101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization

I give this book my highest recommendation!Design has become a very popular concept in management over the past several years. Unfortunately, design has been like quantum physics in its application. It was hard to explain and the concepts often seemed to be both contradictory and useful at the same time.In  101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization , Professor Kumar leverages his wealth of experience in practical design to provide a very approachable, consistent, and understandable methodology for design. The chapters are laid out in a logical sequence, and the author is ruthlessly consistent in applying the methodology. The entire book is structured, and the subsections are numbered in a way that constantly brings you back to the underlying process.Each step is described in detail with the inputs, techniques, outputs, and information flows clearly articulated. There are examples with pictures sprinkled through every chapter.The book is lavishly illustrated and brightly colored. (When I read the book on the commute to work, I routinely had people on the DC metro asking me to let them page through it.) It is fun to read, and I bought five copies of the book the day after I read it to immediately apply Professor Kumar's techniques to a real world, strategic issue my group was wrestling with.The results have been phenomenal.Bravo Professor Kumar!Now, if you would just write a book on quantum mechanics!In service,RichThe Original Dr. Games since 1993

I moved into UX design from software development about ten years ago, and have read about 50 books on user experience design. My top four are:1. Universal Principles of Design, by Lidwell, et. al.2. The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman3. Sketching User Experiences, the Workbook, by Bill Buxton, et. al.4. This book, 101 Design MethodsThe first two on my list are about design principles. They help you understand how to recognize and diagnose poor design.The second two are about the design process. What steps do you go through to get a good design?I don't believe in highly prescriptive processes, and the author of this book doesn't either. Since projects and teams vary so much, you need a menu of options to construct a good design process for your circumstances. This book gives you many, many options, and discusses the pros and cons of each. I found myself knowing right away if I thought a particular method would work for me and the teams I lead.If you are looking for step-by-step recipes to do design, this isn't the book for you. If you want to consider lots of ways to do design, and choose the ones you think apply to your case, then I don't think you can find a better book for that than this one.

I am not surprised at the level of differences in the many reviews for this book as it really depends on what the reader is looking for before purchasing. I too use this in a course that I teach for the primary reason that it places structure around the topic and can be used as a reference. It is an excellent resource book for that purpose. The key is to take this book into context within the tropic of innovation and ALL of the methods and tools available to innovation and design leaders. The book does have some legacy methods like Industry Diagnostics (Porter's Framework), SWOT, and Doblin. It also has references to gamification processes. Although it doesn't mention things like MURAL, Gamestorming, or Hyper Island it doesn't mean that they don't apply. They are excellent tools that would complement several of the artifact deliverables mentioned in the text. This book should be viewed as a resource along with all of the other possible resources you will discover on the topic to add to your library. As far as the review on the physical quality. My copy is just fine but, then again, I haven't gotten it wet yet... >)

The books always get here in a quick matter, tho only thing that's a big concern is when doing a expense report because of so many shipments, which I don't mind but to get all the receipts, this order was more that 15 shipments. I did not recieve all the email notices for shipments which is broken up and on the same charge card, I now need quite a few invoices to match the charges on the credit card. Sometimes there's a packing slip in the box with what what it is and total, which is great for expense reports, but this order did not have those.How do I get those? I went online to your shipments, but all they do is put the order toghther in a word document, which is not good enough, so I still need each invoice. Can someone help me with that. We are a big company and I do order alot and I need everything to match up for expense reports.Thank you,MaureenSC Johnson

This book is a decent overview of the design methods it discusses. It excels at explaining the purpose of each described method, and where each is most or least appropriate. This would make it a valuable resource for a seasoned UX or IxD professional to use when collaborating with other disciplines, or when trying to get buy in from necessary constituents.If you're in need of a how-to book, this will not be sufficient. For methods that are well worn, or attributed to others (i.e. Doblin), this book presents a clear menu of options for reference, which can be researched in greater depth. Since no book can be fully exhaustive or definitive, this is absolutely appropriate.A number of the methods are of Kumar's making. To have access to the methods of someone as renowned as Kumar is great, but these methods receive no more documentation or explanation than the more common methods. Unfortunately, this is the only document that references those methods, which makes them of limited use to anyone who wishes to employ them in design research.

I purchased and read this book as part of my required reading for my Masters. The book is really practical, tactical and is aimed squarely at those within the design or innovation space. It gives you a range of options, explains how to use it, what its for, how its used; some play really well together too.The only issue I had with the book is that sometimes its hard to know if the tool is actually useful for your context or situation; some of the imagery is blurred, and some of the imagery seems like its from the 90s.Regardless, I do think its a very useful book and has lots of tactical ideas, or tools of what you can use through a design innovation explore and the book structure follows a light variation of divergent and convergent practices.Very good. 4/5

Used this book at university for NPD module

Very good book, opened up my thinking to new ideas and new ways to innovate. Thank you.

Excellent

Die Grundlage für dieses Methodenbuch ist eine gewisse Systematik, bestehend aus vier Prinzipien auf die sieben sogenannte Modes aufgeteilt werden. Die vier Prinzipien ergeben sich aus einer Matrix (unterstand, make, abstraft, real). Die sieben Modes (sense intent, know Kontext, know people, frame insights, explore concepts, frame solutions, realize offerings) erscheinen einerseits willkürlich, machen aber durchaus Sinn. Auf diese Struktur sind die 101 Methoden aufgeteilt. Einige sind originell, aber viele kennt man natürlich schon (SWOT Analysis, S.80). Ein guter Überblick und durchaus geeignet zur Inspiration.