Design thinking

CIHM's response to the Community Dialogue project request was to structure a programme of work around something we called "design-led coproduction". By this we mean several things...

• coproduction is a design activity - you're trying to get a broad group of people focused on an issue and together you'll solve the problem
• design is what designers do - on the other hand, we have to recognise that we are all designers, we're all try to shape the world we live in, to make it better for ourselves and those we support
• you can't design in a vacuum - to solve a problem you have to know what the problem is, when it's a problem and to whom; more than that, problems exist in a context or a system - you solve a patient's problem and you may create a problem for a nurse, solve the nurse's problem and you may create one for another patient - to make lasting change happen in a complex system like the NHS, you have to do it with the people who'll have to live with the change
• sometimes it's hard to know what the real problem is - particularly when we don't share the problem, sometimes we need to 'walk a mile in their shoes' and then we get it, sometimes that makes us realise we're dealing with the wrong problem and then we have to be able to "flex" the project
• design is basically a simple set of techniques - here's my old boss at design firm IDEO talking about "design thinking", which is what designers do when you strip away colour, form and material...

Design thinking is at the root of what we'll explore in the Community Dialogue project. We're all designers; some of this will help us to start thinking as designers.