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"User empathy is a huge element in design thinking." —Jeremy Alexis, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago "The design students wanted to go on a nature walk, as a group, for inspiration. The business and engineering students complained that a nature walk was a waste of time," she says. "But guess what? It was the design group that eventually came up with the mechanism for the product, using the same flow matrix that you see inside a sea shell." That's a lesson in inspiration that business and engineering students often have to see—and experience—to believe, she says. Empathy & Ethnography Once students are comfortable on their teams, they begin to employ a three-step process, one that many educators have determined are key to innovation. First, they complete inten- sive research to understand the needs of the users or environ- ments in question. Next, they sketch, role play, or exchange ideas that can lead to solutions. Finally, they choose the most promising idea and develop a prototype and business model that can translate that idea to real-world success. To develop a comprehensive understanding of the user— or "user empathy"—students engage in "ethnographic obser- vation," a technique often used in sociology to observe the ways users interact with a product or environment. Students go out into the field to conduct interviews, interact with users, and document processes via photography and notes. This technique is much different from traditional sur veys and focus groups that businesses often use to try to under- stand their customers. The trouble with those tools is that the information isn't always accurate, explains Jeremy Alexis, an assistant professor of design at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design in Chicago. Customers often exaggerate or tell interviewers what they want to hear. Or, they may simply not know what they want. Ethnographic observation allows students to witness needs that users may not even realize they have, says Alexis, who helped create a dual degree program between the Institute of Design and IIT's Stuart School of Business. "To understand the long-term needs of customers, students have to spend a lot of time with them, interacting with them in different ways than most businesses currently do," says Alexis. "User empathy is a huge element in design thinking." Once students complete their ethnographic research, they return to the lab to enter the prototyping phase. They act out scenarios, create storyboards, sketch drawings—techniques that are typical of the design world but are outside the experience of many in business. Finally, once they've created prototypes of their best ideas, they develop business models that take costs and other constraints into account to make those ideas work in the real world. 26 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007 A Course for Innovation How one business professor brings the language and tools of design into the business classroom. by Youngjin Yoo The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has landed men on the moon and sent robots to Mars. The innovation consultancy firm IDEO has invented products ranging from disposable insulin injectors to space-age shopping carts. And the architectural firm of Frank O. Gehry has designed the gravity-defying Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. What do these organizations have that others don't? True, NASA, IDEO, and Gehry benefit from excep- tionally talented people, not to mention big budgets. But they're also differentiated by their mindsets. They see themselves not as stewards of a world that they inherit, but as creative forces that shape and change the world for the better. They speak in the language of possibility, not limitations. In short, they see themselves as designers. There's a profound disconnect between the language these companies use and the language we use in typi- cal MBA programs. At business school, we often teach students to focus on control and the status quo; they learn to make choices from a relatively narrow set of existing alternatives. The complex world of management is radically reduced to numbers—net present values, survey results, and spreadsheet reports—with black- and-white clarity. I believe that business students can benefit greatly from adopting the language of design and innovation. I cre- ated the course "Designing Innovation in an iPod World" for the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to give them that opportunity. The course, which launched last spring, is designed to help students learn the tools of designers and explore new solutions and possibilities—in short, to turn them into innovators and shapers of the world. From Decision Making To Designing Design as a core element of professional management is not a new idea. In fact, Herb Simon wrote in his 1996 book The Sciences of the Artificial: "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing