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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

'Design thinking' a broader, more creative way

Reviewed by: Mary Reid

Posted: 10/25/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Glimmer

How Design Can Transform Your Life,

Your Business, and Maybe Even the World

By Warren Berger

Random House Canada, 352 pages, $35

In this engaging work of non-fiction, American journalist and author Warren Berger attempts to describe a broader and more creative way of thinking about doing business, living and relationships.

He does this through "design thinking," which he calls a process of evaluating, researching and problem solving.

Berger highlights many innovative designers and projects, but the central figure in the book is Canadian design guru Bruce Mau.

Berger seems to want to do for design what Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail and Free) has done for the Internet.

Glimmer is that seed of an idea that twinkles during a brainstorming session and turns out to reshape and redefine the way corporations perform and the way large social problems are tackled and our own life experiences are mediated.

Berger organizes his argument around 10 design principles, which he divides into four categories: universal, business, social and personal.

The universal section highlights the building blocks of the design process, which all starts with asking stupid questions.

Asking questions is really the hard work of reconsidering, adopting an outsider's perspective and seeing an old issue in a new light.

Berger encourages us to "think laterally," to survey the archive and account for what is there and what is missing, all in the effort to "break out of familiar patterns" to find new combinations and connections.

The second section deals with business. Berger makes a profound observation that during a recession it is a time to innovate and realign the company with its current reality.

The answer is to get down to the core issues of what people really need and how to best provide that product or service.

Section three focuses on how design can tackle social issues and challenges by looking at things in a larger context to highlight many interrelated problems.

Life is messy and interconnected, so it makes sense that problem solving would have the same collaborative approach.

The personal section deals with how the approach of design thinking can be applied to your own life. According to Berger, the key to designing a better life is to make your immediate surroundings self-sustaining, to become involved in your community, to never stop learning, and always be open to creating.

To further support his ideas, Berger discusses many current case studies. These examples brilliantly illustrate where the concept of design thinking fundamentally changed a great number of cultures and even their micro and macro economies.

Littered throughout the pages are quick and dirty (even at times amusing) illustrations, proving the saying that a picture can tell a thousand words.

These sketches add a new layer of interpretation to the thinking process by creating a tangible, physical manifestation of an idea people can respond to directly.

Berger claims that design is a way of looking at the world with a desire to change it, and he further writes that design is applicable to any challenge and that it can be applied by anyone.

The design process breaks down old patterns of thinking and behaviour. In many ways, the clichés "thinking outside the box," "necessity is the mother of invention" or "tinkering in the tool shed" are excellent examples of the design process in action.

To quote Bruce Mau: "It is art that connects to our life, to human needs and emotions -- and that allows us to build a bridge to new possibilities."

Mary Reid is the curator of contemporary art and photography at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 25, 2009 B7

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