TED Blog » Tim Brown

Design thinking about climate change: IDEO's new LivingClimateChange.com

Emily McManus — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Launching today, the design firm IDEO presents LivingClimateChange.com, a clearinghouse for design thinking about the environment. Watch Tim Brown’s TEDTalk, just posted today, for some inspiring examples of design thinking that solved big problems of the past. In the same spirit, IDEO’s LivingClimateChange.com collects ideas looking forward. From the site:

Living Climate Change is a place where the most defining challenge of our time is explored through design thinking. It’s also a place to show, discuss, and share compelling and provocative thoughts and ideas about the future.

Check out LivingClimateChange.com >>

Also quite interesting: Linda Tischler from FastCompany interviews Tim Brown about how design thinking can improve democracy >>

A call for "design thinking": Tim Brown on TED.com

Matthew Trost — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:17:02 +0000

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.” (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK.Duration: 16:50)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/3U

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Tim Brown at TEDGlobal 2009: Running notes on Session 7

Shanna Carpenter — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:58:53 +0000

Tim Brown at TEDGlobal 2009, Session 7: July 23, 2009, in Oxford, UK. Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

Designer Tim Brown of IDEO begins his talk by posing the question, “What happens if you move from design to design-making?” He sees a profound difference between the two. He explains that when he first began working as a designer he had a small view of design. He shows his first projects: a woodworking machine and a fax machine. In both cases, he put a prettier casing around an existing object and in both cases the companies were out of business within months.

He thinks that his small view was influenced by more recent trends in design. But, he says, design used to be big. He shows a slide of Isambard Brunel, and introduces him as one of the great designers. Brunel was responsible for the Great Western Railway and wanted to achieve for passengers the experience of floating across the countryside, which meant creating flattest gradients ever. He imagined an integrated transportation system where a passenger could embark on a train in London and take that straight through to a ship to New York City.

Brown explains that design thinking begins with integrative thinking. Opposing ideas and opposing constraints create new solutions. It’s a matter of balancing desirabilty with feasibility and viability. But then, he says, design became a priesthood of black turtlenecks and designer glasses focusing on an ever smaller campus and creating pretty but not necessarily useful objects.

Today, he thinks design is beginning to think big again. Design has returned to being human-centered, meaning that it starts with what humans need, which is more than good ergonomics. Brown expands by saying that good design is often about understanding culture and context.

Then he describes the main characteristics of good design-making. First, he says, one must begin learning my making and building in order to think. Prototypes speed up the process of innovation. One has to put products into the world to see their successes and failures. Then, instead of making our primary objective consumption, we must see it as participation. Brown thinks the design of participatory systems is going to be the major theme for design and for our economy. Design has greatest impact when put in the hands of everyone. At this point, Brown gives an example of nurses at Kaiser Permanente designing new system to increase patient comfort using in-depth conversations with the patients.

Now, Brown returns to speak about Brunell. He says that connection is change and that in times of change we need new alternatives and new ideas. Brunell proposed change in the industrial age. Industrial systems have run their course and we need another massive change. We need new choices. Design thinking gives us a new way of tackling problems. It takes a divergent approach that allows us to explore new ideas.

What is the question we’re answering today? Brown explains that he’s also working on safe drinking water for the world’s poorest, along with Acumen Fund. He teamed designers with eleven water experts across India. Then, they hosted a competition and had winners develop their ideas. The solutions were participatory and Brown thinks we can continue to use models like these to tackle bigger and more interesting questions.

IDEO's guide to designing for social impact

Jenny Zurawell — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:30:54 +0000

The recent collaboration of IDEO with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDE, Heifer International and ICRW has inspired a new application of Human-Centered Design (HCD) — a system used by multi-national corporations to develop design solutions at the intersection of desirability, feasibility and viability. IDEO’s new open-source toolkit is a methodical approach for NGOs and social enterprises to design and implement innovative, customer-centric solutions to specific design challenges for global communities in need via three simple steps: Hear, Create, Deliver.

This process has been specially-adapted for organizations like yours that work with people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Human-Centered Design (HCD) will help you hear people’s needs in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, will be a speaker at TEDGlobal 2009 on July 23. His talk on creativity and play from the 2008 Serious Play conference is available on TED.com.

Watch TEDTalks from speakers at the upcoming TEDGlobal 2009

Emily McManus — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:00:00 +0000

From TEDGlobal’s speaker list of more than 90 — including 18-minute talks, demos and TED U courses — 13 of our scheduled speakers already have TEDTalks online from previous TEDs and partners. To find them, check out our new theme, Speaking at TEDGlobal 2009, and watch archive gems from these returning speakers. All of these speakers are bringing something new to TEDGlobal 2009, exploring the theme of the conference, “The Substance of Things Not Seen.”

Browse the new theme Speaking at TEDGlobal 2009 >>

See the full conference schedule for TEDGlobal 2009, July 21-24 in Oxford >>

The story of Serious Play

Emily McManus — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:24:07 +0000

Our TEDTalk today, from Ideo’s Tim Brown, comes from the 2008 Art Center Design Conference, wonderfully named Serious Play. Curated by the design legend Chee Pearlman, the Serious Play conference was held this past May at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

A nice benefit of holding a conference at a design school: plenty of student art to record speakers and small moments in fresh ways. The image above — which will make perfect sense once you’ve watched Tim Brown’s TEDTalk — comes from the Art Center College‘s flickr photostream. (Here’s another take on the same talk …)

Watch for more TEDTalks from Serious Play in the coming weeks and months.

The powerful link between creativity and play: Tim Brown on TED.com

tedstaff — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:00:00 +0000

From the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown from Ideo talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn’t). (Recorded May 2008 in Pasadena, California. Duration: 27:58.)

Watch Tim Brown’s talk from Serious Play 2008 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks — including more talks about creativity.

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