At the beginning of any design thinking project, David shares a set of rules that help get every participant on the same page. The rules apply to everyone (including executives) and help create an optimal environment for creativity. If you are planning to run a project using a design thinking approach, you might want to consider sharing these rules with your group before you get started. I’ve used this list many times, and I promise, it really helps keep things on track.

1. Avoid the devil’s advocate: The devil’s advocate is someone who (purposely or accidentally) shoots down the ideas of others without taking any personal responsibility for his actions. The devil’s advocate often begins his objection with the phrase “Let me be the devil’s advocate for a second…”. The devil’s advocate often intends to be helpful by pointing out flaws in an idea, but ultimately this focuses people’s attention on what won’t work rather than exploring unexpected ways that it might work.

2. Make agendas transparent: Every participant should make their personal agendas as clear as possible.

3. Leave titles at the door: No one person’s ideas are worth more than anyone else’s.

4. Generate as many ideas as possible: During ideation, you are not trying to generate the best ideas; you are trying to generate the most ideas.

5. Build on the ideas of others rather than judging them: If someone else has an idea you like, build on it. If you don’t like an idea, share another one rather than critiquing.

6. Stay on time: Don’t let your ideation session spiral out of control. Each ideation session should be timed and should have a clear ending point.

7. State the obvious: Sometimes things that can seem obvious reveal great insight from their simplicity.

8. Don’t sell or debate ideas: Selling and debating ideas takes time away from generating new ideas.

9. Stupid and wild ideas are good: Sometimes the craziest ideas lead to the best ideas.

10. DTA stands for death to acronyms: Avoid acronyms—they are exclusionary because people who don’t know what they stand for will quickly be lost. If you must use an acronym, write what it stands for somewhere everyone can see it. Keep a running list of all acronyms used during the project or session.

11. Always understand in which stage of the process you are: When you are ideating, you are not critiquing ideas. But when ideation is over and you begin the process of selecting the best ideas, you’ll need to discuss the merits of each idea in a more traditional, analytical way.

12. Play is good, have fun: The more fun you are having as a group, the more creative ideas you’ll generate.

If you’d like to learn more about design thinking and how you can use it in your projects, I recommend any of the following books.

From the amazing team at IDEO:

- The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown

Other great books to consider:

- The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin
- Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value by Thomas Lockwood

As in many states, North Carolina’s Department of Transportation is often the main point of interaction (and impression of) state government. Whether driving on state roads, using public transportation, or getting a driver’s license or plates, citizens in North Carolina would likely meet or see the work of some of the over 14,000 employees of NCDOT every day.

North Carolina Secretary of Transportation Gene Conti and Deputy Secretary for Communications Ted Vaden believed there was an opportunity to more deeply involve citizens in improving the services provided by NCDOT. We at New Kind believed there was an opportunity to employ some of the same principles used by successful open source software companies like Red Hat to build better software faster. But we’d be using them not to build better software, but instead to build better government.

We led multiple preparatory sessions with NCDOT staff, introducing them to new ways in which citizens are engaging with government online, with a particular focus on how the “open source way—collaboration, openness, meritocracy—might apply to a government agency. And we worked with the NCDOT staff to co-design a citizen engagement model in which North Carolina citizens could work together with government workers toward a common goal in an open, collaborative environment.

We helped recruit citizen participants to three collaboration sessions in different parts of the state. It was a new experience for the citizens and NCDOT employees. Rather than promoting or trying to explain a change or new policy, we listened to what they didn’t like, getting all the criticisms and concerns out in the open. But this was no focus group.

Once we collected an exhaustive list of complaints and concerns, we then changed the conversation. Rather than focusing on what was wrong, we focused on what was possible. We asked these citizens what great things NCDOT could do for them and how these ideas might come to life.

At New Kind we feel strongly that great ideas can and do come from anywhere. In this case they literally did. All across the state we received excellent suggestions, many of which surprised and delighted the NCDOT staff. Several of these new ideas—including one to merge multiple NCDOT communication platforms into a single entity—were chosen by the staff to implement.

We believe that great community collaboration involves moving beyond just getting “advice” and actually involving the community in the implementation of the solution itself. Because of this, we devoted a great deal of each session to having citizens design and map out potential applications for their ideas. After each session, we posted citizens designs and prototypes in an online forum open to the public.

NCDOT found that even a few sessions with a small community of average citizens quickly pointed to new ideas and methods of operating, with implications for not just communication interfaces but organizational structure and policies. Through careful tracking of outreach methods, session surveys, and staff training sessions, NCDOT now has more capability to employ the innovative ideas generated by applying open source principles to community engagement efforts in the future.