Design Foundations
Beginning in 2021, I have been thinking about a new way to think about the practice of design. Professionally, the market is saturated with variations on the IDEO/dSchool "Design Thinking" process, which has spawned countless iterations that all orbit around the common themes of "Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test."
I have seen a great impact from this kind of systematization in design, but I also think there are some significant problems with the process. In my experience, teams in their most innovative periods seldom follow a rigid process like Design Thinking, with its "methods, not muses" mentality, can bring a group of non-designers together and help them reach an actionable outcome. But how do we level set for higher outcomes?
In the ATLAS Institute, we are aiming to create a new generation of designers who have innovation in their daily habits, and who understand design thinking as more of a practice than a process. (there is an ATLAS Manifesto for Deep Design in the Age of Generative AI) In support of that, I'm developing a new fifteen-week course that teaches students to become true innovators, not just process followers. Here are the lectures from that class, in active development.