We are facilitating a design thinking workshop as part of Boston AIGA’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on this upcoming Saturday, March 28th. The description is below. If you know anyone interested in learning more about Continuum’s approach to Design Thinking please forward along the link below.

Bridging Business & Design: The Power of Design Thinking
with Matt Carlson, Principal, Brand Experience
30 participants  |  9am – Noon

Design Thinking is a structured approach to the creative process, a powerful tool for communicating the value of design to clients through a collaborative process. In this half-day workshop Continuum will show how to apply the principles of Design Thinking to solve business problems big and small, creating lighthouse concepts that can guide design and galvanize organizations.

Matthew is a principal at Continuum, with a focus on brand strategy and experience design. For 15 years, he has helped companies to understand their customers, identify unmet needs and envision brands and products that meet those needs. He works with industrial designers and ethnographers, engineers and MBAs to make ideas real and bring them to the marketplace.

People can register for the event at the Boston AIGA Website.

I had two Value based experiences recently, first I had a real estate broker come by my house to give me an estimate of what my house might sell for. I was unpleasantly surprised when they told be houses are selling for “Assessed Value”. Most of us know that’s just what our taxes are based on. But, now it’s means to buyers that they are getting a deal or the best Value for their dollar.

The second experience was around one of the hundred circulars we received this year in the mail. It had a page full of gifts for under $5.99. It got my attention; I saw three or four deals on the page that caught my eye. I even mentioned to my wife we should go to this store and pick up some these things that were a great deal. My wife very astutely pointed out that we nor anyone we are buying gifts for needed a wooden puzzle or keychain flashlight. I had been sucked into the “can’t pass up a great Value” mind set.

What does this mean?

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I spent the earlier part of the week at SCAD at a design charrette we helped them host. Design for the other 90% was the theme. Some 200 or so industrial design students are spending 4 1/2 days working in groups of 5 or 6. The groups were assigned regions and topics – South America, peace and stability for instance. Each day (and most of each night) the groups are getting first hand experience with a phase of our design strategy process – alignment, discovery, analysis and envisioning. Its inspiring to see these talented young designers applying their time and talents to understanding and proposing solutions to some of the worlds real problems.

I’m hoping this experience will inspire them. I think it will. Focusing 4 days on far off lands and how most of the people on this planet live must seem such quite a departure from designing cars of the future and jet skis!

Congrats to the folks at SCAD (and Continuum’s Beth Johnson) for all the work to set this up. But, most of all thanks to the students participating. Perhaps you can see that you can make a difference in this world.

Check out details on the event

http://scadcharrette.net/