Design Thinking for Design Capabilities in an Academic Library

Abstract

Design thinking has recently emerged as a powerful approach to innovation. Its ability to transform products, services, and organizations has been broadly discussed in the literature. However, how to implement the approach in organizational settings has not been sufficiently understood and addressed, especially when it comes to developing in-house design capabilities. Libraries, like many other public-sector organizations, often depend on the engagement of external design consultancies to guide their transformational and innovation processes. The development of in-house design capabilities could empower an organization to more actively engage with transformational processes and sustain design-led innovation and strategy building over time. This thesis explores, both conceptually and practically, such processes in an academic library. The Research through Design (RtD) approach was used to design and implement a series of design interventions. They mostly took the form of design workshops. All interventions were based on the real-life concerns of the academic library and, over time, contributed to the increase of in-house design thinking capabilities. The methodological approach, RtD, helped to formulate and allow discussion of a framework consisting of three inter-related components: temporal aspects, openness, and dialogical spaces. The thesis provides a set of guidelines that aim to help academic libraries develop in-house design capabilities using design thinking.