David Dunne - Design Thinking at Work: How Innovative Organizations Are Embracing Design

The individuals I interviewed for this book were forthcoming, honest, realistic, and ultimately optimistic in their appraisal of design thinking in organizations. For reasons of space, not all were quoted in the book, though their contributions were nonetheless invaluable in helping shape my ideas. I am deeply indebted to Alex Ryan, Barb Korol, Mei Huang, and Wayne Crosby at Alberta CoLab; Jess Roberts at University of Minnesota College of Design; John Body, formerly at the Australian Tax Office, at ThinkPlace; Chris Ferguson at Bridgeable; Brandon Riddell at Canadian Tire; Craig Haney and Chris Plunkett at Communitech; Philip Rubel and Mikal Hallstrup at DesignIt; Ronna Chisolm at Dossier Creative; Mathew Chow, David Aycan, and Deb DeVries at IDEO; Joe Gerber and Dan Elitzer at IDEO CoLab; Xavier Debane and Rocky Jain at Manulife; Christian Bason, Jakob Schjrring, and Thomas Prehn at MindLab; Holly ODriscoll and Cindy Tripp at Procter & Gamble; Mark Leung and Mihnea Galeteanu at Rotman; Judy Mellett, Chelsea Omel, Markus Grupp, Patrick Bach, and the Service Design team at TELUS; Brian Zubert at Thomson Reuters; Frido Smulders at TU Delft; Anna Kindler at the University of British Columbia; Wendy Mayer at Pfizer, and to several others who prefer to remain anonymous. Earlier interviews with experts, including Tim Brown, Jane Fulton Suri, Jim Hackett, David Kelley, Larry Keeley, Vijay Kumar, Roger Martin, Whitney Mortimer, Donald Norman, Moura Quayle, Diego Rodriguez, and Patrick Whitney, helped me understand the nature of design thinking and its application. I am especially grateful to both Roger Martin and Patrick Whitney, who have been guiding lights in my design journey. Simon Dunne and Carol Ann Courneya reviewed an early draft and provided extremely helpful comments, as did two anonymous reviewers. Patrick Ho and the Railyard team at Dossier did wonderful work on cover designs. Finally, I owe special thanks to Brad Buie, at University of Victoria, for research support and insightful comments on several drafts; and to Jennifer DiDomenico, Manager, Social Sciences Acquisitions at University of Toronto Press, who could be counted on to provide much-needed clarity and helpful suggestions throughout.

Thinking Like a Designer

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How Design Keeps the Dutch Dry

Delft is a quaint Dutch city located about halfway between Rotterdam and The Hague. Sometimes called little Amsterdam, its canals, churches, and narrow streets have a way of transporting you back in time ().

From time to time, the citys charms are less obvious. Winter storms batter the North Sea coast, bringing gale-force winds and driving rain, testing the patience of its residents and the durability of their umbrellas, which tend to flip inside out in the high winds.

In a single week in March 2004, Gerwin Hoogendoorn lost three umbrellas to the elements. Frustrated by the experience, the industrial design student at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) set out to improve a product that had been essentially unchanged for 3,400 years. The ultimate result was Senz, a stormproof umbrella designed to withstand whatever nature could throw at the hapless Dutch pedestrian.

1.1a and 1.1b Delft today (left), and Vermeers View of Delft (c. 1660) Credit, 1.1a: Art Anderson, Delft from the Feniks, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0; 1.1b: Mauritshuis, The Hague. Photography: Margareta Svensson

Hoogendoorn explored everything about umbrellas: their tendency to flip inside out, to block visibility, to poke people in the eye. Umbrellas were a boring utilitarian product that didnt fulfil their function well so boring, in fact, that Hoogendoorn had to endure the ridicule of his fellow design students, Gerard Kool and Philip Hess, for even working on such a product.

His early ideas included a magnetic field to repel the rain and a helicopter-like device attached to the users head. Eventually, however, he focused on the aerodynamics of umbrellas. With no background in aerodynamics, he sought out the help of university contacts with expertise in the field. To build prototypes, he bought a couple of umbrellas, tore them apart, and rebuilt them (). He tested his ideas through computer simulation, wind tunnels, and in-use tests (i.e., taking them out in the Dutch rain).

With Kool and Hess who, by now, had begun to come around to the idea Hoogendoorn founded Senz in 2005. ) captured the public imagination, and the initial stock of 10,000 units sold out in nine days. In its first year, Senz won almost every major design award and went global in 2007.

1.2 Hoogendoorn works on the Senz umbrella Credit: www.senz.com / Production: VLA Productions / Client: Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft

1.3 The Senz umbrella Credit: www.senz.com