The perfect stimulus

The simplest form of design thinking can be defined as problem solving. Problem solving that isn’t only just limited to design; art, architecture or computer science, but problem solving related to every day life encounters.

When going through our everyday life we apply design thinking in expediting all the tasks we do. Is it not a normal thing to try to improve our daily life through small interactions with the world? By applying design thinking we can enhance and optimize simple tasks such as taking a shortcut walking home, to bigger tasks such as how we might change the way we handle dealing with fender benders after already experiencing one before.

This process of revolutionizing past ideas to benefit our daily life functions can be seen as a tiny step perhaps towards evolution.

Take a step back and look at history for example. Not history of human interactions filled with wars, but more so at the biological level. The most obvious example would be the evolution of man. We went from being Neanderthals to the species Homo Erectus, to finally the Homo Sapiens we are today. Not only just humans but animals as well.

In nature the survival of the fittest over the centuries have certainly proved true. Animals that were able to successfully adapt and problem solver, in other words apply design thinking successfully in their lives were able to survive and become what they are today.

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be anymore what design thinking boils down to, but what provides the perfect stimulus for design thinking to take place.  As evidenced by evolution and biology, nature is the perfect stimulus.