Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55957
Laying the Groundwork Faculty who want to expose students to a wide variety of design processes might start with Hugh Dubberly's book How Do You Design? A Compendium of Models, available at www.dub berly.com/articles/how- do-you-design.html. In his book, Dubberly describes more than 100 design processes. Though they share many elements, each has characteristics that make it unique. One approach may suit a particular situation better than another. In our courses at Weatherhead, we use Richard Buchanan's "art of design" process as a starting point. Buch- anan's model serves as a basic guide, although we encourage students to develop familiarity with the wide range of models in use. We teach students to use design methods out- lined in the "characteris- tic actions" of Buchanan's model, including obser- vation, concept mapping, scenario building, and sketching. Students also learn approaches such as reframing problems, storyboarding, and cri- tiquing to identify design opportunities in real organizations. For instance, some stu- dents used these methods to help a retailer spur its customers to use social media to connect with each other and promote its brand. Others showed a new exhibit and performance facility the value of helping diverse student groups achieve their goals. By emphasizing the power of creation, our students unlock creative abilities they would never discover merely by conducting analyses. And by using analysis and synthesis together, they greatly expand the possible courses of actions they'll have as managers. Design thinking has been a key part of the programs at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland, Ohio, since archi- tect Frank Gehry engaged our faculty in designing a new building for the school. In 2002, the year the Peter B. Lewis Building was completed, we hosted a workshop on design thinking. Four years later, we decided to dis- tinguish our program and graduates by refocusing our curriculum on two central and interconnected themes: "managing through design" and "creating sustainable value." We believe that integrating design and design thinking into the MBA program can produce graduates who bring their whole selves to managing. In addition to mastering analytical skills, these design-minded graduates understand the value of engaging physically with their markets to expe- rience what is actually going on there. They know how to rapidly sketch ideas, explore and share alternative courses of action, and trust their instincts. These skills will be crucial in global markets where so many variables play into a company's strategy. By integrat- ing design into the MBA experience, we invite students to think more deeply about the products and services of an organization—what they are, who will use them, and what purposes they will serve. Finding Design Opportunities Within our MBA program, we spend the first semester of a yearlong, field-based course helping students learn to identify design opportunities. Teams of three students each work with an organization. They first develop an under- standing of the organization's vision; then, they identify a problem that warrants design attention. At the end of the semester, each team writes a brief for the company that presents the problem as a design opportunity. We ask students to seek opportunities in what Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber refer to as "wicked problems." In their 1973 Policy Sciences paper "Dilemmas in a Gen- eral Theory of Planning," Rittel and Webber outline the features that wicked problems have in common. They aren't definitive—they don't have what decision theorists call "a stopping rule," which makes it clear when to stop refining the solution. They are messy, persistent, and complex, and they are always symptoms of other prob- lems. While possible solutions to wicked problems can have good or bad outcomes, no solution is clearly right or wrong, and different views of these problems can lead to very different solutions. Finally, the actions taken to 38 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010