. But that would be like the most recent example. Yes, sir. So, the question is, it's great if you have the resources to send out ethnographers into the field that can do all this research, but when you're on your own, how do you do it? This is a basic question, right? So, you become the ethnographer. You become the person that does the research, in a sense. So, you find out who your users are, who your clients are. I spent, when I was working for a startup, at one time I spent many hours at Starbucks buying people coffee and asking them to sit down and sign up and create an account on our website. You just do those things. You get out there and meet people. Buying coffee works great. People love it. Any other questions? Yes. For sure. The statement there was a lot of the plug-in, speaking of the plug-in directory, don't really give you the detailed information you need to kind of have it set up once you install it and activate it. Am I right? Correct, yeah. That's something we're definitely considering. We notice that as well, like the installation of these plug-ins and stuff. We're really trying to work around that. A lot of, if there's any plug-in authors, this question is really towards you because you're the one writing the content for those plug-ins. They're the ones creating the screenshots. It's good to hear this, that people are having trouble installing and activating these. You need to be more descriptive. Use screenshots. Show where these plug-ins are being installed and where to go to find them. But yeah, it's something that needs to be addressed for sure. Yeah. Videos to display how to install and activate the plug-in would be very helpful. I agree. How to use it. There you go. Okay, yeah. Perfect. How to use it is the actual question there or statement. There is, there's some plug-in things going on. Yes, sir. True, very true. The question is kind of how do you get this process implemented in a larger corporation or something big where they're not used to this sort of processes? I've been there. So, I said it empathizes one of the big things character traits. Well, you need to have patience. You need to have patience. And you need to create these processes in such a way that it's lean enough that people are willing to accept some of it, some of these changes. One area that I did is I kind of went rogue and actually did it on my own. Did a lot of user testing on my own at a company. And didn't really run it through management. I guess you could say. But talk to the managers. I mean, we've got to have that communication. Yes, sir. Recommendations for prototyping tools. I do in the resources area. I know I've flipped through those slides really quickly, but yes. Yes. I really kind of mean a couple other designers are kind of working through some style guides with .org right now. And in a sense, I don't know if we're really calling them style guides, but we're like getting our ideas and just putting them and trying to refine them to because I like style guides. I think it helps give us the patterns, the proper patterns that we could pull from to create new content and new pages and things like that. So, I personally think they're very beneficial. But 10 more minutes. Anybody else have any other questions? Or I could let you go 10 minutes early. Or I could beatbox. We could do stuff like this. Oh, good question. Okay. So the question is clients that really have strong opinions, but maybe not have a good sense of design. How do you work with them? Very good question. I would say empathy is great, but you need to be educated. You need to educate as well. I would definitely share ideas, share research that has been proven to work. I think with business people per se, that helps. They have an idea that when you show them research that's working in a particular way and that's kind of the direction you want to go. That's beneficial. Yes. So right now what we're trying is we went through and we thought we'd use a typographic modular scale. So we went to typography. Hugo, if you guys are familiar with him there in the back, he's a huge guy with typography. He knows a lot there. And I've been working with him and he's creating this modular scale on typography that really dictates a lot of the proportions on the website. So that's kind of where we started there. Then we allow that to kind of form the shape of our website basically. We start playing with things and layout designs. But then images and stuff that I think kind of comes later. But typography for the web is huge. So I believe so. That's probably how I would approach it. Yes. Typography up front, working your way back to photos and imagery and stuff later on. Yeah. So you look at character limits, on lines, right? And what sort of fonts are you using on the website? How's that going to look? Defining those proportions between your header text and your body text, things like that really, that you can just use mock text to get across the idea on how that all relates together. You know what? There's nothing that I specifically follow regarding color. I like to have a primary color that's the color of the brand or the company and then work off with complementary colors from there or something and try to figure out a good solution that fits their brand and the desired feeling that you want. I mean colors they they activate feelings in us. So what are the colors you're using? What's the feeling you want your users to have? That's a huge thing is people's emotions. How they feel about your product, your website. Definitely. I would say the question is do you bring developers into the design process? Yes. If possible, get them involved. Hear their opinions, their ideas and work with them. Especially with websites like to create something that's doing what it needs to do. Bring across the feeling you want it to bring and performing the functionality that the developers can add to that. Five minutes. Anybody else? Yes, sir? Definitely. So integrating that developer and that designer. As a designer we walk a fine line between business requirements and user expectations. So we need to navigate that. And that's probably one of the funnest parts of our jobs is really trying to get those two sides to meet somewhere and build something that's awesome. So I think that might be it on our time. Build something awesome. Be creative guys. Thank you.