News

'Design thinking' taking hold in Australian business sector: ABC news headline 

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Design & Innovation Consultants

Thoughts

Design: A design-led approach

Design: A design-led approach

08 May 2019

At Kwokka, we work with human complexity and collective creativity to expand the horizons of possibility, rather than taking a conventional narrow problem-solving focus that limits the scope of ideation. 

Kwokka works towards design-led solutions to the challenges faced by businesses, groups and organizations.  We do this through delivering actionable projects, proposals, ideas, prototypes, strategies and constructive maps that help shape services, systems, events, products and places. With extensive international and cross-cultural experience, we actively incorporate fluid design tools, sketching and concept modeling techniques to facilitate client engagement with the entire design process.  By designing with clients and stakeholders (including clients, customers, suppliers, staff and users) rather than for them, we ensure the development of ideas is: flexible, specific, appropriate and achievable.

Kwokka identifies and maps internal and external opportunties for modification in order to transform what and how you deliver services or products. We can help you transform what you do and how you do it, getting to grips with the details and project managing the process of implementation.  As designers we have experience in all stages of project work from research and concept design through to feasibility, development, realization and post-project maintenance/monitoring. Conventional operational or organizational thinking can be too stale, and blue sky thinking too unrealistic.  

Design: The potential of design thinking acknowledged in Australia

Design: The potential of design thinking acknowledged in Australia

26 June 2013

A video published on the ABC News website finally recognisies the potential of 'design thinking' beyond the traditional sphere of creative industries (architecture, product design, advertising, graphic design, fashion, etc).  Watch video (3.47mins). 

While the presenter introduces design as "a new way of understanding customer needs", it is so much more.  The Business program from which the short video has been taken was broadcast on 25 June, and provides a greater sample of 'design thinking' applications.  Watch program (25mins).

"Creative Australia is informed by the belief that a creative nation is a productive nation in the fullest sense of the word—empathic, respectful, imaginative, industrious, adaptive, open and successful." (Source: Creative Australia National Cultural Policy - read here)

Design: from + in context

Design: from + in context

06 March 2013

Most traditional creative disciplines have areas of specific design expertise at the core of their business while operating within a wider context, such as architecture or urban design operating within the construction industry, and beyond that as part of a complex social, political, economic, cultural and technologically facilitated global environment.

After many years of cross-cultural development experience creating new communities and designing commercial, leisure and living environments, the team at kwokka found they had begun to focus more on the context itself as the initiator of design opportunities, than on addressing traditional design \'problems\' in isolation.

The design practice evolved around a deep interest in the generation of value through designing for ongoing transformation rather than the delivery of a fixed output. We firmly believe that developing design ideas requires sensitivity to the multi-dimensional context of our environment and an understanding of what drives complex human behaviour.

Design: for + with transformation

Design: for + with transformation

06 March 2013

Everyone - regardless of cultural or educational background, work role or home situation - operates in an environment that is continually changing. We are all constantly adapting to the context within which we live and work, while simultaneously altering things around us to suit our needs, desires and preferences.

Within businesses, organisations, establishments and households, people everywhere are agents of change: building on the past, shaping the present and actively creating the future. Individuals and groups in any situation have the potential to be innovative and inventive, and yet are not always successful in overcoming the inertia to take action.

Design: in + for participation

Design: in + for participation

06 March 2013

We believe design should be a dynamic, elastic, collaborative and participatory activity; one that engages other disciplines and fields of knowledge, acknowledges the value of alternative processes and practices, and utilises multiple tools, skills and methods of work.

As designers we assist in the development of ideas right through to the implementation of projects to realise client requirements and plan for ongoing transformation. We acknowledge clients are often experts of their field of knowledge, but specialisation often reduces an appreciation of the wider context.

Embracing co-production, co-design and collaboration enables us to develop fruitful working partnerships with our clients and facilitates the evolution of a broader perspective on transformative design opportunities.