Frequently Asked Questions: Editors-in-Chief

Typical FAQ's of our editors-in-chief

What kind of stories do you want to publish/see on the blog?

Stories we want to see

Stories we don’t want to see

Fail stories and what has been learned from them
Stories that show the measures taken to diffuse design thinking in organizations (e.g. how to do innovation capability building, cultural hacks, etc.)
Design thinking success stories, which describe the process in detail: Observations >> Insights >> Hypotheses >> Set-up of Tests >> Iterations >> Learnings … etc.
Reflections of senior practitioners and people from academia on their topics of interest (e.g.: “The role of empathy in DT”)
Critical interviews on the design thinking discourse

Generic descriptions of the ‘design thinking process’ that lack any insight
Advertorial ‘success’ stories, which show the ‘superiority’ of design thinking and overpraise companies without showing what was actually done
Generic beginner stories of organizations, which are new to design thinking and start with the usual suspect measures (workshops, establish insights unit, etc.)
Stories of how design agencies or consultancies did design thinking projects for companies (describing successes of ‘DT outsourcing’)

If you (or your authors) are looking for a case to write about, here is a list of design thinking organisations that is regularly updated.

How long should an article / case study be?

Articles on the blog have different lengths, and all of the following examples are good stories. If you like, you can model your own article after them in length.

(Almost too) extensive case: https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/05/intuit-design-for-cultural-change/ (2068 words)
Perfect length case: https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/05/the-rise-fall-of-design-thinking-at-oticon/ (1306 words)
Short case: https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/05/airbnb-design-thinking-example/ (677 words)

What does the publishing process look like?

So far we use the following process:

Some additional information on this site can only be displayed to "editor" users.

What are your goals? What do you want achieve with the site?

We compiled a little presentation on this. You can view it in your browser or download it below.

Download ThisIsDesignThinking.net - Call for Participation

Which kind of authors do you want me to bring together for this site?

Authors can be from industry and academia alike. We believe that they need a certain level of seniority and reflection regarding the topic already, though. Thus we suggest that master students, PhD students, young professionals or senior (faculty) staff are a good fit. What’s most important is that they are intrinsically motivated to write their article. It’s no good idea to ‘force’ or ‘motivate’ them with credits or the like.

How many stories do we as an institution have to contribute every year?

We’d love to see 3-5 stories a year per institution but you are actually totally free regarding that. What’s more important is the quality of the stories, which is hard to maintain as we’ve experienced. Thus constructing one rich and informative story per year is worth more than having five ‘quick’n dirty stories’ in the same time range.

Do you have an example of how the case should be prepared in WORD before getting published on the blog?

Sure! Why don’t you have a look at these two examples. One was written by Caroline Szymanski, the other one by Jan Schmiedgen. Especially in the Mobisol draft (which is more recent) you can see how certain styles of the Word file correspond with styles in the later blog post. So it might gives you good idea, which layout elements you will have at hand.

Preparation in the Word file (.doc, .docx)	Final styling in WordPress (the blog post)
Mobisol – Word Draft	Mobisol – Final Blog Post
AirBnB – Word Draft	AirBnB – Final Blog Post

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Author: Jan Schmiedgen | Last modified: March 8, 2016