DI Toolkit
We developed our Design Innovation Toolkit as a compilation of a range of key elements that serve as the “recipe” for how we approach the concept of design innovation at Kent State.
The DI Toolkit is essentially a ‘mash-up’ of design, design thinking, human-centered-design, and innovation strategies that we believe are essential to the practice of becoming “fearless collaborators.” The DI Toolkit consists of eleven "elements" that are interwoven, overlapping, and cyclical. They include:
Superpowers
Awareness of our superpower, and those of our team, promotes diversity and cross-disciplinary collaboration to optimally embrace Design Innovation to develop novel solutions.
Storytelling
Storytelling is a unique approach to help solutions to be developed and communicated in order to capture the imagination and meet the needs of those who it is designed for.
Collaboration and Team Dynamics
Teams are far more than a collection of multiple disciplines and skills sets. They are a dynamic gathering of diverse people, with a multiplicity of perspectives, to collaboratively solve a complex problem, and to co-create a novel solution.
The Role of Empathy
Empathy is about understanding other people's feelings, thoughts and perspectives. It is employed towards self, those in your team, and towards the people you are hoping to develop a novel solution.
Gaining Deep Insight into Problems
Embracing the philosophy of “designing with, not designing for” is at the heart of the participatory process of gaining deep insight into problems. This involves going deeper to understand the problem, through inclusive engagement with the people searching for a solution and their context; to ultimately reframe possible solutions to the problem.
Play and the Creative Process
Engaging in creative play promotes the Design Innovation team to move into the flow state, where they are no longer constrained by blocks. This is when profound solutions can be found through exploration of the gaps and opportunities that exist at the intersection of the team's various disciplines.
The Power of Making
The power of making is intricately tied to inculcating a mindset of multidisciplinary team-work and community building founded on communication that goes beyond prototyping.
Supercharge Your Brainstorming
Brainstorming recognizes the multitude of possible ideation methods, to 'see' the problem from novel perspectives and translate them into a powerful array of possibilities.
Reframing the Challenge
Turning a problem on its head is sometimes the best way to a solution. Being willing to take risks creates new possibilities.
Implementing Powerful and Novel Solutions
Harnessing the power of human centered design, implementation science, and the Design Innovation process to generate implementation plans that can be acted upon.
Iterate! Evaluate!
Continual iteration through prototyping and evaluation, promotes the magic of creating the most effective ideas and solutions.
Employing the DI Toolkit
What might that look like? A fearless collaborator knows their own superpowers and recognizes both the strengths and ‘shadow side’ of what that might mean when they work in teams. They get good at recognizing others’ superpowers as well, and at thinking about how to thoughtfully communicate and build trust with collaborators who are not like them.
They employ thoughtful and intentional strategies for “visualizing or seeing” complex problems together with their teammates, so that collectively everyone can view the problem from multiple perspectives. They employ empathy to gain deeper insight into how the problem is experienced and utilize a variety of tools to help them ideate.
In short, a fearless collaborator is someone one who is willing to jump in and tackle problems together even when they don’t have specific expertise related to the challenge. They are confident enough to utilize key tools and resources to build trust and learn together with the goal of arriving at truly novel solutions.
This kind of thinking is not groundbreaking, but is increasingly important in the context of higher education and the evolving work of the future. The ability to create the conceptual space, ecosystem and culture to practice becoming a fearless collaborator inside large academic institutions is critically important. We ALL need support to be able to explore and fail fast, to reach beyond our comfort zones, to tackle the really messy problems together…