Transformations

Thanks to Joyce Yee, Emma Jeeries and Kamil Michlewski, business readers now have a smart and practical primer on design thinking. Unsurprisingly for a book on transformation design, it puts you, the reader, at the centre. It s easily navigable and layered so you can mine it quickly for the headline, dig deeper through the case studies or go further in to the tools and methods on-line. The authors academic credibility comes to the fore. They present seven well-evidenced roles that unfold in the book as a check-list for anyone in business concerned with turning complex systems into simple eortless services for customers. Remarkably for a book written by three people it feels like it was written by one. I liked its straightforward business language. This book gets my vote as a great new addition to the pantheon of writings on why and how to design change in your company. - David Kester, Founder, Design Thinkers Academy, London We have heard a lot about design thinking in recent years; this book helps us think about design doing . Fascinating case studies and interviews with design consultants, industry leaders, and key academics provide the foundation for an intriguing investigation into the various roles that design plays in transforming cultures, products and infrastructures. This book is not about design thinking, nor is it about design methodsit is about the roles that design takes. The authors outline the subtle ways in which the results of design as a discipline and a practice are communicated, and how design therefore influences people, groups and organisations. A fun read, this is a very human text, speaking to the ways in which design ideas are communicated in the complex social arenas where innovations and infrastructures are created and maintained. Whether you want to reflect on how you communicate your design practices and ideas, or if you are looking for a way to think about how to communicate design ideas, or if you simply want to glance into how design is practiced in a number of disparate organisations, this book is for you. - Elizabeth F. Churchill, Director of User Experience, Google, former Executive Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Human Computer Interaction and current Secretary/Treasurer of the ACM Design-driven companies have happier customers, greater competitive advantage, and higher financial returns than their peers. This is a useful book for anyone who wants to embed design as a core approach in their organisation. It clearly articulates seven roles and related activities that enable organisational transformation, as well as well-documented case studies that show how design strategies can be successfully activated in dierent types of organisations. This book will be a useful guide for leaders, managers and front-line employees who want to understand and implement design transformation. - Dave Gray, Founder of XPLANE and author of Liminal Thinking