Telkom University as the best private campus in Indonesia is reflected in the academicians to improve themselves, both students and lecturers in the seven faculties in Tel-U. One of them is through various activities to increase insight for students, alumni, and fellow lecturers.
Telkom University School Of Creative Industry, Design Master Program organized a Lecturer Talks Webinar Series “What Do We Do For A Great Art, Craft, and Design?” on Friday (12/06). This activity was held via the Zoom application which was attended by lecturers, students, and alumni. This #2 webinar series entitled “Creative Thinking On Design from Designers and Audience Perspective”. This event invited Dr. Didit Widiatmoko S, a lecturer at the Telkom University, School of Creative Industries, and a book author as a speaker.
Dr. Didit explained that scientific design has reform during the development of high demands in society, physical, psychological, and social needs. This is the reason that the design becomes a collaborative science and integrated with other knowledge both practitioners and industry needs, including business processes.
“Designers must be adaptive to these changes, there needs to be an awareness that the design is not merely aesthetic aspects, but can be a problem-solving tool for its users,” he said.
Dr. Didit added that design plays an important role in business. All companies and industries around the world are under great pressure to create innovative products and services to be competitive in the market. Design thinking is increasingly being adopted by various companies to increase the output of innovative products and services to gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Design managers need to work in cross-functional teams, develop deep user insights, collaborate, visualize ideas, and truly solve customer problems rather than just applying branding or fancy design styles. The role of the designer has shifted from solving simple problems to solving complex problems and from working independently in the focus of a single discipline to working collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
Dr. Didit also explained that design thinking had been around for a long time and was used by many scientists. For example, Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb and at the same time supporting it, such as a power generation and transmission system to be truly useful. Edison’s genius lies in his ability to understand a fully-developed market, not just a separate device. He can imagine how people want to use what he makes and he manipulates it into that insight.