Designing Environmental Solutions
Lesson 1: Additional Resources
Articles referenced in the class materials:
Sustaining Innovation vs. Disruptive Innovation builds on the 10 types of innovation and invites you to consider what level of change you are driving for.
Some more resources that help set up the case for Design Thinking, and why it’s so essential to understand problems through the perspective of our users:
- Design Thinking and Conservation in the Era for Sustainable Development
- A human-centered framework for innovation in conservation incentive programs
- Empathy on the Edge
- Meant to Keep Malaria Out, Mosquito Nets are Used to Haul Fish In is a classic example of what happens when we fail to design for users’ real needs and behaviors.
- On the other hand, Design Won’t Save the World offers a critique of design thinking: while it is incredibly powerful, it is not a panacea and needs to be complemented with a deeper systems understanding (as discussed in our Introduction Module), not just the human factors on the surface of the problem.
- Greater Good Studio is one example of an organization that uses design thinking to advance equity and drive systemic change.
Some more tactical tips for interviewing:
- 6 Tips from IDEO Designers on How to Unlock Insightful Conversation
- Laddering: A Technique to Find Out What People Value
- Get better data from user studies: 16 interviewing tips
- Talking to Humans (fill out the form to request a free educational version)
- IDEO U Creative Confidence Series: How to observe, interview, and uncover deep insights
- Avoid Leading Questions to Get Better Insights from Participants
- Unlocking the Potential of Digital Ethnography offers helpful tips on how to do remote interviews and testing when you can’t go out and interview in person.
- IDEO.org Design Kit’s Inspiration Phase shares a host of different tools, beyond interviewing, that will help you better connect to your users’ perspective.
- Want Breakthrough Ideas? First, Listen To The Freaks And Geeks covers the value of learning from ‘extremes’ as you go through your interview process, in addition to talking to mainstream users.
Identifying the right problem to solve:
- Zero to Sold Part 2: Their Problem
- How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit
The next steps after interviewing:
- Design Research From Interview to Insight: Part 1 and Part 2 offer guidance on how to download your research learnings with your team, craft insights statements, and move forward.
- Define the Problem and Interpret Results: How-to for POV statements
- Revising your POV: “Imperfect” Example shares insight into how we refine POV statements to make them sharper, more unique, and more actionable.
- How Do You Transform Good Research Into Great Innovations? Addresses the common pain point of how to move forward after doing user research