4’KD Design-Kavita Jhala

Book: 4’KD Design-Journeying Through Design Thinking and Processing Output

Author: Kavita Jhala

Publisher: Self Published

Balancing creativity and logic have always been one problem that has flummoxed designers.

4’KD Design by Kavita Jhala is a short guide on how to use effective design thinking. Designing is a process that is used to identify problems and propose effective solutions, but more often than not, products fail to fulfill their designed objectives. The only way to correct this is to Rethink your design and this is precisely what this book does. This book gets you into the flow of the design process enabling you to create your pathway.

The book is divided into 10 chapters that begin from the basics of design and take you through the entire process of how the brain works, balancing logic and creativity, how to incorporate design thinking, what constitutes a good design and how to make it work. After understanding the process of designing and the art behind balancing logic and creativity, we move on to a critical aspect, which is understanding what is to be done, and the author recommends a design checklist, which leads to establishment of good design practices, which are detailed in the book and one can understand them quite easily. Kavita also gives the reader a roadmap which one can follow to ensure good design practices and maintain a healthy balance between concept and actualization. Once the process is done, the author emphasizes that reflection on your design is important by means of feedback through various means to ensure learning and improvement of one’s own process. In the end, Kavita has given some tools that can be used for implementing the concepts explained in the book as well as some good recommendations for readings on the subject.

Overall, it is a short but an effective read on design thinking and I would recommend it to everyone. Its just not about design, its about a process and how you create ideas, concepts and products that work, and in that context, it is relevant to everyone, be it a student, a manager or an artist or a creator.

The book scores a 4.33/5 from me.

Get a copy here.