One hour talk for Junior College students about design, creativity and innovation. Going beyond buzzwords and eye-candy, the aim of this talk is to motivate and inspire young people to understand and become aware of design. Delivered: 04/07/2013

1. Fundamental Principles of Design
Dr. Ricardo Sosa
ricardo_sosa@sutd.edu.sg
Singapore University of Technology and Design

2. Hi Ricardo, We have been invited by NJC to give the talk on Design Thinking
during the Singapore International Science Challenge. The session will be
on 4 July 2013 from 10am to 11am. I am wondering if you will do the
honour of giving this talk to the students?

4. buzz·word (ˈbʌzˌwɜrd) n. “a word or phrase, often sounding authoritative or
technical, that has come into vogue in popular culture or a particular
profession”

6. Patterns and trends on what millions of people search
sometimes tell us something…

8. Some keywords show us what people value or want to know more about

10. Big data can reveal priorities, interests and perceptions

12. Big data can confirm our intuitions and observations

14. It’s not easy or trivial to interpret these aggregate numbers…

16. Back to the main topic of this talk:
Why should we search for, discuss and engage in design?

17. http://www.designsingapore.org/Files/Dsg_II_Strategic_Blueprint.pdf
“… this rate of change will need to be matched with mindset
and paradigm changes in order for us to maintain our ability
to innovate, and to create new value.
It is no longer business as usual. We are already facing
increasing global competition in the new ideas-driven
creative economy…
Design must become the critical strategic tool for
futureproofing Singapore from the uncertainties of the
future.”

18. http://www.designsingapore.org/Files/Dsg_II_Strategic_Blueprint.pdf

19. Ok, it is important, but what is design?

20. Bruce Archer (1960s)
“The practice of design is a very
complicated business, involving
contrasting skills and a wide field of
disciplines. It has always required
an odd kind of hybrid to carry it
successfully”
Engineer, Professor of Design Research at
the Royal College of Art
Bruce Nussbaum (2010s)
“Design Thinking is beginning to
ossify and actually do harm, in
order to appeal to the business
culture of process, it was denuded
of the mess, the conflict, failure,
emotions, and looping circularity
that is part and parcel of the
creative process”
Economist, Professor of Innovation and Design at
Parsons The New School for Design

21. How to understand and excel in something that experts refer to:
“complicated, odd, mess, conflict, failure, emotions, looping circularity”?

23. My goal here today is simple:
To get you (more) interested in design, creativity and innovation
(And I will attempt to do this without eye-candy)

25. The opportunity is huge

26. 534M
328M
89M
12M

27. You can compare with other countries/cities/keywords
Or define more specific targets…

29. Ok, what about more concrete evidence, such as an analysis of the
contents of one million books published in the last one-hundred years?

30. Google Books Ngram Viewer displays a graph showing how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years
http://books.google.com/ngrams/info

31. Google Books Ngram Viewer displays a graph showing how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years
http://books.google.com/ngrams/info

32. Let’s talk about design
(thinking, doing and feeling)

33. Reason abductively
• D: “Aristotle is mortal”
• I: “All swans are white”
• A: “Our new product will be a success”

34. http://www.flickr.com/photos/goingslo/4981211649/sizes/l/in/photostream/

35. If facing uncertainty and ambiguity is not enough…

36. Think critically

37. http://www.cihm.leeds.ac.uk/document_downloads/Art_of_Powerful_Questions.pdf

38. How to make decisions in such conditions?

39. Make reflectively
http://kristen-soley.blogspot.sg/2012/03/in-sculptors-hands.html
http://www.gladwinlibrary.org/joomla/index.php/june-25th-knitting-club

41. To succeed in this area, you need to fail

42. Cultivate failure
http://kingdomentrepreneur.blogspot.sg/

43. ricardo_sosa@sutd.edu.sg
“Babe” Ruth hit 714 home runs in his career (1914-1935)
He also struck out 1,330 times in his career
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cliffbaise/4479440032

44. “Alfred Nobel was full of ideas;
he said ‘If I have a thousand
ideas a year, and only one
turns out to be good, I am
satisfied’.
I, too, am full of ideas, and I
would be satisfied with one
good idea per year”
Dr. Linus Paulinghttp://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1962/pauling-acceptance_en.html

45. Un-learn a few things

46. Avoid myths
http://www.wall321.com/

47. The Ten Year ‘Miracle’ of the poster child for design and innovation
NASDAQ AAPL: Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. iMac was introduced in 1998, iPod in 2001, iPhone in 2007

48. NASDAQ AAPL vs AMZN / KRX5930

49. “a bestselling book on
creativity for people who
do not like books on
creativity”

50. Select the best ideas

51. A
B
C
F
K
N
R
S
Ford Model T
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7213
http://www.goldcoastmodela.com/Early_Ford.pdf
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/331880/347933.html?1363551928
http://25.media.tumblr.com/935fa0bd19cd7f4edfcb7528cffd21ad/tumblr_mga6unWcNt1rgmlf9o1_1280.jpg

52. http://wordlock.com/
http://140.116.71.92/lock/english/char.htm
http://restraintsblog.blogspot.sg/2010/12/1876-clarke-10-letter-combination.html
http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/march32012/index.html

55. Old and new ideas

56. 3 Lenses
http://savic.cc/tag/feasibility/ http://www.wixomdesigns.com/architecture.php

58. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/3012011ec026.pdf

59. Water
http://www.flickr.com/photos/haniamir/2630466183/sizes/l/in/photostream/

60. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/3732230674/sizes/l/in/photostream/

61. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/03/22/world-water-day-a-forceful-reminder-that-the-u-s-is-running-out-of-fresh-water/

62. http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-bottled-water/

63. http://awesome.good.is.s3.amazonaws.com/transparency/web/1204/your-daily-dose-of-water/flash.html

65. http://www.waterfootprint.org/downloads/TheWaterFootprintAssessmentManual.pdf

66. Fundamental Principles of Design
Dr. Ricardo Sosa
ricardo_sosa@sutd.edu.sg
Singapore University of Technology and Design