Design Doing.
George Shewchuk
If you’ve been following along you’re now well-versed with Design Thinking as a holistic, human-centred approach to finding novel and durable solutions to complex problems that arise in the social sciences. You’ve seen the examples, read the blogs and watched Dave Kelley (founder of IDEO) on TedTalks. But can you put your money where your mouth is? If you’ve kept up with your homework you certainly can and you may even be handsomely rewarded for your effort.
Where can I practice what they preach?
Innocentive.com offers a fascinating venue for aspiring and veteran design thinkers alike. The overwhelming number of challenges target expert practitioners in the natural sciences. But for those of us more accustom to mixing it up with fuzzy issues that involve diverse stakeholder groups, there’s plenty of work to be done in those domains too.
The following is small subset of social and marketing innovation challenges that have been offered in the past on the Innocentive platform:
The SUDEP Institute Challenge: Preventing Epilepsy Seizures:
How might we create processes or tools for people with epilepsy that supports and aids compliance to the most effective lifestyle and medicine regimen that was designed to control their disease?
Switching Patients to Improved Forms of Existing Medications:
Without the usual channels of mass communications (i.e. telecommunications, broadcast, online and direct marketing ) how might we inform and reassure patients that their current medication is being replaced with an improved formulation that simplifies their daily dosing routine?
High Blood Pressure Self-Management on a Box:
How might we re-tell the rather long and complicated story of blood-pressure-measurement best practices in a way that could fit on the actual packaging of the medication itself?
Communicating About Ingredients – Nutrition, Value, Sustainability:
Just what is it about the inclusion of meat byproducts in pet-food that deters purchase by some pet-owners? How might we navigate through the complex regulatory restrictions for ingredient listing practices and convince pet-owners that they are not getting the full story on the box?
Ford Motor Company- Create Accessories to Enhance the Driving Experience:
How might we design novel accessories or apps that support drivers and enhance their self-sufficiency when traveling in remote regions.
Maximizing Retail Merchandising Space:
If you can’t make your convenience store physically larger, how might you showcase and sell more product? What technological tactics or architectural features could you put to work to engage your customer even before they cross the lease-line?
Capturing Institutional Memory and Knowledge
Attrition and the usual turn-over of staff erodes the natural stores of institutional knowledge that accumulates over years of collaboration amongst internal workers, contractors and suppliers. How might we devise strategies and create best practices for capturing institutional knowledge across the breadth and depth of an organization?
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Challenge is good for for you. Some people risk life and limb on a rock-face, but why not take a hike through Himalayas of the mind ( Gord Downie's phrase) to discover innovative directions to human-centred solutions that actually work.
(Full disclosure: Since early 2014, I participated in all 7 of the innocentive challenges listed here, producing award-winning solutions for 3. All winning solutions are protected by an NDA but for those of you who are interested in more details, you can contact me directly. Other details can be found here.)