Last Thursday, I was lucky enough to get to attend the first Fuel Vancouver. For those that are unfamiliar, Fuel provides an avenue to generate public dialogue around social, technological, and environmental shifts that are happening around us. There was a ton to absorb throughout the day: the keynote speakers spoke about some great ideas, a number of panelists provided snippets of anecdotal insight, and future forecasts were a glimpse into what our world was headed towards.
While I’d love to give a full account on what the day looked like, I’ll keep it brief and summarize and reflect on some of the points I thought were interesting.
I have recently realized that asking designers “how they learned about design thinking” to be quite a silly question. As a business student, I thought that everyone learned about design thinking the same as I did, as a completely new concept. In reality “design thinking” is integrated into design itself, it’s those who aren’t studying design, like myself, that don’t necessarily learn about it. It wasn’t until my last year in university that I learned about design thinking in an interdisciplinary course called Change Lab. In fact, if I had not stumbled across this class in my last year in university, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn about design thinking at all.
As a business student, the design process was difficult to pick-up and even more difficult to apply. The reason behind this is that a strong focus is placed on stability and low risk in all the different subjects you take in business school. Unless you concentrate in entrepreneurship, you learn that risk is bad and that continuing with what you’ve always done and what you’ve always known is generally the safest route. You learn that the average shareholder does not value variability or the unknown, they value structure and organization. It’s not until you look beyond what you’re taught to what’s practiced in the business world that you realize stability does not necessarily equal success and most definitely does not equal innovation.
When you learn about innovation in business school, you learn about it as a tool that businesses use to become more profitable through differentiation. You don’t learn about it as an all encompassing process, this is where design thinking comes in. Businesses that embrace design thinking, like Proctor & Gamble and Herman Miller, have integrated design across the whole organization. Instead of making slight iterations to “what’s worked in the past” they are continuously going back to the drawing board. Businesses today lack the integration of design thinking into their organization, which has resulted in a lack of creativity and inspiration in the majority of products and services we are engaging with every day.
Those are my thoughts on design thinking and why it was a completely new concept for me as a business student!
Jessica
We, new Railyard cohort - Jessica, Dan, Elsa and Robert - joined the Dossier team last Monday, and now that we have been here for almost two weeks, we thought it was time to introduce ourselves! In this post we will tell you about each of us - our backgrounds, aspirations and an interesting fact.
This week Taylor and I attended the Seattle Interactive Conference. It was three days long and full of a diverse number of talks focused around design, digital, and development outlooks on the theme of transparency. Multiple points of views were shared, but there were some common trends that were apparent. Those that resonated the most with me discussed creative value and the ease of transferability across creative mediums. Here is what I gathered:
Creative value comes from what makes you different from your peers.
A person’s background and experiences whether related to design or not contribute to their creative value, their own unique perspective to a problem. Of course, no matter how enthralling a journey may be, collaboration is key. Without interacting with other creatives, one would only be able to produce fragments and replications of what they have already seen. This ties into the idea that the formula for success cannot be repeated. When designing from solely what you already know or have already seen, you won’t be able to create a unique result. Forcing yourself to interact with the unfamiliar, making yourself uncomfortable, embracing disagreement, and a thirst for learning are requirements for fresh, intriguing work.
Values that we learn from creative problem solving and storytelling are transferable.
In Keith Frankel’s talk he spoke to his background in philosophy and how the foundation behind it’s information structure guided him through his journey in various creative fields. He mentioned that the basic unit of philosophy is argument and that all arguments are made up of premises and conclusions. He believes that this same notion is also applicable to design, film, etc. and when utilized appropriately results in fluid narratives. I like the thought that designers are able to change hats and not constrain themselves to one medium of speciality. It’s important to explore and expand your knowledge base, while still recognizing the limits to your skill sets and thus when to seek help.
All in all it was a pretty interesting conference. We both enjoyed our time there and left with new perspectives on creative process and what it means to be transparent. A parting thought from HUSH’s David Schwarz - There is always room for a poetic experience.
Stay sassy,
R
After several weeks of wall painting, manifesto writing, graphic designing, vinyl weeding and wall sticking, we are done!
This was an internal Railyard project where we had the task of creating a “Railyard presence” within our studio space. After we filled our recycling can up with balls of scrapped ideas, we landed on developing a manifesto. We wanted a catalyst for empowerment and dialogue for future design and business thinkers who will step into our space.
Being a part of this full process was pretty surreal. It’s not often that students are able be involved from initial ideation to full production, so I’ve become slightly attached to this vinyl letter that rests on our wall. I also learned that I’m a pretty awful painter.
Peace, love, tanks,
t
Oh hey, didn’t see you there.
We are Railyard, a four month internship program designed to complement business and design with the practical, real-life and integrated application of the two disciplines in order to help students become business and design-minded professionals. Guided by mentors from the Dossier team, students in this program operate as a studio within a studio to create and develop new businesses, brands and Ideas. Currently we, Taylor “Wears Tanks” Ward and Roxanne “The Sass” Henschke are this term’s creative interns. This is our blog where we will post about our interests, what we find inspiring, and our day to day experiences at Dossier Creative. Stay classy.