Meta-skills Are the Key to Human Potential

A new world is trying to be born –a world that seeks greater resilience, creativity, compassion and sustainable planetary progress. To bring this world into being, we need a new set of abilities not yet taught in schools and a fresh perspective on humanity. Neuroscientist, entrepreneur and expert in human-centred design Dr Melis Senova explains the idea behind her proposal for a new Institute for Human Potential

Exploring the role of mindset in design thinking: Implications for capability development and practice

Design thinking continues to be an emergent field as it pertains to business. In building design thinking capability in organizations the current focus is on design skills and tools, rather than mindset. This imbalance toward design process, methods and tools is also present within design thinking and design research literature. Mindset is little acknowledged. The purpose of this article is to investigate and articulate the role of mindset within design thinking capability and practice. Mindset is the perspective that informs how a person approaches and interacts in the world (Nelson and Stolterman, 2013). Where mindset is acknowledged as a critical underpinning for design thinking in the literature, it is usually presented as a guiding principle for design doing. There is little insight into what the different mindsets are, how to develop or enact them or how mindset impacts on practice. Mindset remains underexplored in discussions of design competency and maturity.<br></br>By analysing qualitative data collected across three studies of a doctoral research project exploring the composition of design thinking in practice, two mindsets emerged. These were: design thinking as a way of work and design thinking as a way of life. Design thinking as a way of work is focused on the process of design thinking with the primary purpose of designing for outputs and innovation. Design thinking as a way of life is a holistic view of design thinking where the focus is on designing for transformation and creating positive change. These mindsets are scalable, applicable to an individual or organization. The two mindsets, when mapped against competencies in design knowledge, skills and tools, contribute a framework to explore maturity in design thinking. Understanding the maturity framework, and the role of mindset within it, has implications for how an individual and organization can build capability in design thinking and maximize outcomes in the environment in which they are designing

Designing for Trust : Role and Benefits of Human-Centered Design in the Legal System

For laypeople, the experience of courts can be confusing, intimidating or even aggravating. Court users are often overwhelmed because their needs are secondary to procedural or organizational needs. This perception is even more acute for court users with special or additional needs, such as those with past trauma, cognitive impairment or socio-cultural barriers. As a result, with trust in organizations potentially diminished, the effectiveness of the legal system can be undermined. This research seeks to advance our understanding of the nature and role of human-centered design as an approach to innovation, supporting change in the legal system while creating or maintaining trustworthy environments. Human-centered design prioritizes human needs by enabling meaningful interactions in legal environments across the entire user journey, not just in the courtroom. We identify five levers and two levels of design which enable human-centered design to improve court environments and ultimately help build trust of court users within the legal system

Exploring the role of mindset in design thinking: implications for capability development and practice

Design thinking continues to be an emergent field as it pertains to business. In building design thinking capability in organizations the current focus is on design skills and tools, rather than mindset. This imbalance toward design process, methods and tools is also present within design thinking and design research literature. Mindset is little acknowledged. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and articulate the role of mindset within design thinking capability and practice. Mindset is the perspective that informs how a person approaches and interacts in the world (Nelson & Stolterman 2013). Where mindset is acknowledged as a critical underpinning for design thinking in the literature, it is usually presented as guiding principles for design doing. There is little insight into what the different mindsets are, how to develop or enact them, or how mindset impacts on practice. Mindset remains underexplored in discussions of design competency and maturity. By analysing qualitative data collected across three studies of a doctoral research project exploring the composition of design thinking in practice, two mindsets emerged. These were: design thinking as a way of work and design thinking as a way of life. Design thinking as a way of work is focused on the process of design thinking with the primary purpose of designing for outputs and innovation. Design thinking as a way of life is a holistic view of design thinking where the focus is on designing for transformation and creating positive change. These mindsets are scalable, applicable to an individual or organization. The two mindsets, when mapped against competencies in design knowledge, skills and tools, contribute a framework to explore maturity in design thinking. Understanding the maturity framework, and the role of mindset within it, has implications for how an individual and organization can build capability in design thinking and maximise outcomes in the environment in which they are designing

Free-field equivalent localization of virtual audio

Virtual audio has great potential for conveying spatial information and could be applied to advantage in several environments. Previously implemented virtual audio systems, however, have been shown to be less than perfect with respect to front-back confusion rate and average localization error. A system from this laboratory has been evaluated by comparing, for three participants, virtual and free-field localization performance across a wide range of sound-source locations. For each participant, virtual localization was found to be as good as free-field localization, as measured by both front-back confusion rate and average localization error. The feasibility of achieving free-field equivalent localization of virtual audio should encourage the more widespread use of this relatively new technology

Localization of virtual sound as a function of head-related impulse response duration

The effect of the duration of head-related impulse responses (HRIRs) on the localization of virtual sound was examined. The accuracy with which three participants could localize virtual and free-field sound was measured using an absolute localization paradigm incorporating 354 possible sound-source locations. HRIRs were truncated to durations ranging from 0.32 to 20.48 ms. The truncation of HRIRs results in a smoothing of their frequency-domain representations, which are known as head-related transfer functions (HRTFs). Whereas some previous studies have suggested that the localization of virtual sound is affected only by extreme smoothing of HRTFs, this study indicates that localization can be subtly disrupted by modest HRTF smoothing. For all participants in the study, the localization performance for virtual sound generated from 10.24- and 20.48-ms HRIRs was as good as that for free-field sound. Localization performance gradually decreased as the HRIR duration was reduced, and first became significantly worse than that for free-field sound at HRIR durations ranging from 0.32 to 5.12 ms. Like previous studies, the present study found that the localization performance for virtual sound was not disrupted dramatically until the HRIR duration was reduced to 0.64 or 0.32 ms

Localization of virtual sound as a function of head-related impulse response duration

The localization accuracy of subjects using headphones was determined as a function of the duration of the head-related impulse response. Unlike previous studies, there was a gradual decrease in accuracy starting at 10 ms and becoming drastically worse at about 0.5 ms. Durations of more than 10 ms result in performance indistinguishable from free-field localization. Shorter durations are equivalent to smoothing the frequency response and thereby removing the fine detail unique to each subject's own ears