Design thinking resources

There are a plethora of design thinking resources – academic literature and practical toolkits as well as articles, blog posts and videos. The purpose of this page at present is to provide a set of introductory resources to provide a grounding in the ideas and approaches of design thinking and by no means exhaustive.

First this: Tim Brown urges designers to think big at TED

Design thinking literature overview

• Bell, S. J. (2008). Design Thinking [PDF]. American Libraries, January/ February, 45-49.
• Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking [PDF]. Harvard business review, 86(6), 84-92, 141.
• Brown, T., & Wyatt, J. (2010). Design Thinking for Social Innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter, 30-35.
• Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation [Book]. Harper Business: USA.
• Design Management Institute. Study: Good design is good for business. Fast Company.
• Grainer, M., Noble, C., Bitner, M.J., Broetzmann, E. (2014). What unhappy customers want, MIT Review, Spring.
• Lockwood, T. (ed.) (2009). Design thinking: Integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value [Book]. Allworth Press: USA.
• Martin, R. (2009). The design of business: Why design is the next competitive advantage [Book]. Harvard Business School Press.
• Service design books. (2014). Some books for service designers to read.

Practical resources (tools, techniques etc)

• IDEO. (2010). Human centred design toolkit.
• IDEO & Riverdale. (2012). Design thinking for educators toolkit.
• Leidtka, J. & Ogilvie, T. (2012). Designing for growth: A design thinking toolkit for managers. [Book]. Columbia University Press.
• Open Colleges. (2013). 45 design thinking resources for educators.
• Namahn & Design Flanders (2014). Service design toolkit.
• McIntosh, E. (2014). Design thinking: Tools to help make design thinking visible. NoTosh.
• Politecnico di Milano (2014). Service design tools.
• Stanford University. (2010). D.School Bootcamp Bootleg [PDF].
• Stanford University. (2012). D.School design thinking virtual crash course.
• Stickdorn, M. & Schneider J. (2010). This is service design thinking: basics – tools – cases. [Book]. BIS Publishers.

Videos of interest

• Brown, T. (2008). Tales of creativity and play.
• Central. (2010). Design ethnography.
• Design Council. (2013). The value of design.
• Isaac, E. (2013). Ethnography.
• Sinek, S. (2009). How great leaders inspire action.

My related writings

• Howard, Z. (2015). Understanding design thinking in practice: a qualitative study of design led professionals working with large organisations, PhD thesis, Swinburne University of Technology.
• Howard, Z. (2012). From concept to capability: developing design thinking within a professional services firm, Proceedings of  Design Research Society (DRS) Conference 2012: Bangkok, Volume 2, 1-4 July, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, pp.729-739. Presentation available here.
• Howard, Z. (2012). A conversation approach to business model innovation, PIN-C 2012: Participatory Innovation Conference, 12-14 January, Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale, Australia.
• Melles, G., Howard, Z. & Thompson-Whiteside, S. (2012). Teaching design thinking: expanding horizons in design education. Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences: incorporating the proceedings of the 2nd World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership (WCLTA 2011), Istanbul, Turkey, 28-30 October 2011 / Huseyin Uzunboylu (ed.), vol. 31, pp. 162-166, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.035.
• Melles, G. & Howard, Z. (2012). Empower.me: Social innovation design for homeless families: Collective design creativity. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of Design Creativity (ICDC2012), Glasgow, United Kingdom, 18-20 September 2012, pp. 125-132.
• Howard, Z. & Davis, K. (2011). From solving puzzles to designing solutions: integrating design thinking into Evidence Based Practice, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 15-21.
• Howard, Z. & Melles, G. (2011). Beyond designing: roles of the designer in complex design projects, Proceedings of ‘Design, culture and interaction’, the 23nd Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (OZCHI 2011), Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, 28 November-02 December, pp. 152-155.  Presentation available here.

Selection of my related presentations and workshops

• Howard, Z., Senova, M., & Melles, G., (2015). The role of mindset in design thinking: Implications for capability development and practice, Design for Business: Research Conference, Melbourne, Victoria, 13-14 May 2015. (Paper to follow).
• Lawry, S. & Howard, Z. (2014). The role of mindset in user centred design, presentation at UXAustralia, 26-28 August, Sydney, Australia.
• Howard, Z. (2014). From dinner to dining: the evolving role of the designer, presentation at LeanUXNYC, 10-12 April , New York, New York.
• Howard, Z. (2014). Design thinking for designing and delivering services,  workshop at LeanUXNYC, 10-12 April , New York, New York.
• Howard, Z. (2013). We need to talk about…designing better library experiences, presentation at ALIA Information Online 2013: Be different, do different, 12-15 February, Brisbane, Queensland.
• Howard, Z. (2013). Introducing design thinking, guest lecture for INBO1 Industry Insights, as part of Bachelor of Information Technology, Queensland University of Technology, March 8, Brisbane, Queensland.
• Howard, Z. (2013). Design thinking for designing and delivering services, workshop delivered for Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC), 17 May 2013, Brisbane, Queensland.
• Howard, Z. & Drummond S. (2013). Designing the future vision of libraries, workshop delivered at New Librarians Symposium 6 (NLS6) 2013: Be Different, February 9, Brisbane, Queensland.
• Howard, Z. (2012). Developing design thinking practice in complex organisations, seminar delivered for Linkoping University, November 29, Linkoping, Sweden.
• Howard, Z. (2012). Rewriting the information literacy recipe for future palates, design thinking workshop delivered at CAVAL Reference Interest Group (CRIG) seminar ‘Information Literacy Recipes for the Melting Pot: Traditional Ingredients with a Modern Flavour’, 8 November 2012, Melbourne, Victoria.
• Howard, Z. (2012). A speed date with design thinking, Bootcamp workshop delivered at VALA2012: eM-powering eFutures, February 9, Melbourne, Victoria.
• Howard, Z. (2011). Design thinking for library experiences, guest lecture for INN533 Information Organization, as part of Master of Information Technology (Library and Information Science), Queensland University of Technology, October 7, delivered via Elluminate. Recording available here.