Design thinking — two buzzwords that I’ve heard (nearly) every day in my Stanford career, so far.
Before arriving at Stanford, I came from a suburban town in Southern California. This town, slow paced and simple-minded, has likely never heard of the phrase “design thinking”. Now that I’ve been in Silicon Valley for over a year now, I feel that my environment is all about living and breathing in a “design thinking” mode. Everyone around me is all about creating the next big thing; everyone is big on innovating and building.
One of the biggest pros that I see with design thinking is its emphasis on making design an iterative process. It’s hard to just jump right in and create a beautiful product overnight; rather, it’s a non-linear process that involves trial and error. On the contrary, one aspect of design thinking that poses as a potential peril is that it can create a false sense of security. More specifically, design thinking makes it sound like there is a concrete framework to design the next killer product. This is not necessarily true, especially since design is such an abstract concept that no step-by-step recipe can guarantee a successful product.
When I think about some examples of recently design thinking products, I first think of Bird. Many of us, especially those of us who have been in urban areas, have seen Bird scooters thrown haphazardly on the sidewalk. The invention of Bird was intended to become the “next big thing” for public transportation; you borrow a scooter to ride to work, then you abandon it at an appropriate space for another person to ride. Bird sounded appealing to many, especially those who care deeply about sustainability and going green with transportation. However, I think its core issue revolves around the high cost of replacing the scooters. Many of their scooters are thrown on the floor; some never even see the light of day after someone “borrows” it. Moreover, some areas impose a high cost on renting the scooter, causing some individuals to turn to Uber or other rideshare options for the sake of convenience (and possibly being a cheaper alternative). I believe that the core issue with Bird is their business model because the high costs of the scooters makes it difficult to keep the rate of renting the scooters low.
