Summary of:
Design Thinking for Systems Innovation
By Craig Damlo
To begin their discussion of the design thinking process, Damlo (2024) first described the
more traditional innovation process. This process begins with a strategy, progresses to a
brainstorming phase for ideas and a development phase for the best one (narrowed down from
many), then a definition phase once a product has been developed, and concludes with a phase
for evaluating the product in its market. In a standard normal distribution (or bell curve)
representing the market, this process typically targets the middle 68% (within one standard
deviation away from the mean). However, a weakness of this process mentioned by Damlo
(2024) is that a resulting product may not make as much sense to its user as it does to its
designer. As such, it is also possible that the product won’t solve the right problems that the users
in the market are experiencing. To address these potential issues, the design thinking process
innovates products with this particular goal in mind (Damlo, 2024).
Differing from the traditional process, the design thinking process begins by empathizing
with the users of the product (the humans in the loop). By observing and engaging in how they
utilize the product as well as immersing in their work environment, gathering information
throughout to better understand their perspective, current problems they experience with the
product can be defined for the process to solve, which leads into the next step (as opposed to
defining the product itself in the traditional process) (Damlo, 2024). Not only must the
problem(s) be defined, but the environment in which they take place must also be understood. As
Damlo (2024) mentioned, knowing why things are the way they are when tackling a problem
helps prevent creating new ones along the way.
Design Thinking for Systems Innovation
By Craig Damlo
To begin their discussion of the design thinking process, Damlo (2024) first described the
more traditional innovation process. This process begins with a strategy, progresses to a
brainstorming phase for ideas and a development phase for the best one (narrowed down from
many), then a definition phase once a product has been developed, and concludes with a phase
for evaluating the product in its market. In a standard normal distribution (or bell curve)
representing the market, this process typically targets the middle 68% (within one standard
deviation away from the mean). However, a weakness of this process mentioned by Damlo
(2024) is that a resulting product may not make as much sense to its user as it does to its
designer. As such, it is also possible that the product won’t solve the right problems that the users
in the market are experiencing. To address these potential issues, the design thinking process
innovates products with this particular goal in mind (Damlo, 2024).
Differing from the traditional process, the design thinking process begins by empathizing
with the users of the product (the humans in the loop). By observing and engaging in how they
utilize the product as well as immersing in their work environment, gathering information
throughout to better understand their perspective, current problems they experience with the
product can be defined for the process to solve, which leads into the next step (as opposed to
defining the product itself in the traditional process) (Damlo, 2024). Not only must the
problem(s) be defined, but the environment in which they take place must also be understood. As
Damlo (2024) mentioned, knowing why things are the way they are when tackling a problem
helps prevent creating new ones along the way.
