Lizzie Bruce’s Post

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. 🤔

Insightful & practical Steps to an Inclusive & Integrated LIFE- Centered Design Approach

https://lnkd.in/g-nv7_Nv 💡Building an Innovative Culture Through Human-Centered Design 💡 As our design teams begin their ideation sessions this week, it’s essential to recognize how Human-centered design drives impactful solutions. What is The Human-Centered Design Approach? Human-centered design is a user-focused problem-solving methodology. This approach centers around understanding users’ needs, behaviors, and experiences. How Can This Approach Be Successful? For this approach to be successful, collaboration must be fostered. This guarantees that a comprehensive understanding of the end-user is developed. For collaboration to flourish, a team must establish a clear set of values that serve as a compass when navigating this process. This fosters an inclusive atmosphere where team members feel encouraged to share their ideas. An inclusive culture promotes various perspectives, leading to more curated and thoughtful solutions. How Does Innovation Play a Role in This Approach? Despite being distinct concepts, innovation and human-centric design are interconnected since they are both built on the foundation of human experience. Innovation is promoted by a deep understanding of human needs and experiences. The human-centered design approach fuels innovation by recognizing people’s challenges and meeting their needs. Combining these concepts offers a powerful formula for transformative growth.

Many people have asked “Okay so what’s it worth and what can you do with it.” As a Master of science in Design Driven Innovation, I focus upon creating innovative solutions to complex societal challenges (wicked problems) through “research through design” or in other words a design-centric approach. In order to do these key aspects that play a role are: Problem-Solving: Tackling diverse challenges from multifaceted issues within companies that affect strategic decision-making, to modern societal challenges such as sustainability, healthcare, and social equity. I aim to develop sustainable, feasible and realizable, creative and practical solutions. Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Collaborating with professionals from diverse fields, including engineering, business, and social sciences, I aim to ensure a Inter/multi-disciplinary, holistic approach to problem-solving. Human-Centered Design: By prioritizing the needs and experiences of stakeholders, from directors to the people on the street, I aim to ensure that the solutions are user-friendly and impactful. Innovation and Creativity: By fostering an environment that encourages experimentation and out-of-the-box thinking, I stimulate and facilitate creative teams to generate novel ideas and interventions. Practical Application: By engaging in real-world projects and applying my skills to address current and pressing issues, I want to have a tangible impact upon the world in which we live. But how do I achieve these goals. Well by focusing upon the following activities and key responsibilities: ·       Identifying Opportunities: I explore and identify areas where design can create significant value. This often means addressing unmet needs or improving existing solutions. ·       User-Centered Research: I conduct extensive research to understand the needs, behaviors, and experiences of users and stakeholders. This often involves interviews, observations, and using other qualitative methods. ·       Ideation and Concept Development: I generate innovative ideas and concepts through brainstorming sessions, workshops, and collaborative efforts with multidisciplinary teams. ·       Prototyping and Testing: I create prototypes of their ideas, which can range from simple sketches to detailed models. These prototypes are then tested with users and stakeholders in order to gather feedback and refine concepts. ·       Collaboration: I work closely with engineers, marketers, and other stakeholders to ensure that the design solutions are feasible, marketable, and are at least aligned with, if not improving, the overall strategy of an organization. ·       Implementation: I oversee the implementation of design solutions, ensuring that the final product or service meets the intended design goals and user needs. ·       Continuous Improvement: I continuously seek ways to improve products, services, and processes, by staying updated with the latest trends and technologies in design and innovation.

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 thinking is important for innovation

Design isn’t just about having amazing ideas—it’s about making those ideas work for the people who use them and the company that creates them. One of the most exciting parts of design is crafting a clear map that takes a product idea from concept to impact. That means asking the right questions: What does the company need? What do the users need? Why are we building this? It’s not enough to focus on the what. Strategy is about aligning the why with a realistic plan to get there. This involves organizing ideas into actionable steps, setting priorities, and staying flexible as things evolve. A strong strategy ensures that everyone—from the designers to the stakeholders—has a shared vision and knows where we’re headed. It’s where creativity meets structure, and that’s where the magic happens. And that’s what I love most —solving problems through strategy. It’s not just about the ideas; it’s about turning them into something real, impactful, and meaningful. Strategy is where innovation meets clarity!

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! 🙂

A reset was needed. The role of Design and Innovation is morphing. It needs to do so. Design Leaders were given an impossible task at most companies—create our future growth, but then the companies failed to embrace the solutions generated. Not a design issue, but one of culture and an addiction to core business models. We’ve led nearly 200 human-centered design projects in our 16+ years as a firm. Several clients have made 100s of millions of dollars from this work, as well as winning key industry innovation awards. Some have launched entire new businesses as a result of the insights. Yet, most designers suffer the fate of 1000s of market-tested concepts in Innovation portfolios—meaning the culture never embraces and launches the work. The lesson: if you’re going to have an innovation or design department, set the stage. Do the rigorous change management to include winning concepts in product or brand managers portfolios. Put hard metrics around how many Innovation products are expected to launch and thrive in the market. Fix the culture and business model issue, or don’t bother. Focus on expanding the business model, formally, to properly commercialize the option value coming from these departments.

Over the past 12 months or so I’ve been noticing a big change in some of my clients – the reduction in headcount and value that has been placed on some design teams. This has meant that the number of CX designers, product designers or those bearing different titles has been reduced, the budgets they’re working with have been cut, and the scope of work they’re trusted with has been diminished. In the midst of an economic decline this might be accepted – except not all design teams have suffered, some have developed and prospered. What separates the teams that are successfully agitating for change, successfully placing themselves in the midst of solving their organisations biggest challenges? In part they’ve been able to demonstrate the impact – the value added – by their team. They’ve been able to talk to the impact that they’ve had on the business metrics their organisation cares about. And as a result, they’ve been trusted even as budgets are being more heavily scrutinised. What do you think – is it time that we make a stronger case for the impact that good design adds to NZ businesses?