Design Thinking for Social Innovation IDEO

DESIGNERS HAVE TRADITIONALLY FOCUSED on enhancing the look and functionality of products. Recently, they have begun using design tools to tackle more complex problems, such as finding ways to provide low-cost healthcare throughout the world. Businesses were first to embrace this new approach called design thinking. Now nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too. In an area outside Hyderabad, India, between the suburbs and the countryside, a young woman—we’ll call her Shanti— fetches water daily from the always-open local borehole that is about 300 feet fromher home. Shanti and her husband rely on the free water for their drinking and washing, and though they’ve heard that it’s not as safe as water from the Naandi Foundation-run community treatment plant, they still use it. Shanti is forgoing the safer water because of a series of flaws in the overall design of the system. Shanti can’t carry the 5-gallon jerrican that the facility requires her to use. The treatment center also requires them to buy a monthly punch card for 5 gallons a day, far more than they need. As Shanti’s situation shows, social challenges require systemic solutions that are grounded in the client’s or customer’s needs. This is where many approaches founder, but it is where design thinking—a new approach to creating solutions—excels. Design thinking incorporates constituent or consumer insights in depth and rapid prototyping, all aimed at getting beyond the assumptions that block effective solutions. Design thinking—inherently optimistic, constructive, and experiential—addresses the needs of the people who will consume a product or service and the infrastructure that enables it.