Page 8 - CSA Celebrity Speakers | CSA Speaker Bulletin October 2015

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DESIGN THINKING

Designing
Tomorrow’s
World Today

John Thackara is an internationally acclaimed author and authority on innovation in a green economy. For Business
Week he is “one of the great voices on sustainability”, and the Wall Street Journal has noted his “global reputation
as a cutting edge design expert”. The Economic Times of India lauded his “brilliant insights into the internet and
sustainability”.

When Britain’s Lord Chancellor myriad small details - from the hard-to-
was shown a five minute understand letter summoning someone to
video about a day in the life jury service, to dimly lit waiting rooms.
of a juror in one of his courts, Hilary Cottam describes these tiny episodes
he was shocked to the core. The highest during a juror’s journey through the
legal officer in the land had literally no system as “touching the state”. These close
idea that law-abiding citizens could be left observations were the basis of a system-
hanging around in dark waiting rooms for wide redesign for which Cottam was voted
hours on end. He was taken aback when a designer of the year.
juror complained that she felt her time had
been totally wasted - and chastened to learn Designers use a wide variety of methods
that the State never said “thank you” to and tools in this person-centered approach
citizens for giving up weeks of their time. to service innovation - from so-called ‘actor
maps’, to service blueprints. Their language
The leader of any large organisation will read now includes words like mood boards,
that story with a frisson of anxiety. No CEO customer journeys, activity diagrams,
subjects people to insulting transactions on personas, and opportunity maps. The
purpose, but in today’s global economy the increased presence of digital technologies
front line - in the real-world, and on the in everyday life - and the explosive spread
internet - has grown ever more distant from of mobile devices - has added temporal and
the executive suite. geographical fluidity to the design ‘space’.

Redesigning Britain’s jury system involved By a pleasing irony, however, the very
close observation, minute-by-minute, of intangibility of social design research has

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