Design tools

This technique creates awareness of personal differences between the designer and the target users. It asks participants to map their own experience and compare it to the experiences of intended end users.

Map the specifics of the design environment and the various uses of it in a quick video, and share it with your client or problem owner.

Summarise your insights on a group of users with a similar profile. Create a fictive representant of this group through writing and drawing in a template.

Use your knowledge and empathy with end users to define the problem, a direction for solutions and your design challenge.

This technique helps thinking out-of-the-box by listing the characteristics of a phenomenon or situation, inverse the list, and design for the inverse.

This technique supports thinking up new ideas through visual stimuli.

This technique supports thinking up new ideas through random combinations of words.

A series of compact exercises to explore an environment through multiple senses: sight, sound, smell, touch.

Synectics as a game: create small stories of random combinations of objects and characteristics. What would happen if sidewalk tiles could float..?

Make a rough selection of the outcomes of a brainstorm and compare your choices with those of other team members.

Place dots with your favourite ideas and work towards consensus with your team.

Rate ideas on originality and feasibility in a crosshair diagram.

Judge if your ideas fulfill the main criteria and compare ideas by traffic light codes: green, yellow, red.

Use a feedback form to formulate feedback in a way that overcomes defensive tendencies and inspires a new design iteration.

Making a quick video presentation from your design materials, for sharing with a client.

An exercise to practise a standard structure for design presentations.

A Workbook with a standard structure to help you create a complete story of what your design is about, useful for well developed ideas or final designs.