Our Design Process: Harnessed Creativity
The newly formed architecture team (Caitlin, Jin, and I) are beginning to formalize our process for generating and supporting innovation in system design. At KR, design is intended to be a creative process. Our reputation holds that we are an organization that excels in producing innovative approaches to complex, enterprise-scale problems. Some projects do not require and, in fact, cannot support innovations in design or methodology. As an organization, we have learned (and are continuing to learn) this lesson the hard way. In these cases, the process detailed below may be inappropriate. Still, our ideal client and project allow us to:
- flex our creative muscles,
- bring 100's of years of implementation experience to bear,
- and utilize processes that we know will result in solid solutions while supporting our organizational needs.
So, our basic design flow is represented in this picture:
The steps are:
- Problem immersion
- Immersion sharing
- Approach forming
- Gestation
- Insight incorporation
- Vetting
- Documentation
- Socialization
- Implementation approach
- Guidance
- Formal follow-up
- Learning
- Sharing
Much of my understanding of the creative process comes from the research of Albert Shapiro. Here is a relevant excerpt from his 1985 article, "Managing Creative Professionals".
posted by Tim Panagos @ 12:57 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
I'm trying to do some comparison to other approaches.
Before I start to change more detail and formulate anything, I’d like to put my materials here for sharing.
How to pub a [photo]?
If I understood correctly, Problem immersion (and I guess part of Immersion sharing too) is about defining the problem. This is a critical step of the process, because the way we define the problem may direct the solution to some extent. In order to define the problem correctly, the way the users (or the business) present it may not be sufficient. We need to look beyond how and what the people closer to the problem state.
We have seen this - when business users state the perceived problem... they tend to blend good-to-have stuff, their wish-lists, and possible enhancements in it. This dilutes the focus from the core issue. I understand that there is no single idiot's-guide-to-distill-problems... but I am looking forward to others to shed some light on it from experience.
Sourav has a great point. The Design process is best served by an input from a well-designed and executed conception stage. Your output is the key input to our immersion step. Knowing what the problem is (and is NOT) is crucial and very often difficult to uncover. Look for more info on our interlocking framework in the coming months.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home