Design thinking is a word that keeps coming up in business innovation discussions, and has done so for a couple of years. In my discussions, at least with non-designers and more traditionally oriented business people, it’s usually because I bring it up … which often puts me in the role of having to explain what design thinking is and why (I think) it’s one of the most promising ways to take your business to a new level. I thought it might be a good idea to put some of my thoughts on the subject in a post as well. Think of it as a crash course in design thinking for people that have missed out, rather than a thorough examination of how the term is used and what it can mean. I COULD talk for hours …

What is design thinking?

First of all, design thinking can basically be defined as using design methods to develop business. Now this doesn’t mean designing physical artifacts. It can be an integral part of using design thinking, but it’s not its core. Rather, it’s about thinking as a designer (or, naturally, letting a designer in to think with you.). At the Rotman School of Management, one of the schools that have been in the forefront of design thinking with their Business Design program, design thinking is conceptualized as an “integrative way of thinking and problem-solving that can be applied to all components of business”. Heather Fraser, from the Rotman School, talks of the following integral principles in design thinking (with my comments after the dashes):

Empathy and Deep Human Understanding – good designers are human-centered

Multi-disciplinary and Cross Industry Collaboration – good designers find inspiration in cross-pollution

Ability to Imagine New Possibilities – good designers find opportunities in new places

Embracing Constraints as a Source of Creativity – good designers love constraints and make their best work on a tightly defined brief

Making the Abstract Visually Concrete – good designers translate a concept that’s contained in the mind to something visible that can communicate

Iterative Prototyping and Co-creation with Users – good designers make many prototypes, and create them alongside their customers

Intuition and Common Sense – good designers make decisions based on instinct and gut feelings (in combination with research and logic, mind you)

Drawing Inspiration from a Broad Repertoire – good designers get themselves a broad range of experiences to learn from

Vision and Perseverance – good designers follow through with their visions*

What does design thinking DO, exactly?

Design thinking helps you in any area of business that needs innovation – and frankly, what area of your business is completely stable? It’s useful when developing new products or services or creating new ways of marketing. Or, of course, reinventing your brand or your entire business model. With the help of design thinking, you’ll produce bigger ideas, truly transformative innovation, and you get a more holistic way to take on complex challenges. And the great thing is, unlike some other business theories that become trendy, it’s not just a catchphrase for top level management in large companies. There are design thinking case studies of giant corporations like GE or Procter & Gamble, but it can be just as easily – or more easily – applied to small business entrepreneurs. For a designer with an interest in business (and if you aren’t interested in advancing your clients’ business, why are you a designer?), it’s an opportunity to help create innovative brands and businesses at a core level, not just as the visual afterthought we’re often left to deal with. Our design trained mind is our biggest competitive advantage in any field of business.

* I borrowed these aspects of design thinking from this excellent blog post by Jesse Thompson. Do read it, it provides plenty of examples.

How does it happen – the creation of really innovative products and brands? Not the ones that are slightly better than their predecessors. The ones that redefine their category, redefine the very activity of using a phone, buying groceries, playing video games … In Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, released last month, Roberto Verganti, Professor of Management of Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, covers this subject and reaches some interesting conclusions.

The problem with much product innovation, according to Verganti, is that is largely user-driven – changes are done to products in response to what consumers say that they want. This will create incremental changes; when asked about what more they want from their phone, say, few people will think up a radically new use for it. Rather, they will talk about small nuisances with their existing product that they would like to have fixed. More radical innovation has traditionally been driven by the emergence of new technologies, it’s technology-driven. Technology has created some groundbreaking products, but is it the only way?

No, Verganti argues, really radical innovation should be design-driven. With this term, he’s not referring to design in its everyday meaning but in its etymological essence, as “making sense of things.” The really interesting point Verganti makes, I think, is that innovation needs to be centered around the meaning of things. People don’t buy products or services – they buy meanings. They use things for various emotional, psychological, and sociocultural reasons, not just utilitarian ones. Companies should therefore look beyond the actual product and its technicalities, and instead try to understand the real meanings given to it by consumers.

Understanding these means being able to innovate radically, by redefining such meanings. This can not be done by standard consumer research. Instead it takes a broader approach to getting to know both the context in which the product is used and general trends in society (I’m thinking that ethnography, anthropology, possibly semiotics are the methods for this?). Additionally, it demands an analytic, creative mind – an interpreter – that can come up with a way to create a new, appealing, meaning.

Verganti uses some very well-known brands as examples of this type of innovation. For example, when asked what they wanted in video game consoles, users said more power, more virtual reality … Enter the Nintendo Wii, a product that doesn’t give you those things, but instead redefines how video games are used. Or, in the service sector, who would have thought that they could see shopping organic, healthy food as a pleasant pastime, pre-Whole Foods? Well, now they are. As these examples show, this approach to creating innovation is not detached from what the user wants at all. It aims to find what he or she wants, but doesn’t know yet. And who doesn’t like to be pleasantly surprised?

You can also hear Roberto Verganti speak about the main ideas in his book in a recent Harvard Business Ideacast.

In late 2008, the very successful online fashion store Net-a-Porter announced that they were launching a “discreet packaging” service – purchases could now be sent in brown paper bags, as opposed to their trademark, elegant black packaging. The e-mail informing of the new service featured the headline “You’ve been shopping – we won’t tell.”

The arrival of the so-called “Brown bag luxury” was mostly a way of simply disguising indulgent shopping – to avoid invoking envy or hostility from less fortunate neighbours and friends. But is also signaled a change in the financial crisis consumer’s mind; stepping away from ostentatious luxury. Net-a-Porter’s move was particularly interesting since their luxury packaging is credited with a part of their success – it’s an integral part of the shopping experience they provide, making it closer to real life boutique shopping.

Mainly, the redefinition of luxury is not merely about playing down the bling. Credit crunch or not, there has been a growing fatigue about luxury brands, that just justify their high prices with the status they represent instead of matching it with uniqueness and superior craftsmanship. Aspects such as environmental concerns and working conditions has also made their mark on how we think about luxury. One obvious way to signal craftsmanship, as well as an unique experience, is to include an element of craft in the packaging, especially when the packaging is an integral part of the product. These are two brands that have worked in different ways with their packaging to convey a sense of well crafted, artisan luxury goods worth spending your money on.

Bois D’Alexa handcrafted scented candles are specially created and poured in Grasse, France by historical candle makers, using lead-free 100% cotton wicks. Each candle is incased in a black French glass with an elegant lead-free pewter lid. The etching on the lid is hand done by artisans.

COTO is a luxury fashion accessories company in NYC, with quite unique packaging. COTO cuff links are packed in tiny glass vials sealed with a cork, while ties are in round capsule boxes. When shipped, COTO’s products come embedded in reindeer moss.

(COTO also talks about their products in a very “redefined luxury” way: “Utilizing nature-borrowed, sustainable materials, we create a limited collection for those who appreciate the details. By using carefully selected components, each product reveals a familiar, almost vintage quality in character and craftsmanship. They complement a style of understated sophistication – for the sartorial and sustainably minded.”)

(Photos from Lovelypackage.com and Reubenmiller.com)

These last years, the environment has been so much talked about, that it would be rather weird if it didn’t influence how we package our products. Packaging is of course a major culprit when it comes to our ecological footprint – from the production of different substrates, via the impact of packaging size and shape on transport, to the waste it eventually becomes. Therefore, much packaging by eco-conscious brands has been designed with the environment in mind in different ways.

However, a certain look of naturalness, dominated by unbleached and unprinted kraft board and simple (often intentionally uneven) screen printing, seems to be just as important to brands. Sending a clear signal to consumers that they’re doing something for the environment by buying these products is of course important – the sales argument of eco-friendliness should be clearly visible on the shelf. In some of these products, though, the natural look does not reflect an environmental benefit in the product itself, but just a general connotation of naturalness in other aspects: fresh ingredients for a meal instead of industrially produced frozen food, or good-for-you functional juices. In these cases, premium qualities are communicated with the absence of expensive looking packaging (foiling, UV coating, etc) – something I’ll return to in my next post which will cover The Other Side of Luxury.

For brands like cosmetics company Pangea Organics, the eco packaging thinking goes way beyond the look. Their clever glueless box, pictured below, is soy printed on 80% post-consumer single-ply uncoated paperboard, and carbon neutrally manufactured with 100% green electricity. An excellent example of a brand that’s truly consistent in delivering its brand promise.

Glueless box by Pangea Organics.

New Leaf 100% Recycled paper goods designed by Willoughby Design.

Scratch food packaging designed by Brandy.

M13 functional juice packaging designed by Betterdaze.

Basic Shapes toy packaging designed by Coöp.

Empty paperbags to be folded into animals, for the benefit of WWF, designed by Magdalena Czarnecki.

Cascade Green beer packaging designed by Landor Sydney.

(Pictures via The Dieline)

The prevalence of retro styled packaging is not a new trend, but seems to have really taken off this year. This is probably linked to the current economic climate. Hard times seem to bring more nostalgia for the good ole days – nostalgia which translates into visual culture, for example through consumer product packaging. In an unstable world, it’s not surprising that we reach for something safe from the shelf; a kind of visual comfort food if you will.

The perhaps most extreme example of taking advantage of consumers’ crisis-induced love of times gone by is companies actually going back to older packaging designs. The last picture below shows just such a phenomenon – vintage styled General Mills cereal boxes that were sold at Target in February and March this year. Another example of this is of course the much written about Throwback edition of Pepsi and Mountain Dew.

But probably, a part of the turn towards the intricacies of vintage packaging can also be explained in terms of broader design trends; the modernist hegemony of the early 00’s started in time to seem  limiting to designers. Elegant as a simple, stark graphic approach may be, it can also mean a risk for brand anonymity. With the whole arsenal of retro ornament and imagery at hand, the designer might be better equipped to bring out the personality and history of the brand. This way of connecting with a brand’s story is of course in line with the trend of consumers seeking out the local, the authentic and the obscure.

Booths Originals heritage range designed by Camilla Lilliesköld.

Irving Farms coffee designed by Louise Fili.

Loto Massage Oils designed by Arutza Onzaga, P576.

Mommy Francis takeaway packaging designed by ilovedust.

Painted Pretzel pretzel packaging designed by Yael Miller.

General Mills cereal boxes on the shelf.

Half of 2009 has passed. It might be an appropriate time for some recapitulation of trends, that have emerged or intensified this year in the field of packaging. At least three clear trends can be identified, that I will briefly explain and exemplify over the same number of posts.

Packaging is of course, like other forms of visual communication, deeply submerged in culture. Therefore, though some trends seem to emerge solely as self referencing fashions among design agencies, they can often on closer inspection be seen as a reaction to overlying tendencies in the world around us. (Which strengthens my view, that to excel in working with brand communication, you above all have to be interested in what happens in the world. Without being curious, and knowledgeable, about life, people, trends, economy or politics, you can not expect the pieces of communication you produce to actually communicate to people.) With this in mind, there’s no surprise that packaging this year has been steering towards The Safety of Yesteryear, The Other Side of Luxury and The Goodness of Nature. These are the trends that I’ll look into for the next three posts.