Change By Design

Who's the author?

Tim Brown is CEO and president of IDEO, an international design and consulting firm. He is an industrial designer by training and earned an MA in design from the Royal College of Art in London.

What's the intention?

Brown is asserting his belief that design can play a much broader role across industries than it has traditionally been granted. Under the banner of design thinking, he describes what he sees as foundational capabilities of designers and argues for their value for people who don’t traditionally think of themselves as designers and problems that are not traditionally thought of as design problems.

Who's it for?

Brown is writing primarily for design professionals or leaders in a position to benefit from design thinking. As the CEO of IDEO, we should assume he is also trying to address potential clients and industries that might be attracted to IDEO’s approach to design.

So what?

Anyone who has traced the history of design thinking will be familiar with the difficulties the designers have had with it. Some saw it as a new framing of design for business problems, and others dismissed the concept as an overhyped buzzword. But leaving behind the baggage of the term, I think books like this are worth reading because the basic premise that design work can be more meaningful when we expand our contexts and collaborators seems increasingly relevant to me.

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