Failure to Launch: Learning About Design the Hard Way
In 2004, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) decided to design and build an enterprise content management system to streamline its publishing process. The first attempt revealed the technology of the day was inadequate for the design of this complicated project. However, 12 years later the ATO now has a world class website which is shaped by daily user feedback and longitudinal unmoderated usability benchmarking.
Reinventing Solar Energy Supply for Rural Africa
There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing and 1.6 billion people worldwide with no access to electricity: A fact that Mobisol set out to change.
Extreme Bathroom Users: Lapeyre Embraces the Elderly
A major French furniture company challenges an international team of students to redesign the bathroom experience for the elderly – and receives a product that ends up changing the way their organization approaches senior customers.
How an Improved Food Service Creates a Better Life Quality for Elderly People
In autumn 2007 the Danish innovation and design agency Hatch & Bloom was assigned to design a new meal service for The Municipality of Holstebro. Six month later the idea for The Good Kitchen was created. Thus the way was cleared for a new type of meal service in Denmark, a meal service with more quality, more flexibility and more freedom of choice.
Early Approaches: The US Tax Forms Simplification Project
This case concerns one of the earliest attempts by design thinkers at designing a large, complex system. It shows that design approaches in the public sector can look back at a long history. And it reveals how design thinking within the organization must include members of the whole organization in the design process.
Designer Nights Out: Good Urban Planning Can Reduce Drunken Violence
Violent crime and the loss of young lives in assaults pose a frightening problem in many urban city districts. This case from Australia shows how the ‘Designing Out Crime Research Center’ aimed to devise solutions for Sydney’s Kings Cross area, recently renowned for its alcohol-fuelled violence.
