I've been reading the book Change by Design by Tim Brown. It's part of my overall interest in design in general. I have found a number of interesting ideas in the book so far, and I'm not even half way through it.
One concept had to do with constraints. Anyone that has worked much on projects know that constraints are a big part of it. He talks about three aspects of constraint; feasibility, desirability, and viability.
Feasibility is looking at whether or not something can be done in the near future.
Viability is looking at whether or not it's sustainable from a business model perspective.
Finally, desirability of course is will it be something that people want. In design thinking you want to take into account all three of these aspects as you're working on a project.
As I think back to projects that I have had that have been either successful or not successful, I can see how all of these play into a project's success or failure.
On an actual project, we can test for feasibility by doing something like a spike, a short test to prove out if the idea will work.
Viability may be a bit harder to show on a project. It will take other supporting input such as market research to prove the approach is a sustainable business model. This is probably best done before you go to far in the project.
I think there's a very strong tie between desirability and how agile projects work. It's that whole idea of working closely with your users to truly understand their needs.
I've seen other ties between design thinking and the agile approach. I'll have more to say on the future blog post.
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