Design Thinking with Devin O'Bryan

Hi, I'm Craig and welcome to the Treehouse show. 0:00 The Treehouse show is a conversation with the Treehouse community. 0:02 [MUSIC] 0:04 In this episode we'll take a deep dive into design thinking and 0:10 what that means with our wonderful guest teacher and Creative Director for 0:13 Project Whitespace at IBM, Devin O'Bryan. 0:17 >> My name is Devin O'Bryan, and I am the Creative Director for 0:20 Project Whitespace at IBM. 0:25 >> So what is design? 0:27 >> Design is about empowering a user. 0:29 Design is essentially taking someone's intent and 0:33 helping them realize that intent, whether it's you providing a set of tools, 0:39 you providing a process, but it's about empowering and enabling a user. 0:44 >> What's web design? 0:50 >> So over the course of the last several years, I've seen web design evolve, 0:52 grow, and the role of the web designer has continued to change as well. 0:57 What started off as just simple markup, and 1:02 being able to take that content and get into a single screen, 1:06 now it's about being able to port a single bit of information across multiple media. 1:11 And so web design is continuing to evolve 1:19 beyond more than just, I'm gonna look at it on a single screen. 1:23 Now it's, I can look at it on my phone. 1:26 I can look at it on a TV. 1:29 I can see this manifesting across a number of different storytelling possibilities. 1:31 So you think about this concept of omnichannel, it's kind of becoming 1:38 everywhere and everything and I love the fact that it's continuing to evolve. 1:43 >> So what does a designer do? 1:50 >> On a day-to-day basis, designers are looking to enhance a user, 1:53 to help them stretch themselves. 1:59 Whether it's a matter of creating a product or 2:03 a service that's going to allow them to become a better version or 2:10 more effective version of themselves. 2:13 But what it comes down to is essentially listening to a user's need and 2:17 trying to find out what's need versus what's want and 2:22 then balancing those things out to figure out what's best for your user. 2:27 >> Now, as a designer, how do you approach a new project? 2:33 >> When I start a new project, I really do my best to listen. 2:38 It's hard because I wanna get in and just immediately start making. 2:42 I get really excited, but that excitement can work against me. 2:47 What I have to do is listen, and 2:51 that's probably the most important step out of all of it. 2:53 If you can separate out what it is that your user is telling you 2:56 in terms of what they need and 3:01 you can understand what it is maybe a request or something that they want. 3:03 And to be able to balance those things out, it 3:08 takes a keen ear and it takes quite a bit of patience. 3:13 But once you find that balance, then you 3:19 have the ability to make something that's really meaningful for that user. 3:23 >> What tools are invaluable to you as a designer? 3:29 >> A designer's gonna have a pretty decent collection of 3:34 tools over the course of their career, but the fundamentals are really pretty simple. 3:38 You have your ears, and then you have some type of mark making tool. 3:43 Along the way, you're going to learn a ton of different tools. 3:49 And the key is not so much learning any specific tool at any given time. 3:53 It's how are you taking these tools and applying them? 3:59 How do you understand the purpose of the tool? 4:04 Because If you can make yourself a better designer through the use of a tool, 4:07 great, do that. 4:12 But if you don't understand how the tools connect, 4:14 how those tools connect to your user, how they connect to you as a designer, 4:16 then really you're just kinda of learning a new skill set just to learn it. 4:22 You've got to go into that with a particular understanding of, 4:25 what do I wanna get out of this? 4:30 Why do I wanna grow this particular area? 4:32 Why do I need to become better working with this particular tool? 4:35 So if you start with your ears and you start with a mark making tool like a pen 4:38 or even a Wacom tablet, being able to jot things down, 4:44 whatever that is, it's all an extension of you. 4:49 And if you can figure out a way to extend you more effectively, 4:53 you're gonna become the designer that you ultimately wanna be. 4:57 >> What are some design trends that you're currently seeing? 5:01 >> Probably my favorite design trend that I'm seeing right now is that young 5:04 designers are becoming so much more aware of the social impact of their work. 5:09 There maybe visual trends, there maybe trends in terms of users' experience. 5:17 But when it comes down to it, there has to be a strong 5:21 understanding of why it is that we're making what we're making, and 5:25 there's an accountability that has to go along with that. 5:30 And the fact that there's so 5:34 many young designers that are caring about that is excellent. 5:35 It gives me a lot of hope for 5:40 the new generations of designers that are coming out. 5:42 On top of that, 5:46 it's inspiring older designers as well to think about why it is that they're making. 5:47 >> How do you think machine learning will affect the future of design? 5:54 >> So machine learning is still kind of in its infancy. 5:58 But what we've discovered about machine learning is that it's allowing us to 6:02 work faster and more effectively then ever before. 6:10 We have a lot of questions that need to be answered 6:16 as it relates to how we factor in ethics, 6:21 or doing things in a moral way when it comes to machine learning. 6:26 But on the pure processing side of things, 6:33 what is advantageous about machine learning is that we're able to combine 6:36 the creativity of your average human being with 6:42 a superhuman capability of being able to process massive amounts of information. 6:47 And what this does is it gives a new 6:53 sense of where generative design can go. 6:59 We're creating a system and allowing that 7:06 processing power to continue the process. 7:11 Whereas originally it was just, we would have a handful of designers, 7:16 maybe one designer trying to tackle a single problem. 7:20 Now we have the ability of several hundred, maybe thousand designers. 7:25 But like I said, we still have a lot of questions that are unanswered. 7:32 It's a brand new field, 7:36 there are a lot of things that we'll probably get wrong along the way. 7:38 But we do have to keep pushing that envelope. 7:44 We do have to keep asking questions along the way. 7:46 [SOUND] >> Thanks for watching the Treehouse show. 7:51 To get in touch with the show, reach out to me on Twitter or 7:57 shoot an email to show@teamtreehouse.com. 7:59 We'd love to hear from you. 8:02 And I know I'll be on the lookout for Devin's design thinking course. 8:03 Our team went to IBM's headquarters in Austin, Texas to shoot it. 8:06 [MUSIC] 8:09