Delft Design Guide -Revised edition. Annemiek van Boeijen
and collaborate with you. Finally, to develop yourself as a designer with a strong identity and rich toolbox to tackle the challenges ahead!
Build a mindset
The domains and application areas that design contributes to are becoming increasingly complex and turbulent. For example, designing interventions that help bring about positive change in the healthcare system, or that change our relationship with the climate are immensely complex and require skills, creativity and thoughtful actions, and productive collaboration. The content of this book can help you in achieving impact, yet it is not enough on its own. Much of what is needed is embedded in the culture and values of our faculty, the missions of the design challenges we collectively work on, and can be identified in the principles of our way of working. In these we can see a strong common denominator that is what makes up the Delft designer. For example, we believe in being human-centric and evidence- based. We also believe in iteration and co-creation. Methodology provides the building blocks, yet you and the people working with design need to build a design mindset to bring these together into effective and meaningful ways of working. This
is why we have added a section on mindset to each method in this new edition. These mindsets help you understand how and why a method can contribute to achieving a certain goal. Your first priority however, should always be to succeed in solving your design challenge and to have maximum impact for your cause.
Be reflective
We see design as a goal-directed discipline aimed at creating change. This is not a new idea: Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon already wrote in 1996 in his book The Sciences of the Artificial : ‘ To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones ’. Design is inherently uncertain and this can be traced back to the core elements in Simon’s definition. Designers explore new and sometimes untrodden territories when they ask: what would be a preferred situation? They discover and define opportunities for innovation and improvement. They ask what would be meaningful and valuable for people in their context and dare to take a stance to steer innovation. Designers challenge the way tasks or problems are framed and formulated when they ask what is problematic about the existing situation? They will keep asking questions until they find root causes and core values that form the starting point for good design. Designers facilitate and drive the development of design solutions that can realise the preferred situation when they ask: what courses of action will best realise the preferred situation and who should I involve to make it happen? They make ideas and visions tangible
and iteratively explore their potential in realising the desired change. They will keep asking how to realise maximum effect with minimum means for people and within the complex systems that we find ourselves in today.
The Delft Design Guide embodies a diverse and rich set of perspectives, models, approaches and methods that can help you in navigating uncertainty and realising your design goals. There is one major prerequisite: you need to take the steering wheel and always reflect on what ways of working are most likely to help you achieve your goals. In doing so, you need to reflect on both your own values and beliefs as well as the ones of the organisation and community you are working with or for. This means that there are three core questions to ask yourself continuously: 1. what do I want to achieve or contribute? 2. What is the best way to reach these goals? 3. Am I still on the best path to get where I need and want to be? In short: be reflective!
Be a co-creator and facilitator
Design is an integrative discipline. Designers work with clients, stakeholders in the organisation, external stakeholders, experts from other disciplines, users, et cetera. An important role of the perspectives, models, approaches and methods is to provide a common structure and language for innovation projects and practices that facilitate productive collaboration, trust and coordination amongst the diverse sets of people that are typically involved in design.
Be a navigator
A design assignment is typically framed along two dimensions: impact and manifestation . Impact refers to a desired effect of the design. M anifestation refers to the way the design manifests itself in the world, for instance, a physical product, a service, an app or a game. For both impact and manifestation, an assignment can either define what is expected, or leave it open for the designer. The position of an assignment in one of the quadrants gives direction to the kind of approach and/or methodology that is appropriate and likely to help you achieve your aims. Of course, the world is not as black and white as the matrix suggests, it should be used as a canvas. The more experienced you are as a designer, the more you know how to play with the model.
1. Impact fixed, manifestation fixed.
The classic design assignment: how the design should be manifested and what impact it should have is fixed. A good example is the assignment for a ticket vending machine for public transport. Both impact and manifestation are given from the start.
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For this kind of assignment, you can work with a user-centred design approach to structure the overall process. Various methods like interviews or focus groups can be used to elicit and validate specific user needs. The WWWWWH method can be used to generate relevant questions for the problem analysis and a list of requirements to capture and manage all requirements to inform solution development.
2. Impact open, manifestation fixed.
Assignments of this nature often focus on generating new business models or expanding current businesses. The manifestation in this case is often tied to the assets of the organisation, for instance, its current production facilities, technology expertise or distribution channels. A good example is TomTom, who became famous with its GPS navigation products. When smartphones were introduced, the company realised that selling hardware products to consumers would not be a sustainable business model anymore. Tom Tom successfully changed its strategy and moved from a business-to-consumer to a business-to- business approach, building on the available assets.
Navigation Canvas.
(Source: Jeroen van Erp)
manifestation OPEN
IMPACT
OPEN
FIXED
FIXED
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For this kind of assignment, you can work with the product innovation process to structure the overall process. Methods like SWOT and brand DNA can help to analyse and understand the current situation of the company. Methods like business modelling, and list of requirements to define the design brief and creative problem solving approach to develop and test solutions.
3. Impact fixed, manifestation open.
Assignments like these often have a strong drive to realise change in a specific domain or situation. Hester Le Riche got her PhD in 2017 and developed the