Jessica Habinoski Levy’s Post

In the realm of innovation and creativity, the interplay between research and design always sparks endless discussion. Some argue for their separation, while others champion their inseparability in the journey of creation. But where does the truth actually lie? 🤔 As someone deeply passionate about both research and design, I see their relationship as far more nuanced than a simple binary. Rather than drawing a rigid line between them, I prefer to see them as symbiotic partners, each enhancing the other to achieve meaningful outcomes. It's disheartening to reduce design to mere software manipulation; it belittles the incredible work of our ancestors and historical storytellers whose continuous understudy of how things works informs a lot of our groundbreaking discoveries. Design's true beauty lies not just in its outcomes, but in the intricate groundwork that precedes them. Over the years, I've explored numerous research methodologies and just this week I have been exposed to not less than 3 that I have never come across before, and the results these methodologies draws out have been astounding. As designers, understanding how research and design intertwine is crucial; neither would reaches its full potential without the other. In essence, design breathes life into research. It takes raw data and insights, infusing them with creativity to craft solutions that resonate with users on a profound level. Design injects humanity into complexity, transforming it into intuitive experiences that captivate and delight.

Design thinking is important for innovation

Innovation Through Design is a neat weekend course. A cheeky take on Design Thinking that explains why a well-designed outcome is often pricey: layers of fidelity come at the cost of multiple iterations. Thinking like a designer can get you far in new product/service innovation. Sadly, it won’t help as much with grand strategy. Finding a winning way to, say, (re)launch a $BN asset through rounds of normalized failure is unfeasible. #intellectuallaborday

If you don’t know how to say no, you can never really focus as a creative. Here is the exact process I use to stay focused in our innovation lab (while wearing multiple hats): Frameworks are the secret weapon of great designers. Frameworks allow you to: • Make informed decisions • Get buy in on your ideas • Move slow to go fast A good framework reduces the brain clutter, allowing you to think clearer. My 4 stage decision framework: Stage 1: Define what a good idea is for YOU For our lab, this includes: • Alignment to our values (as a team) • Ability to be leveraged (since we’re lean) • Alignment to our individual incentives (bc why not) If it doesn’t pass all 3, it probably isn’t worth investigating further… Stage 2: Spend time investigating what passes your idea stage Your idea stage can take a day, or even a conversation. But investigating takes time to find what’s worth pursuing. At our lab, we investigate: • What the wider opportunity is (beyond just the idea) • What allows us to build brand authority (strategic pillar this year) • How aligned is this towards future goals for us (not just a dead end idea) Stage 3: Invest only in what you can prove You can investigate many ideas, but only invest in the ones you can prove. (P.s. “invest” can mean with money, time, resources, etc.) For us, this means only investing in things that: • We can actually deliver on (feasibility) • We have found clear market fit for (desirability) • We can build into a sustainable business (viability) Stage 4: Operationalize investments that are worth growing Operationalizing can mean different things to different teams. If you have the luxury of resources and partners you have more options. For us, this can look like: • Building out and maintaining - harder to do with a lean team • Define and graduate - makes sense for our delivery partners My personal decision making also falls into this framework. Same stages, different variables. • Idea • Investigate • Invest • Operationalize Very few ideas make it to the end. But the ones that do will give you superpowers. We’re finding our way there, little by little each day. In this week’s newsletter I’ll break down specific examples of ideas that have gone through this framework and show you exactly what we’re experimenting with at the Design Factory. Join here: https://lnkd.in/eS8M_rc4 — Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost it to your network and follow Jake Carroll for more.

🛠️ Pragmatic Design: The Key to Efficiency and Optimisation for SMEs 🛠️   In the world of small and medium-sized enterprises, innovation doesn't always mean reinventing the wheel   📌 Sometimes, the most impactful changes come from refining what already exists📌   As a technology design partner focused on pragmatic design, we're here to help you enhance your products by making them more efficient, user-optimised, and reliable Let's dive into the advantages of using a Technical Partner and the power of collaborative design:   ✅Expert Guidance: Leverage the specialised knowledge and experience of a design partner to ensure your product incorporates the best practices and latest advancements in design thinking   ✅Fresh Perspectives: Working with external experts can provide new insights, challenging the status quo and leading to innovative solutions that might not emerge from within   ✅Resource Efficiency: Gain access to specialist resources on an as-needed basis, allowing you to scale your design capabilities without the long-term commitment to expanding your team   ✅Cross-Industry Learning: Benefit from the experience across different sectors, bringing a unique cross-pollination of ideas that can give your product a competitive edge   ✅Optimised Design Solutions: A technical partner can help identify and implement design solutions that make your product more efficient, durable, and cost-effective, aligning with both your business goals and market demand   DaniHar Technology pragmatically engineer innovation alongside You   Our collaborative approach to design focuses on pragmatic improvements that drive your product success and secure your business's sustainable growth   👉 Contact Us 👉 Book a Consultation 👉 Start a Project Link in the comments

In today’s fast-paced world, the term innovation is thrown around with such ubiquity you’d think it’s easily achieved. CEOs champion it, factories churn it out, and consumers demand it. But does every problem require an innovative design solution? No.             True innovation—at least the kind that disrupts markets and creates obscene wealth—is rarely needed to accomplish a client’s objectives. Often, a client needs design that subscribes to the MAYA principle—Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. Coined by industrial designer Raymond Loewy, the MAYA principle calls for presenting novel design solutions that are new to the client but never so advanced they can’t be understood. In other words, most people need good design—not even great design— to achieve their goals.             Does that mean we don’t create innovative work at Small Hat Studio? Not at all. However, we believe in balancing the correct amount of innovation, time, and effort against our client’s objectives and budgets to make design an accessible commodity. Now that’s a novel idea. 

4 ways to develop connected thinking during the design process: 1. Start connecting EARLY, don't wait until you've designed everything as much as possible yourself, it will create more work to make changes. 2. Your design is going to be MADE, from a variety of materials and systems that need to work together as a whole. It will also be used and have an IMPACT on people and the environment. You do not know everything about everything, so be humble and let other experts have a say in the design process. Take a TRANSDISCIPLINARY approach. 3. Establish your VALUES from the start - what social or ecological impact are you trying to achieve? Ensure you collaborate with those who share your values 4. SHARE your concepts. Collaborators can't approach you if they don't know about your project. This is a tough one for design firms. Many company policies make this impossible. However, there are ways around this - use of related images, words, and key principles to describe your project. Once you build trust with someone, you then decide if you want to share more information privately. But the trust building is the first step that has to start somewhere! I created Make Me With to help designers use this process, create a holistic impact led ecosystem, develop collaborative and transdisciplinary design thinking, create new opportunities accross the supply chain, and make supply chain connections that go beyond the product, or service, to the process. Starting with the built environment, and aiming beyond. Striving towards a regenerative future. The best way to start is to join the Make Me With ecosystem here https://lnkd.in/dN_D2cMm, so that we know you're interested! Let's connect, to create and regenerate! 🙂

The Extended Danish Design ladder 🪜 sounds like an incredibly useful framework! Not only can it be applied by entrepreneurs to identify where their organisation is and create a roadmap to move upwards, it’s also a helpful tool for design-minded folks to evaluate teams they might potentially work with. Thanks for sharing this, Nina Maturu ! It would be fascinating to see your call to action as a Poll or survey. I’m curious to know where most organisations sit on this ladder, particularly segregated by industry and type of org. 🤔

Does design create market-winning capabilities? Is it becoming a backbone for products, experiences, and platforms? Does it play a central role in making your business distinctive and utterly desirable? Is design the magic potion that sways customers to vote with their wallets? The answer is an emphatic yes. Like a super vitamin, design is a determinant that strengthens, defends and distinguishes a venture or product from its neighbours and competitors. Here are a few examples/facts that illustrate the above: (1) Throughout history, design has always inspired the novel (look at the wheel, the safety pin, the i-pod, the gleaming new editions of bio-mimetic vehicles or the Pillpack’s proposition designed around your life) and led from the front. (2) Design has helped differentiate and uniquely shape strategy to position businesses in a crowded market. Every disruptive business strategy has a design to it. One that ensures that business has uniqueness and alignment to it. Customer Insights, Ideation, Visual Thinking, Prototyping, Storytelling, and Speculative Design for Scenarios. These are all useful design thinking tools to build new futures and business models. A business model is a design around choices (policy, assets, governance) and consequences. Management expert Joan Magretta says a business model is “the story that explains how an enterprise works”. Mgmt. Guru, Peter Drucker, says it is the answer to the three questions: Who is your customer, what does the customer value, and how do you deliver value at an appropriate cost? And for each definition, there is a design to the model. From the mosquito mats & coils that displaced Odomos ointments to the small heat patch designed for localised pain and from the Octopus inspired Onitsuka basketball shoes to the luggage strolley and Kindles - each is an example of how designed to be has gone on to change the market forever. Take a look at how design led innovation and being venturesome with design changes the course of business and impact - https://lnkd.in/dAwiEB_2 (3) Design also delivers another powerful outcome - Impact. In the not for profit & foundations sector, the importance of outcomes can never be overemphasised. Be it accessibility, inclusion, community enterprise, social innovation or market linkages, it is program & community design that holds the key. And this is increasingly felt by businesses and reinforced by customers. Research by consulting majors like McKinsey shows that design alert businesses earn €225 for every €100 they invest in design. Or that as per S&P (Standard & Poor), design conscious companies received 219% higher returns in the 2004-2014 period survey. #design #strategy #venturedesign #innovation #impact #growth

Design vs Innovation: Navigating Paths to Impact Design, fundamentally, is more than just aesthetics or functionality; it embodies a mindset, a methodical approach to understanding concerns, issues, and contexts deeply rooted in human experience. At its core, design is a holistic process of empathetic inquiry and iterative problem-solving. It invites us to immerse ourselves in the nuances of community needs, cultural dynamics, and environmental sensitivities. However, design, while transformative, doesn't guarantee innovation in every instance. It can manifest as incremental improvements or adaptations rather than revolutionary breakthroughs. A design intervention might entail optimizing existing systems, refining processes, or enhancing user experiences without necessarily pioneering entirely new paradigms. Innovation, on the other hand, represents the outcome of diverse processes and approaches. It underscores the importance of nurturing ecosystems that foster both creativity and resilience, where iterative design processes can flourish and seed innovations that resonate across communities. In essence, while design and innovation operate distinctively, their synergy within the realm of social impact is transformative. Design offers the blueprint, the thoughtful groundwork that informs strategic innovations. It honors context, amplifies voices, and invites collaboration, laying the groundwork for innovations that transcend boundaries and ignite enduring change. In frame: Iti Seth from Treemouse, thank you Iti for these valuable insights over design vs innovation in the context of social impact. #socialimpact #design #innovation #nonprofits #socialcontext #sustainablesolutions #socialinnovation #lastingchange