Better Design Through Humanity
Equipped with a
design innovation mindset and toolbox, Northwestern students leave ready to
confront society's pressing problems
.
What
would happen if we put humans back into the foreground?
Northwestern engineers believe they can
harness some of the non-quantifiable qualities—like empathy and deep human
understanding—to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. Not only can this
human-centered approach identify the underlying issues with the greatest impact
and meaning, it can also produce fast, thorough, transformative
solutions that have the power to change lives.
This concept is called Design
Innovation. And at Northwestern, it's booming.
For the past 20 years, Northwestern
students have learned design innovation skills to uncover richer insights that
lead to more meaningful products, services, and systems.
Ironically, as an approach to solving big
problems, design innovation appears smaller, more personalized, more specific,
more human.
What
is Design Innovation?
Elizabeth Gerber
Design innovation creates value using
design-centric tools and frameworks such as empathy, visualization,
prototyping, and iteration. By acquiring design innovation skills, students are
prepared to find and frame problems, identify opportunities, and innovate
across a variety of spaces. They are ready to bring their ideas to life.
The results of design innovation benefit
all stakeholders. The end goal does not have to be a product. It can be a
service, system, business plan, or experience.
“Innovation is creativity that is
implemented,” says Elizabeth Gerber,
associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Segal Design
Cluster. “it could just impact one person’s life. It could impact a thousand
people’s lives. But it must influence what we do and how we experience our
lives.”
Design innovation requires a type of
thinking that is truly whole-brain. Innovators must augment their analytical
thinking with creativity, which results in a human centered, holistic
perspective.
Design
Research
Greg Holderfield, Director of the Segal
Design Institute
For design innovation to work, the designer
must understand the users in the context of their everday lives, which helps
shed light on often unarticulated needs. Elizabeth Gerber says, "We want
to know what keeps our users up at night and what gets them up in the
morning."
Finding that answer requires a very
different method than other types of research.
·
Design research often relies on small
sample sizes
·
It doesn't just ask what, it asks why
·
It requires understanding and learning, not
proving or justifying
“We are not asserting that design research
is better than other types of research,” Greg Holderfield says.
“All types serve different purposes, and they can often all come together to
inform decision making.”
Mindset.
Process. Tools.
Northwestern Engineering takes a threefold
approach to teaching design innovation:
1.Establish a
mindset
2.Follow a process
3.Develop a
toolbox
From the start, succesful design requires
an optimistic mindset focused on the future. Students begin
with empathy to best understand the end users' needs and humility to
acknowledge that they don't have all the right answers.
"Empathy is the foundation of design
thinking," Holderfield says. "We're not looking at big data or
insights from a thousand people. We're deeply mining the stories of a few
people. We want to find needs that are often unarticulated and might be
different from what the data show."The process for solving
the problem often begins with messy, ambiguous needs, which are examined
through immersive observations and interviews. Students learn to identify the
right problem, genreate many ideas for solving it, iterate on those ideas, and
implement the optimal solution.Finally, students develop a toolbox that
helps them frame problems and bring concepts to lfe. This includes brainstorming,
prototyping, storytelling, user testing, rapid iteration, and giving and
receiving feedback.
Risk.
Fail. Repeat.
Bruce Ankenman, Co-director of the Segal
Design Institute.
"Students have to realize that they do
not and will not always have the right answers. They can also find purpose and
meaning in the setbacks." Bruce Ankenman, Co-director of
the Segal Design Institute.
As students adapt to design thinking, they
often feel apprehensive.
Even though the world is a messy,
complicated place, brimming with ambiguity and uncertainty, children learn to
solve neat equations and to seek the one correct answer. they are urged to
color within the lines and follow a prescribed path to success. That leaves
little room to explore the uncomfortable boundaries of the unknown.
When Northwestern Engineering students
experience their first design course, Design Thinking and Communication (DTC),
during freshman year, they balk at the idea that there can be many right
answers. They also soon learn that finding the answer isn't the only challenge
- the problem itself is often ambiguous.
“Ambiguity is not always a comfortable
place to be,” Holderfield says. “Design innovators are not necessarily focused
on what is probable. Instead, they work in spaces that are unknown, often
mining unarticulated needs of users. They have to use intuition to make a leap
forward into the realm of possible.”
If embracing ambiguity is difficult for
students, then accepting failure can seem incomprehensible. The best way to
find the right problem and an optimal solution requires taking risks, testing
many iterations, and failing over and over again. Most Northwestern students
are high achievers who finished at the top of their classes in high school.
Lifelong perfectionists accustomed to straight A’s, they often experience a
deep fear of failure and recoil at the very thought of it.
“The educational ecosystem at large bemoans
failure,” says Ahren Alexander, a senior studying manufacturing and design
engineering. “But it’s extremely important to realize that failure is
necessary. Failing helps you understand what you could be doing better.”
Students benefit from failure in ways that
extend beyond the design process and their final projects. They also develop
resilience and humility, both key to working and living in the world outside
the academic experience.
The
Design Process at Work
Wheelchair Ramp (Freshman
Student Project)
Problem: Wheelchair
users have difficulty navigating curbs and broken sidewalks.
Solution: Portable,
dual-telescoping wheelchair ramp.
Challenges: The
ramp needed to be sturdy enough to hold a wheelchair but lightweight enough to
be portable. The DTC team developed a ramp with a telescoping structure,
allowing it to extend in length from two feet to six feet. A locking mechanism
secures the sections of the ramp in place for stability.
Lesson learned: Early
prototypes often fail. “Near the end of the project, we tested the prototype,
and the walls buckled under very little weight,” says Nathan Miller, freshman
in mechanical engineering. “That wasn’t exactly ideal.”
Education Startup (Graduate
Student Project)
Problem: Preschools
in some areas of India lack adequate learning resources.
Solution: SharEd, a
startup that leverages the sharing economy for early childhood education.
How it works: Preschool
children need a variety of books, games, and toys for the best learning
environment, but these materials can be expensive. SharEd develops theme-based
curricula and corresponding materials. “We put eight different schools
together,” explains Kate Geremia, MMM student and chief marketing officer of
SharEd. “Each school receives one of the units. Every month, they come together
and rotate units.”
Lessons learned: User
observation is important — even when the users are on the other side of the
world. SharEd’s chief financial officer Nihar Shah visited Pune, India over
winter break to observe students and teachers in the classroom. “Observational
research and becoming immersed into the environment is so much more valuable
than relying on pure numbers or intuition,” Geremia says. “It allows you to
gain different insights.”
Breadfruit Peeler (Undergraduate
Student Project)
Problem: Breadfruit
is a staple food in Haiti and Jamaica, but its tough, stiff exterior and dense,
starchy interior make peeling it difficult.
Solution: A
bicycle-powered device that rotates the breadfruit for the person peeling it,
preventing the arm from overwork.
Challenges: The
peeler needs to be safe, easy, and economically viable. “It needs to be manual
because electricity is unreliable in Haiti and very expensive in Jamaica,” says
Betsy Chou, a junior in the Segal Certificate program. “Our users might say
they want an electric product, but really they just want something that doesn’t
cause them to expend too much energy.”
Lessons learned: If
the intended user cannot realistically use a product, then it does not matter
if it’s well engineered. “This made me think more about what people actually
need,” says Dixon Yu, a junior in MaDE. “I pursued engineering because I wanted
to understand how things work. Design combines that curiosity with serving
humans.”
Virtual Health System (Graduate
Student Project)
Problem: Northwestern
Medicine needed a virtual care system that could serve 10 times more patients
per primary care physician.
Solution: Designed
by students in the MS in Engineering Design and Innovation program, NM Check is
a comprehensive virtual care system that brings healthcare to patients wherever
and whenever they need it.
How It Works: The
system, targeted at millennials, consists of three main components: CheckIN, a
web and mobile-based health portal; CheckBOX, a system to deliver medical lab
tests directly to patients; and CheckRN, a virtual care system for patients to
interact with nurses via video conferencing.
Lessons learned: Design
specifically for the targeted user. A system like this would work best for the
generation that looks to WebMD and YouTube for their healthcare questions. The
team found that the idea of entering a traditional healthcare environment is
often too daunting for millennials, so they bypass the system altogether.
Design
Beyond Borders
Design innovation at Northwestern is a
complex story with many different participants and programs. This continuously
growing and inclusive environment mirrors the demand for design on local,
national, and international scales.
“Segal was originally rooted in
Northwestern Engineering,” Holderfield says. “We hoped to give a human-centered
design perspective to engineers. That’s grown, morphed, and encompassed a
variety of programs. To me, that’s the beauty of it.”
"The design thinking curriculum helped
me hone my skills into a powerful design mothodology, which I now leverage in
my work to create impactful and practical experiences for people," says
Anthony Jakubiak (MS EDI ’13), Senior Experience Designer at SAP Labs.
Northwestern Engineering is bringing
diverse perspectives to design in many ways. Here are a few examples:
·
Design Thinking and Doing: The
new course, similar to DTC, introduces non-engineers to the design process and
is the first course that Northwestern Engineering has offered solely to
students outside of the school.
·
MOOC: Northwestern
Engineering offered a massive open online course (MOOC) called “Leadership
through Design Innovation.” More than 430 participants from around the globe
enrolled in the MOOC, offered in winter quarter 2016, to learn more about the
process and power of design.
·
Design for America: Founded
at Northwestern in 2008, the student-led network uses human-centered design to
address social issues. The organization has spread to several universities
nationwide, including Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and Yale. More than 1,000
students are now involved, a number that grows each year.
A
History of Innovation
It all started in 1997 when the singular
first-year class now called Design Thinking and Communication (DTC) debuted.
Now a cornerstone of the Northwestern Engineering experience, DTC, co-taught by
faculty from the Cook Family Writing Program, challenges students to use design
thinking to attack potentially unsolvable problems. The Segal Design Institute
was founded in 2007 and initially offered a small, engineering-focused
curriculum. Now design innovation has exploded to include a wide variety of
programs, course offerings, degrees, and students from eight schools across
Northwestern University.
The
Importance of Being Empathetic
To establish succesful, long-term
solutions, designers must first understand the people they aim to serve. for
one group of freshmen in DTC, this meant navigating campus in a wheelchair
while researching how to build a better ramp.
"We went out multiple times with a
wheelchair to test different bumps, curbs, steps, and ramps," says Nathan
Miller, freshman in mechanical engineering. "Even when ramps exist, it was
so difficult to roll them up."
“From that, we could understand how the
ramp affects the user,” adds William Barron, a freshman in computer science. “We
better understood which angles are climbable and which are not.”
Miller, Barron, and their teammates now say
that they can’t walk anywhere without noticing steep curbs and broken sidewalks
that might be difficult for people in wheelchairs.
“It opened my mind up to the world,” Barron
says. “It gave me a broader understanding of the world and the problems that
exist outside of my own experience.”
Misconceptions
about Design
Walter Herbst, director of
the Master of Product Design and Development Management program, has dedicated
his life to design, and his more than 125 patents prove it. During his time in
the industry and academia, he’s noticed that many people have misconceptions
about design innovation.
False: Design
is purely aesthetic.
True: While aesthetics are often a component of design, design is a process and an outcome that holds meaning for the end user.
True: While aesthetics are often a component of design, design is a process and an outcome that holds meaning for the end user.
False: Design
is only used to make attractive products.
True: Design can be used to create a product, service, business model, or experience.
True: Design can be used to create a product, service, business model, or experience.
False: Innovation
is synonymous with creativity.
True: Creativity is the conception of something new. Innovation is the implementation of something new.
True: Creativity is the conception of something new. Innovation is the implementation of something new.
Lessons
from Failure
Accepting failure isn’t always easy for
anyone. Imagine how it hard it can be for students accustomed to being at the
top of their class. But failure is not only inherent in the design process —
it’s celebrated.
·
“It’s really valuable to get comfortable
with failing. If you’re not failing, then you’re not trying something that
takes risks.” —Betsy Chou, a junior in mechanical engineering who is earning
the Segal Certificate
·
“From the beginning, our professors told us
to do as many things as possible and expect most of them to fail. We’ve been
through a lot of failure, so we’re prepared. Even if things don’t go smoother in
future design classes, we will cope with the failures better than we did the
first time.” —Paul Klatt, freshman in mechanical engineering
·
“Every failure is a push toward a
solution.” —William Barron, freshman in computer science
·
“It’s always disappointing when something
fails. But you learn a lot more from what’s wrong than what’s right.” —Millie
Rosen, freshman in chemical engineering
http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring-2016/better-design-through-humanity.html?utm_source=alumni-newsletter-07-01-16&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email-position9&utm_campaign=alumni-newsletter
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