#27 - Design thinking at IBM

Hi Folks,

Here are a few things I thought were worth sharing this

Adopting Design Thinking at IBM #

Last night I watched The Loop, a short documentary from Invision about IBM’s inspirational journey to adopt design thinking and transform business outcomes. The aim was to “evangelise outcomes delivered to the market which were the result of these [design] practices”, says Phil Gilbert, General Manager of Design at IBM.

This resulted in ‘The Loop’, a metal modal for IBM Design Thinking, designed to mitigate assumption from the design process and create a scalable design language utilised throughout the company.

“Moving through a constant cycle of observation— seeing what people want, reflecting on what you’ve seen and making something based on that reflection… then reflecting on what you’ve just made, showing it to people and going in this loop constantly— drives us forward to understand the problem better every single day”, says Adam Cutler, Design Studio Program Director at IBM Design.

Here’s IMB Design Thinking Field Guide to download.

Mental Modals #

On a similar note Nat Eliason has an incredible list of mental modals and writes about mental modal value on his blog. For even more on the subject I highly recommend this free Mental Models email course from Michael Simmons, which I discovered via How To Tell If Someone Is Truly Smart Or Just Average, his insanely popular medium article.

What is Emergence? #

How Stupid things become smart together, the new one from Kurzgesagt explains how often intelligence is the result of many stupid things combined. Otherwise known as emergence.

Magnus #

Earlier in the week I watched Magnus, a documentary about Magnus Carlsen, the child prodigy who became the highest ranked Chess world champion in history. I found it fascinating.

For your ears #

I stumbled upon The Coward by Adieu when looking at the illustration work of Jean Jullien.

P.S. You may have noticed a slight redesign of my email. I hope you find it easier to read. I’ve introduced headings to make the copy scannable, left aligned the text, and improved line height. If it doesn’t look right on your mail client please let me know and I’ll fix it asap.


Reply by email

Monthly Newsletter

Once a month I curate a newletter for designers and developers interested in static sites, CSS and web performance. Check out past issues to get an idea.