Dr. Charles Burnette’s IDeSiGN — Seven Ways of Design Thinking is the best thing I’ve seen in a while, a curriculum for teaching children how to pursue their goals using different ways of thinking.

This is designing. It is a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained. Purposeful thought and action is the basis for all human achievement and is found in all subject disciplines. Its objective is to change information,understandings or circumstances, to preferred or improved states or to create something entirely new. Because there are many possible outcomes from design thinking it is not easily automated like purposeful thought that has become habitual or has a predetermined result, such as solving a puzzle that has only one solution. Design thinking is a more powerful, comprehensive and creative form of purposeful thinking that can be applied to interpret or resolve complex, confusing, or unanticipated situations whenever and however they occur.

Surrounded by the twin mystiques of brunch and Hollandaise, Elaine Corn offers a better, simpler cooking method (boil water in a shallow skillet, add vinegar and salt, slide the eggs in and turn the heat off, let cook in covered skillet for three minutes). I can tear that page out of my Betty Crocker cookbook now.

The tools we use to create and communicate should be so easy to use we rarely ever think about them. With simple tools we naturally focus on what the tool allows us to do.

The famous typography designer Matthew Carter has said that when you read you should not see the letters on the page, you should see through the type to the message. If printed type was the tool we’ve used to communicate for thousands of years, today we do our jobs using mobile electronics, software user interfaces, rapid prototyping devices, and so on.

And yet, as I write this in 2006, I still can’t use my computer to make an appointment with someone working for a different company and know that the meeting will appear on both our calendars. I may spend time trying, but I know this everyday task is still completed more easily (and with more accuracy) if I simply call the other person and schedule the appointment over the phone.

If your calendar software makes it difficult to schedule a meeting, use something simpler. If it isn’t obvious how to use the functions of your mobile device, get something easier. These tools should be just as transparent as the type you’re looking at now. Communicating and executing our ideas is too important to let technology get in the way.

Robust tools are seductive, but their complexity quickly results in diminishing returns. Adopt tools with as many features as you need, and no more. Usually a few essential features will enable you to do many things well.

Try it now
As you go through your days, write down a list of every tool you use to create and communicate. Mark those that are cumbersome, and find an easier replacement for each cumbersome tool. Do the same with your team.

Two researchers at Pace University here in New York compared results from dozens of studies of thousands of employees in 21 occupations to find which exhibit more stressors. Did fire fighters and police officers come out on top? No. Financial and business people did. We worry more about poor job fit, management problems, and work/home tradeoffs. Whereas police expect and even crave thrills.

With that in mind, here’s a couple thoughts going into your weekend:

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” — Lily Tomlin

“Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” — Kurt Vonnegut

As Vonage prepares for their IPO, are they enacting measures to improve their cost structure?

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I wonder if this flashy, animated building facade — very not-financial services — changes employees’ perception of Lehman Brothers?

Could it backfire and make employees more cynical?

Advertisement, Manhattan.

The new & improved Gain — the AIGA journal of business and design — has just re-launched. Congrats to Karen, Jeff, Liz, and the gang.

We think so.

The always entertaining Andrew Zolli has a new article in the current Fast Company mag, expanding on the themes he’s been talking about in person. Essentially he demonstrates the importance of looking through the demographics lens when thinking about the future…

The hourglass society will bring an avalanche of new social challenges, cultural norms, and business opportunities. With a huge increase in the number of older consumers, entirely new entertainment, culture, and news markets will open up–film, television, books, and Internet sites pitched more to the Matlock set than to the Eminem crowd. Also, older people tend to vote more frequently, and they will wield significant political clout: We could see a multidecade “boomerocracy” or, as one gen-Xer put it archly over cocktails, “TRBN: terminal rule by boomer narcissists.”

I’ve found his presentations quite useful in the past, and I’m looking forward to his participation in the Design 2.0 panel. If you were thinking of going, I hear a few seats are available.

In the past I’ve observed that as processor speed increases, software replaces dedicated hardware. For example, in music or video production programs like GarageBand and Final Cut Pro and a stock Macintosh can replace dedicated rack systems and DSP chips.

Now with Web 2.0-ish advances on the Internet, we can go further and say as bandwidth increases, remote applications replace locally installed applications.

Yamaha has developed a beautiful prototype of a device that “allows everyone to play music intuitively.” But the simplicity of the user interface begs the question of why isn’t it implemented in software (i.e. why can’t I get my hands on this now?). I know the obvious answers, and I appreciate a great hardware UI and portability, but believe we’ll only gain more utility from network-based software applications as people adopt them. It makes even more sense when you see someone make something that looks similar and is a lot of fun, like Ollie Rankin’s Ten or Eleven (imagine this on a tablet PC).

John Holusha of the New York Times profiles Westin’s decision to move to an all non-smoking format in their hotels. I think this rocks on several levels:

1. It’s progressive, recognizing only 6% of customers request smoking rooms (only half of which actually smoke in the rooms), and this segment isn’t key to their success. Also see Nikon’s move to all-digital cameras.
2. It’s good for customers, in that Westin’s in-house smoking cessation program will help the 90% of smoking customers that say they want to stop.
3. It’s good for business, creating more flexible room inventory and avoiding the damage caused by smoke and cigarette burns.

It’s a brave thing to aspire to higher goals for your revenue, brand, environment, and customer satisfaction, then design a solution that addresses all of them.

My colleague Jim, from a recent interview:

I was born in Hollywood and raised in Los Angeles. My father, mother and grandparents all worked in the film industry. My parents actually met when they were both working on Tom and Jerry cartoons. The culture of filmmaking has influenced my approach to design and business. Hollywood offers interesting models for collaboration, ad hoc organization and merging creative and business requirements. Similar practices have migrated to Silicon Valley, and working with clients here was one of the things that sparked my interest in management issues — how we work and the ways in which our working methods influence the products we make.

I’m finding examples of agile work practices in more and more places, and see them as perfectly aligned with the application of design practice in innovation services. Here’s a running list…

• Agile programming has the most robust expression, including a philosophy, an alliance of various approaches, tools, software, and measured results.
• Agile project management
• Get Real from 37 Signals is an effective framing for web application developers
• Lean manufacturing
• Lean manufacturing applied to programming
• Adaptive Co-management in forestry
• Artful Making is the application of theatrical processes to business
• The Knowing-Doing Gap
• Research into pre-mechanization group work

I think people in the product design and user-centered design disciplines work in agile ways as well, but haven’t yet found a common frame that other disciplines readily understand.

I love seeing big companies move in agile ways (because it’s so unusual), even if it only arises from panic of losing their old revenue streams. Here’s an example from Lockheed, whose old culture (despite their Skunk Works-style innovation) included bitter internal fights over whether to pursue unmanned aircraft…

…It also designed and delivered the seven-pound Desert Hawk within 127 days of receiving an Air Force request. The total cost for the first six drones and laptop-computer control system was less than $400,000, Mr. Cappuccio says. To date, Lockheed says it has supplied 126 Desert Hawks, which are used for surveillance to protect U.S. bases in Iraq.

When you also produce the most expensive fighter jet in the world, that’s certainly overcoming your innovator’s dilemma.

Incidentally, here’s an article about another group at Lockheed using agile practices.