Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir [our] blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency.
Daniel Burnham
How we think…
As kids, our thinking was full of creativity. Simple building blocks, re-configured into an endless number of shapes and concepts.
Where and when do we lose that along the way?
We’d like to think that we’ve retained those ways of thinking openly, creatively, and without limitations placed on us by society. It’s not easy… we’ve had to go back and unlearn many of our traditional modes of thinking. The biggest thing we’ve had to get back to is looking at thinking in terms of exploring opportunities, not just being good at solving problems.
Problems, by their nature, don’t let us see the full scope of the many opportunities around us. When we explore a problem, we see only the parameters that created it. When we change to thinking about opportunities, we open up a much deeper and richer thoughtscape: one that gives us almost limitless possibilities.
And, yes… thinking design inherently involves the discipline of human-centered design thinking, and also much more.