There is a great deal of interest at the present time about design thinking, and James Robertson has made a good case for incorporating design thinking into intranet development. There was a good article on design thinking in the September issue of Harvard Business Review by Jon Kolko. This was summarised in the Interaction section of the November issue.

“Design thinking is moving closer to the center of many enterprises. Its principles include a focus on emotional experiences, testing with prototypes, tolerance of failure and and making complex technology easy to use. But a design-centric culture requires understanding that the ROI on design is hard to quantify – and appreciating what design can and cannot achieve”

So now let me replace ‘design thinking’ with ‘enterprise search’

“Enterprise search is moving closer to the center of many enterprises. Its principles include a focus on emotional experiences, testing with prototypes, tolerance of failure and making complex technology easier to use. But a search-centric culture requires understanding that the ROI on search is hard to quantify – and appreciating what search can and cannot achieve”

Perhaps the search community should be tracking how design thinking is being adopted by enterprises and seeing what lessons can be learned. Incidentally if the ’emotional experience’ in design thinking seems not to make sense in search just look at the face of a user when they have found the information they need to drive the company forward. I’ve seen more strong emotions in search than I have with users of ERP systems!

Martin White