As designers' role evolve from crafting aesthetics to facilitating collaboration, Rapid Design Interventions (RDI) emerge as powerful workshops that drive innovation and tackle complex challenges.
Background - the expanded role of the designer
Rapid Design Interventions (RDI) have their roots in design facilitation, representing a significant expansion from the designer's historic role. Traditionally, designers focused primarily on aesthetics, giving form to products and services. This understanding of design was tactical, often limiting the designer’s role in crafting visually appealing objects.
However, design facilitation embraces a more multifaceted and human-centred approach, positioning designers as skilled intermediaries who guide collaborative processes to tackle complex challenges and envision preferred futures.
How do you define Rapid Design Interventions?
There are many ways to define RDI. However, after studying them for 3 years as part of my PhD, I believe Rapid Design Interventions have three key facets. They are:
Intensive and high-paced workshops (or series of workshops)
These sessions usually focus on a specific challenge that participants tackle in a very condensed time frame.
Delivered according to design principles, tools, and methods
RDI leverage the power of design thinking, design innovation and its associated methodologies to guide the process.
Facilitated by design facilitators
Expert design facilitators are crucial in guiding participants through the process to deliver outputs and achieve the most significant outcomes possible (I will discuss these outcomes in my next post!).
What are RDI hoping to achieve?
To answer this question, we need to talk about the two main types of RDI:
Design-driven interventions focus on creating, developing or improving a specific product, service, or even a system. Google Ventures’ Design Sprints are a very popular example of design-driven RDI. There is usually a low ratio of facilitators per participant in these sessions.
Design-led interventions tackle more complex and strategic challenges and aim to explore potential future scenarios for an organisation. They often lead to the creation of a strategy to achieve the organisation’s preferred future state. These sessions are more strategic and can look like creative consultancy sessions, with a high facilitator-to-participant ratio.
This distinction between design-driven and design-led is essential. By choosing one approach or the other, it will help you understand what you are trying to achieve.
It will also determine the tools you will be using. Indeed, while similar methods might be used in both types of interventions, the tools used in a design-driven intervention are often more mainstream and generic. In contrast, those used in a design-led context are usually designed by the facilitators to be tailored and bespoke to the organisation and its context.
Final Thoughts
Now that you have more knowledge about Rapid Design Interventions, you may be wondering, ‘Why would I use these in my organisation?’ Well, there are a few possibilities. You could use them to:
Facilitate collaborative innovation and problem-solving across departments, organisations, or stakeholder groups.
Empower individuals and teams to think creatively and strategically.
Foster a culture of design thinking and innovation within organisations.
Create sustainable change that extends beyond the duration of the workshop.
Are you still curious about how RDI can achieve all of this? We’ll tell you more in our next post. Or, if you really can’t wait, feel free to get in touch with us!
Commentaires