If you’re a businessperson or someone interested in understanding how to facilitate innovation, you’ve probably heard of “design thinking” by now. Coined by IDEO’s David Kelley, the term refers to a set of principles, from mindset to process, that can be applied to solve complex problems. I’ve seen articles lately ranging from those that highlight its potential, [Design Thinking for Social Innovation, How does design thinking give companies a competitive advantage?] to those that warn of it’s impending failure as a practice [Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You , The Coming Boom and Bust of Design Thinking]. I’ve been eager to enter into the conversation, especially because some of the arguments around the topic don’t make sense to me and I wanted to know why. Change by Design, written by IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown, was on my winter reading list anyway, so I decided to finish it before bringing in my own perspectives.
I just got through the book a few days ago, and feel like I “get it.” So I’ve spent a few days reflecting on it and rereading some innovation articles, and think there is a bigger picture at the essence of design thinking that is being lost on some. I’m going to provide a brief summary of the book (from my interpretation), and tie in some other areas that brought me insights into these ideas.
Design Thinking as a Path to Innovation
Though the subtitle of the book is “How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation,” what Brown is actually proposing in this book goes far beyond offering advice for keeping your business on the leading edge of innovation. He’s talking about a new ethos in how we operate as a society. That concept feels pretty big, so it’s packaged as a business innovation book instead in order to overcome the challenge of getting you to open it. Not that you’re being tricked – it IS about innovation, but it’s extended beyond the scope of designing products and services to encompass the way we design the systems in which we live. After seven chapters of explaining design thinking as it relates to your organization, he gets to the meat and potatoes with chapters titled ‘The New Social Contract,’ ‘Design Activism,’ and ‘Designing Tomorrow – Today.’
He begins to frame this within the opening pages of the book:
What we need are new choices – new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that results in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them.
He goes on to identify 3 key spaces of innovation, which function as overlapping stages of a process: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. You can read a more thorough explanation of these stages in this article, but here’s the short version:
inspiration: the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions
[this stage involves sketches, mock-ups, and scenario-building]
ideation: the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas
[this stage involves building prototypes & exploring the balance between practical functionality and emotional appeal]
implementation: the path that leads from the project room to the market
[this stage involves clearly communicating the idea and proving/showing that it will work]
It’s a simple enough of a framework, one that shares many components with any well-devised design or research process. As he explains the approach, he highlights that innovation must occur within a set of constraints, such as economic viability, and that a traditional business-minded rational/analytic approach must be maintained as well. I mention this because some of the articles I’ve read that bash design thinking seem to complain that the approach is an abandonment of good ‘business thinking.’ For instance, here’s a quote from an article in Harvard Business Review titled ‘Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You‘:
Design thinking is trotted out as a salve for businesses who need help with innovation. The idea is that the left-brained, MBA-trained, spreadsheet-driven crowd has squeezed all the value they can out of their methods. To fix things, all you need to do is apply some right-brained turtleneck-wearing “creatives,” “ideating” tons of concepts and creating new opportunities for value out of whole cloth.
I’m kind of surprised by the statement, because Brown never makes a statement that sounds like “all you need to do is…” He actually repeats many times throughout the book that there needs to be a combination of the intuitive/emotional with the rational/analytic, a “balance of management’s legitmate requirement for stability, efficiency, and predictability with the design thinker’s need for spontaneity, serendipity, and experimentation.” If anything, he’s calling for a holistic interdisciplinary approach to business that breaks down the rigid silos of standard organizational structure that, in its very design, impedes creativity, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and in turn, innovation.
Tools for Design Thinking
The design thinker uses a set tools and skills that inform and facilitate the innovation process, from visual tools like sketches, mind maps and prototypes to mental processes like brainstorming, building on the ideas of others, and creating scenarios. They operate on principles that encourage collective ownership, like “all of us are smarter than any of us,” and adhere to ‘rules’ that promote organizational creativity, like having permission to fail, experiment, take risks, and explore the full range of their faculties. They rely on their “ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, and to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality.” But these practices and techniques are not unique to the design thinker.
As I commented on Bruce MacGregor’s article ‘How does design thinking give companies a competitive advantage?,’ the principles of design thinkers are also those used by futurists. (A good introductory article to Futures Thinking was written up by Jamais Cascio in Fast Company, found here.) Though the terminology is different, the process is very similar. Again, I mention this because there is some argument around design thinking which seems to be coming down to semantics – “it’s really just social science,” or “it’s just futures thinking repackaged.”
So, what is design thinking then?
The strategies and tactics reviewed so far are probably familiar to you if you’ve read literature on creativity and innovation. You can pull up the innovation sections of the major business management publications, and find that the articles will give you a similar flavor as what’s mentioned above. So how does design thinking make this any different?
Whether it’s called design thinking, lateral thinking, right-brain thinking, systems thinking, integrative thinking, futures thinking, or my own term of ‘metathinking,’ from my perspective, the concept itself is rooted in a capacity to understand the world and our relationship to it, and within it, in a different way.
Design thinking is a “human-centered approach,” and for me that means truly getting down to the core of what we think it means to be human, of what it ‘should’ look like, and how we want to experience life. When we see the word “design,” we may immediately think of just products made by a snooty designer; items we see displayed at a museum that bear no resemblance to something we’d find in our home, artwork that makes us somehow feel stupid because we don’t understand why it’s so special, or architecture that is said to make “a statement” but feels completely alien in the way it impacts us. That is not the same design that is being proposed by design thinking.
When I started my blog, I knew I wanted to write about emerging trends at the intersection of technology, communication, and culture. Many of the posts lately have been focused around social media technologies and how they’re allowing for a many-to-many communication structure that’s never been possible before in human history, and what the implications of such a thing could be. But really, those explorations are laying a foundation for a bigger question; namely, where do we go from here? My research brought me to systems theory and complexity theory, and I’ve been particularly interested in complex adaptive systems theory. It proposes that the world is full of systems; from the ecosystem in which we live, to the social systems we’ve constructed via civilization, to the online social systems we’re creating as we develop a network culture. It broadened my perspective on the way culture works to think of it as a complex series of interactions, full of meaningful patterns that shape our society whether we’re aware of them or not. It made me think about the many systems around us that are currently collapsing, from global economic systems, to governments, to educational institutional models, to healthcare. The talk about massive change is pervasive today, and many suggest we need to undergo a complete paradigm shift in the way we operate if we’re to survive in a fashion that’s desirable and sustainable. The good news is, that shift can be made with intentionality and choice. We’re citizens in an increasingly participatory culture, and I realized that that was the essence of what I wanted to write about – our ability to influence how we shape society. So I titled the blog Emergent by Design.
My posts have evolved to become a kind of storytelling and connecting the dots, and the comments sections have become conversation areas. We are engaging in a process of collectively inventing what we want, how we’d like to interact with it, and what we can do to make it happen. In my mind, this is at the heart of design thinking.
In a previous post, What is Social Media [the 2010 edition], I briefly covered the definition of “media” and illustrated how our entire manmade environment is a collection of media that act as representations of some other thing or idea. From convenient functionality,
to casual ambiance,
to childlike fantasy,
to shared wisdom and personal histories,
to a better ability to meet basic needs.
None of these examples happened by accident – they were done by design. They create a context that affects the reaction of the person experiencing them. So design is not just about the end product or service itself, but also the process of the interaction and the emotional response and intrinsic value that it provides. In that vein, design thinking is about the interaction between feasibility (what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future); viability (what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model); and desirability (what makes sense to people and for people), with an emphasis on the people for which the product or service is being designed.
Synthesis
So whether you hope to employ design thinking to restructure the culture of an organization or to innovate a new product or service, it’s important to remember that it’s more than a set of simple tactics that can be implemented overnight. It’s more like a new ecology of mind, that takes time to grow, adapt, and evolve. It still requires an adherence to sound business decision-making, but also a commitment to challenge one’s own beliefs about “the way things work,” and to keep coming back to a human-centered approach by focusing on addressing people’s unspoken and unmet needs.
emergent by design 
Ah…. [sigh of relief]. Great to have someone else who understands, but moreso can put the bigger perspective into words that others can consume. […she says while taking a break from a deep debate that broke out on the LinkedIn Design Thinking group over the differences between Systems Thinking and Design Thinking]
It’s not like we’re all going to agree on everything, but it sure is nice when there are even-keeled perspectives that are added to the conversation.
thanks, i just registered for the linkedin group. i’m curious to see what they’re saying
We’re actually getting ready to talk about it all again, in Vancouver Canada. Is your name on the list? http://dtuc.org/event/attendees/
We now feel our goal is to jumpstart these conversations locally, where the community can learn to leverage existing design voices and find ways to find their own design voices to change their own communities, by design.
When we started in Dallas, the goal was more about threading together design voices across major corporations. That failed. I like this approach better.
Based on what we learn at this event, we have our sights on a small town in New York for next year. If you have any friends in Vancouver or Seattle, be sure to pass the word along.
Very good summary Venessa. I think that part of the problem is that a lot of the people that talk about ‘design thinking’ (both critics and proponents) haven’t paid much attention to any of the core thinking in the field. When I read Design Driven Innovation by Roberto Verganti I had many thoughts similar to yours here. I think it is a very sound approach. And it’s actually really hard to execute – which becomes clear as you read case studies. So anyone that reduces it to an ‘all you need to do is…’ statement clearly hasn’t been paying attention.
right, it’s amazing how quick some people are to give opinions on a topic in which they’re clearly not well-versed…. and how quick people are to write off a methodology as “ineffective” without ever having tried to implement it…
You see the big picture and you also know how to read between the lines. A very delightful combination to have.
Well said…
thanks spiro. it’s a fun practice… and certainly makes the world seem a lot more interesting… 🙂
Your point regarding the fluid relationship that design thinking has with other iterative, non-linear, humanistic ways of seeing the world make sense to me. There will probably always be disagreement and questions about what this term means, in contrast to more mechanically oriented methodologies. To add another dimension to the potential for confusion, I know many designers who don’t practice design thinking as it’s being discussed lately. What’s most important to me is that these emerging ways of seeing open more possibilities than conventional approaches. Maybe DT can help us deal with some of the self-limiting problems created by linear thinking.
agreed. i’ve noticed that too in design courses, where the emphasis is put on the tools and the physical product instead of the deeper meaning or message that is supposed to be conveyed. i think that b/c the word ‘design’ is in design thinking, people automatically assume it’s something for designers, but it’s really a broader approach to seeing the world that is applicable to anyone who’s interested in exploring multiple perspectives.
as you said, linear thinking can be very limiting, but it seems to mesh so well with the Western-way-of-thinking package. there’s a TED talk by Devdutt Pattanaik that I keep recommending, which is about the “mythology of business”, and the differences between Eastern and Western thought. I see a lot of ‘design thinking’ in Eastern thought, in that it is based in relationality and transience, without the Western binary thinking that can be so detrimental to seeing possibilities. Check out the video sometime – Devdutt is a compelling storyteller. (http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html)
Another terrific overview, Venessa. In A Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander talks about seeing “everything in the context of the whole,” and in fact structures the book to be read at varying levels of detail in as little as 15 minutes, while preserving the “wholeness” of the books essential treatise. And years later in The Nature of Order, he examines in some detail “wholeness preserving transformations” as the way in which life unfolds by differentiation into a richly diverse ecosystem of interdependent components, like an embryo or seed.
And as I’ve reflected back on the various villages and communities I worked in over the years, patterns of solutions (which felt serendipitous at the time, but became clearer in retrospect) always seemed to emerge from simple connections that cascaded in wondrously complex, enriching ways throughout the social fabric.
In one rural Oklahoma town, we had included “community festivals” as almost a matter of course in our strategic planning and “tactical systems,” but until circumstances led to relocating a barn dance that officially opened the wheat harvesting season to the center of town as a public street dance (even winning the nod of the local Baptist church, which had previously condemned such frivolities–yeah, I’m talking Footloose in real life), we had no idea of the level of vitality and energy that was simply waiting to be released.
I guess that was a round about way of observing that the wholeness of the systems in which we are engaged nearly always exceeds our perception and expectation of constraints–and that’s a vital consideration in design thinking.
I would also like to add my thanks, noting that you are doing great justice to the Design Thinking debate. Is Design Thinking helpful? Yes. Is it brand new? Definitely not. Can it help an organization to become more creative and innovative? Yes. Is it a complete process without gaps and missing components necessary for our 21st Century advancement? Nope. Is it Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking, and Complexity Theory? Yes, to some degree. Does it add to our ability to help people and organizations to think in terms of adaptability, resilience, and transformation. It can.
I agree that processes such as Design Thinking do help people to understand the role of systems in business and global outcomes, but would like to point out that Complex Adaptive Systems are about more than complexity in systems theory. To get the most out of CAS, it’s important to note that systems are not only formed by the agents and interactions that make up those systems, but the fact that they are DECENTRALIZED – without hierarchy or “command and control” guidance – is what makes them more unpredictable, and allows them to adapt to circumstances through emergent behavior and properties. Of course, our organizational model up to this point has mainly been one of mechanical behavior and control rather than organic resilience as can be seen in nature. In forming our organizations, governments, and societies in this manner, we have stripped much of the evolutionary adaptation and resilience from them, building systems that have no choice but to eventually collapse – the systems are trying to correct themselves (positive and negative feedback), or shut down due to their inability to be sustainable. So, in terms of recognizing CAS, we are undergoing a type of global deconstruction. Of course, most are simply attempting to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for another round of “the world as we know it,” but we have/are reaching somewhat of a tipping point in this regard. It is in the discovery that life is made of COMPLEX, ADAPTIVE, DECENTRALIZED systems that we can understand them better – developing a foresight-fit capacity that looks for emergent properties, and operating from a knowledge of human interaction and development that gives birth to our collective futures. My point? The same can be said for Futures Thinking or Design Thinking; they are not meant to give short-term fixes, but rather long-term capacity for opportunity, innovation, creativity, resilience, adaptation, and transformation.
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Terrific post! Thank you for your “meaning making.” At the Interaction Institute for Social Change we are working on the application of design thinking to group process and to organizational life, integrating it beyond the “product development” aspects of the work. I’m glad to find you blog!
Good balanced view of what design thinking can (and cannot) do. We might hold up the iPhone as a example of what design thinking is capable of, forgetting that a number of the clunky, under-utilised phones that preceded it were also the result of design thinking.
The b-schools promoting design thinking are looking for a systematic approach to leveraging the latest trend, an approach which they can teach. The same thing happened with quality management, which was largely considered voodoo until the emergence of LEAN ad Six Sigma. I don’t think we’re at this point with design thinking, as it’s more art than science. Whether or not we can fully systemize design thinking (making it teachable) is an open question.
As with most creative techniques, the best approach is to absorb what is useful and avoid treating it as dogma.
r.
PEG
Hmmm, Peter. The iphone might be a good example of design. It’s a pathetic example of design thinking — have you missed the many issues with the larger experience (the stores and most especially AT&T)?
Isn’t this just marketing? The old phones worked fine, until we were all told that we needed those touchscreens and applications and what not.
I can chop vegetables with my Granny’s old carbon steel knife and not damage myself, but those GoodGrips ads make me think I need/deserve a more ergometric handle.
Thought provoking post as usual. Thank you.
My two cents. Regarding “It made me think about the many systems around us that are currently collapsing . . .” . could also be framed as “many systems around us that are currently growing.”
Edchat and the ning came from nowhere. The English Companion ning grew to over 10,000 in less than a year. Journalism is being reinvented and it seems likely this will be the year that formal education in the States will get to some major structural changes.
I think the trick is to be able to use the collapsing AND growing lens. The good news is that human life has been evolving for at least 6000 since we invented agriculture. It’s a safe bet, we’ll continue to evolve in a not terrible direction.
absolutely. i guess i didn’t put the sentence in there, but it was implied when I said the “shift can be made with intentionality and choice,” that though systems are collapsing, it is creating a tremendous opportunity for us to be the makers of society.
we’re building a much more participatory culture, and i think it’ll be very interesting to see what we come up with collectively.
I have a feeling that 2010 is the start of the inflexion point in media , education and government. What I think I see is that the global economy restart, the emergence of what OReilly is calling Web Squared and the Obama Administration is creating a perfect storm.
Conversations that have been going on for many years are emerging to be visible in the real world.
This is the year that the Chinese auto market is either close to or bigger than the States. The “Race to the Top” encourages and rewards states that are creating the conditions for innovation and reform http://ilnk.me/1521 It’s also the year that QR codes and smartphones are finally going mainstream in the States.
Another interesting data point was an announcement last week that Xerox is selling the Espresso Book Machine. If it didn’t get on your radar, it’s basically an ATM for printed books. The one at the Harvard Book Store is said to be busy printing out Google books.
It may turn out that the Singularity predicted for 2012 could turn out to be pretty accurate.
@rotkapchen That’s really a question of scope. No product or service is an island these days, making it challenging to own the end-to-end experience. Nor can we expect the same experience in each locale. You’re issues with AT&T do not represent the experience in the Australian market where the iPhone is not tied to a carrier.
That said, considering the iPhone (and the ecosystem around it) as a good or bad example of design thinking is tangential to my thesis: that design thinking can result in both good and bad outcomes (i.e. it’s not the tool you use, but the attitude you bring (née obliquity), and that we’re yet to reached the point where design thinking has been transformed into a reliable and repeatable process.
r.
PEG
Venessa, an excellent post and enjoyed the read.
I really think of ‘design thinking’ as a way to model reality, practicality and needs. It is nothing new and has been in existence for a long time. I also think that what needs to happen is (a)remove misconceptions about what ‘design thinking’ means, and (b) diffusion of knowledge on how to create value by sythensizing multiple areas (which to me is the essence of DT).
One thing to note is that folks in general are swayed by opinions – especially if they are new to the topic. From this perspective, I do feel bloggers and ‘experts’ have to be careful in saying things like “act less as a manager and more as a designer” etc., as we don’t want people to suddenly ditch their decision models or analytics and go to the other extreme (I think this was part of the HBR viewpoint). Also, I disagree with the viewpoint that analytics and ‘design thinking’ are mutually exclusive. In its rawest form, ‘design thinking’ is prevalent even in hard core analytical stuff like forecasting (you seek out what needs to be done, iterate ideas, build prototypes, learn as you go, and try to get as close to reality). Similarly, good product marketing always involved design thinking and so on.. (of course, I know I will get a debate on this one 🙂 )
I don’t want this to get into a lengthy post :-), but (imho) what has really changed is the social structure around us. Design Thinking or not, companies that master the art of harnessing the torrent of information flow out there and leveraging the golden nuggets filtered from it will be the one successful in future. Successful firms would have mastered how to stew multiple disciplines (from analytics to cognitive science to sociology) to create the perfect dish for their customers. And in this respect, I would argue if DT is even a discipline to be taught (or a money-making term coined by consultants 🙂 )
thanks Ned-
as you said, analytics and design thinking are not mutually exclusive – i tried to convey that point in the post, as Tim Brown clearly states over the course of his book that analyzing economic viability and prototyping/testing/measuring the functionality and desirability of a product/service are obviously a part of the design process, and design thinking.
and in the end, regardless of how you package it, we’re ultimately talking about a paradigm shift in thought. the problem is, as soon as you package it and try to define it, the conversation turns to what the term does/does not mean vs. talking about how we can implement strategies that allow us to look at problems in new ways.
Vanessa,
I think you hit on a deep problem “as soon as you package it and try to define it, the conversation turns to what the term does/does not mean ” That’s precisely the problem when getting to a paradigm shift.
The old words are the “property” of various groups. “Design thinking” allows designers to think they have the answer. “Constructive education” allows educators to think they have the answer. It’s a similar situation with the systems people, the management people and the marketing people.
I think that like “evolution” it started with the scientists.
“Quantum” is a word that actually refers to a set of mathematical formulas that cannot be put into words that make sense. But it is definitely true. Electro magnetic field theory is at least a century old.
In my opinion, useful words evolve first in specialized silos. They first appear to prefigure reality. Once the reality emerges the specialized words start to disappear and we are left with “common sense.” My bet is that’s about where we are now, some 40 years after the internet was invented.
It’s not so much the packaging up of an idea – the formalisation of knowledge is as old as civilisation – as dilution as the community’s focus shifts from goals to means. Martijn Linssen captures this nicely in a post, Redefining meaning and the goal of social, over at his blog. The same dilution is happening to social media and, as I point out in a post, with mashups.
r.
PEG
Sorry, I’m gonna take another swing at this, since in my earlier comment I realized I had not made explicit the connection between the dots that I had intended.
I’ve been involved at some level in “community development,” “community revitalization,” or “community transformation” at various levels for nearly 30 years. And none of these phrases really conveys what goes on when things work, when people in a central urban neighborhood, a rural farming town, or remote Native Alaskan fishing village rediscover how they can directly engage in the redesigning of their own shared spaces, structures and relationships, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing consciousness of connections far beyond the immediate geographic or cultural setting.
In this context, the sensibilities of “design thinking” have roots that are long and deep, and perhaps reflect the recovery of an earlier “common sense” or even “conventional wisdom” that waned under the brute force penetration of industrial/mechanical paradigms that produced such well-intentioned-yet-fatally flawed concepts as “social engineering.”
Tim Brown’s book does a terrific job of capturing these sensibilities as expressed in a series of concrete, practical examples, expanding out, as you observed, to impact the largest systems in which we live, breathe and have our being. For me, these sensibilities include a constantly evolving sense of wholeness conditioned and shaped through interaction with an increasingly broad and diverse network of connections; the development of a voice from many voices, that is, stories built upon the wisdom of earlier stories, captured in artifacts and structures such as a community commons or community benefit agreements (CBAs) with developers; early prototyping improved through a highly iterative, participative, organic process that frequently results in a very different “product” than that imagined by any individual “expert.”
So one of my projects right now is reinforcing through social media and networking the potential for mutual support and creative exploration by the 100 or so intentional and co-housing communities in the Pacific Northwest, each of which represents a laboratory in the redesigning of community space, decision making, economics and in some instances, cultural patterns such as the role of elders.
Critical for me is the vital role of an emerging collective wisdom that is open to wildly diverse perspectives to, over time, surface and correct the deeply hidden assumptions and prejudices of even the “best intentions” (see, “The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation” by Sally Jenkins, centered on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School but really a story about resilience and creativity–and, I would argue, participatory design thinking through the back door).
Fabulous post, Venessa, and fabulous follow-on conversation.
I like your suggestion that at heart this is a balancing act between left and right brain thinking. The fact that we still have to defend the design process suggests that its totality is not yet understood. To me design thinking is just another way to describe whole systems thinking.
BTW, I liked the post so much that I talked it up at I’m New Here Myself: http://www.element22.com/site/post.php?id=622&cat=2
thanks Mitch, and thanks for stopping by! we haven’t crossed paths in a while – still loving the minimalist clean simplicity of your site!
i’d agree that design thinking and systems thinking share the same flavors…… i’m apprehensive to approach this from an even larger perspective, because i think it may be hard for some to swallow, but i’m always wondering about what the model would be that would be inclusive to all these different schools of thought, because we don’t HAVE to choose one that’s “right.” many options exist for addressing any situation.
when i back it up as far as i can go, i’m at a place where we really ask ourselves what it means to be human…. what our place is in this temporary experience we call “life,” what we think it means, where we think we come from before it and where we go after. ok, it’s deep and dense, and the fodder of philosophical debate for millennia. but honestly, when you look at things from that perspective, the man-made social systems in which we choose to operate melt away, and we really ask ourselves, “um, what the heck are we doing here?”
when you strip away the need for social status, for riches, for reinforcement, for respect or honor or praise or awe… we’re all just people who kind of have no idea what we’re SUPPOSED to be doing… we’re just doing the best we can with the information we’ve been given and the six inches between our ears that allow us to imagine something better.
so why is it SO RADICAL to approach business and life from a perspective where we can all agree that we share common ideals and want similar things? to say, “we’re all in this together. ALL of us. why don’t we DESIGN a reality that we’d want to live?”
just the IDEA of that seems so foreign and utopian that we’re still not realizing that it’s an option.
call it ‘design thinking’ or whatever makes sense to you, but the essence is that we’re in the middle of an awakening, where we realize that each of us has the ability to shape reality, whether that means contributing to changing an institutional structure like government or education, or a local, personal structure like building community in your town or improving the family dynamics within your own home.
you don’t have to be a certified “designer” in a firm to do this. we’re all designers. what it means to be human is to be conscious and to design and create. and when you REALLY strip away the excess and think about it…… what else is there?
Very well stated Venessa!
Venessa,
I am 100% behind your comment “as soon as you package it and try to define it, the conversation turns to what the term does/does not mean vs. talking about how we can implement strategies that allow us to look at problems in new”. The question I have been asking is – why do we always need to give the ‘package’ a name or do we need to? I feel that as soon as you put a label on something, you are by default constraining it (intentionally or not).
I have been a strong proponent over the years of solving problems and/or coming up with solutions using creative application of information from other fields [should have put a label to it – darn 🙂 ]. What is more, I strongly believe that in today’s world we absolutely need to have collaborative efforts across disciplines (a necessity!)- whether it is ideation, problem framing, or problem resolution, viewing it through a multi-focal lens (statistical, sociologoical, psychological, cognitive, etc.) would any day give you a far better solution than doing the same thing using one lens.
The problem I have is when we label something ‘design thinking’ and then extol [say] the designers and relegate the other disciplines. Collaborative approaches are exactly that – collaborative. I am sure we can learn a lot from the designers, but then the designers can pick up a few tips from the analytically minded, and they both can get a lesson or two from the sociologist and so on. By drawing lines as certain articles have done, you are bound to alienate certain groups and thus making it more difficult to actually do something (instead of as you said wasting time debating on what it is).
And by a coincidence, while not on design thinking specifically, over the past year or so we have been having ‘similar’ debates in the web anaytics community as well — on how best to move forward. I will leave you with one of my tweets that summarizes my feelings in that space – ‘It is time WA #measure is stripped of the cocoon of factions and emerge as an independent yet collaborative field’.
Ned: Perhaps you should join the Design Thinking vs. Systems Thinking discussion on the LinkedIn Design Thinking group : )
http://twurl.nl/y5px4o
Just did. Am always open to new viewpoints :-). Thanks. NK
Venessa, this – “so why is it SO RADICAL to approach business and life from a perspective where we can all agree that we share common ideals and want similar things? to say, “we’re all in this together. ALL of us. why don’t we DESIGN a reality that we’d want to live?” – is the ultimate zen koan.
It seems so utterly simple. Bucky Fuller invented the World Game to “make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone” in 1961. And here we are almost 50 years later arguing over whether or not a simple design process is “rational” enough.
Sigh.
Apparently I can’t leave this topic alone. I was just writing about a post by Roger Martin at HBR called “Management by Imagination” and your post and this thread just FELL into it…
http://www.element22.com/site/post.php?id=626&cat=2
Hi Venessa, really a very nice summary.
What I really appreciate is your observation that even the gurus of design thinking emphasize that it must be taken as one part of an overall balanced approach, integrated with other disciplines and methods, and not oversold. That is an important reminder lest critics throw the baby out with the bath water.
The main rationale behind my earlier critique of design thinking, “Coming Boom and Bust of Design Thinking” (which you graciously mentioned, thank you!) was my frustration with the over-hyping and lack of appreciation for the complexities and difficulties which this approach involved.
Your post addresses this challenge wonderfully, and you wrap up the promise and the difficulties of this process very well. Thanks for sharing your insight and reflections on the book.
Imagine the reactions of the people when Einstein proposed e=mc2 in 1905 or newton proposed his gravity theory. They were lucky to be live on web 0.0 era.
Results of criticism or opinions are creating a buzz which is good for Design Thinking in some way.
By the way great work Venesaa.
I had the opprtunity to work with Tim Hurson directly, who wrote Think Better. Have you read hid book? It may be the the perfect example of design thinking. He starts out with the question “what is the itch”?. With a combination of creative first then analytical he provides an approach that allows you to create a non linear answer to your problem. Great article, well done.
i haven’t read it, but i’m putting it on my list now. thanks for the recommendation!
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Thank you for a inspirational post Venessa! I’ve been trying to get a better grasp on “design thinking” the past months and your article summed it all up beautifully.
Hi Vanessa,
This is a very concise and clear explanation of Design Thinking, and I agree with your conclusions. However, I would point out that, while it may well be just semantics, the issue I take with the term “design thinking” is that its not really about design at all…its just a description of good thinking. There is a great video by Patrick Whitney which beautifully summarizes the process of using abstraction as a method for asking the right questions in order to innovate. But while designers seem to think this is something they do exclusively (or perhaps easier or better), the reality most of good engineers, scientists and business strategists (certainly those that I have worked with) think this way in their own domains. After all, innovation does occur without designers.
What Patrick is actually describing in his video is the process of good, rigourous, thinking. Good thinking is about asking the right questions…not about jumping to the most obvious solutions. What is more, I suspect that if you look at how good MBAs, Engineers & Scientists are trained, they will be taught to ask the right questions to identify possibilities because that, ultimately, mitigates risk and/or leads to better solutions.
So in the end analysis, there is no such thing as Design thinking…there is only GOOD thinking. Unfortunately, most people are pretty rubbish at thinking…and so most of the decisions that people make are pretty average and not particularly innovative. But blame that on the education system, not the lack of “design thinking” in the world.
As for whether or not we can design better futures…well, I believe we can design better solutions to the problems we have now (which have logical extensions/impacts into the future)…but if you really understand complex systems theory, every thing you do has an impact on how that future will play out…and not always in the ways that you can anticipate (because we are not omniscient). So the design process is good at coming up with innovation solutions to problems we can identify and understand now…but is not so good at anticipating the future.
So part of the reason that businesses (and societies) prefer to respond to the present rather than design a better future is because actually the latter is largely impossible. Like all complex systems, the future is the result of the cumulative decisions of all the components in that system acting freely. To reduce them to a deterministic future (as design would have it) is to destroy the very structure of that complexity and eliminate emergence as a fundamental, organic and evolutionary phenomenon. From an application of resources (e.g. return on investment for survival), it is better to respond intelligently to the present than to invest too much into trying to control or anticipate the future.
Having said that, designing our own futures (or rather trying to influence the future that we would like to live in) is also a fundamental part of our psyche (and our attempts at improving our individual and collective survival)…so there will always be a tension between what any individual or group imagines “should be” and what actually happens. After all, the future is not our decision alone…it is the result of the often unintended consequences of our collective (and individual) attempts to influence it for our own interests colliding with all those unintentional actions and random events that make up the complex system we exist in.
So the best we can do is to just be open, inquisitive, adaptive, rigourous and thorough in both our thinking and our actions, enjoy ourselves…and hope for the best.
I’ll bet if you ask 100 people on the street what “good thinking” is, you’ll get 100 different answers. Better yet, google “good thinking” and then google “design thinking” and see what you get. The first list is disconnected and not really going anywhere, the second is a conversation. Design thinking is a paradigm. It signifies a specific set of values and assumptions for a specific community of practice. It makes it easier to collaborate and make progress.
If someone walked into my office tomorrow and said “we need to do some good thinking to solve this problem,” I wouldn’t be sure what they mean. What’s the first step? What tools do we need? Should I go to the library? Should I sit in the closet meditating? Will I have to do math at some point?… Whereas if someone came in saying “let’s use design thinking,” we’ll know to start taking the initiative to brainstorm as a group, develop prototypes, try to recognize and address previously unnoticed human factors, etc.
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This is an excellent post, Venessa. I share your interest in the intersection between design thinking and complexity science and have had some long interesting talks about it with designers. You might be interested in an article I co-authored with Dave Snowden for Harvard Business Review entitled “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making” (Nov. 2007). In it, we explore the concept of complex adaptive systems as they relate to the way leaders think and make decisions and we talk about complexity science as a new way of looking at the world. The Cynefin Framework is explained in this article as well and it provides a way of thinking about the relationship between the analytical (ordered contexts) and the complex/chaotic (unordered). You can find a quick video explanation of the framework here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mqNcs8mp74
Design thinking is an excellent match for the complex domain.
hi Mary, thanks! I have read that piece, and seen that video too. I’ve actually been planning to write a piece on Cynefin and complexity for a while, something simple and digestible, but I just haven’t had time to frame it out yet. Thanks for bringing it back up to the top of mind. Are we connected on twitter yet? (i peek in on @snowded already…) i’m @venessamiemis.
Interesting post, inspiring conversation.
“Design thinking” is the focus of my final project in grade school. I’m in a search for a new and simple word for this term; something about the word ‘design’ is too broad, and scary to some people.
I’m convince this theory is here to stay, and all business should consider investing and exploring this ‘new’ way of thinking. As a creative person with a good sense for business, I know that collaboration, face-to-face conversation, direct and simple communication, can create powerful communities (companies, organizations, brands, etc.). Is it a radical and/or new way of thinking? I don’t think so.
hi orit,
i agree that it’s not new, and also feel like i’m searching for that new and simple word/term to describe this idea. it’s a struggle, because as soon as you name something, i feel like 2 things happen:
1. attention goes to the word instead of the essence of its meaning
2. the conversation shifts to bickering about the definition of the word instead of discussing the method of implementing the concept
i feel like this is the issue i see around so many great ideas/concepts. i don’t know how to resolve this. in some ways, i think maybe we should focus on storytelling instead of wordsmithing. just say, hey, look at this thing, this method, this idea, and see how this person implemented it in this way and what happened as a result? how can we approach our problem in a similar way?
this in itself requires a different approach….. some things just can’t be laid out in black and white in this super quantitative definitive way… some things require ambiguity and experimentation as a part of the process, and that’s still scary for a lot of people.
Design is actually the best word. It is more a problem of common understanding of the word than of the term itself. And I guaranty you will not find a better word.
In that respect Design must be understood as in the expression “God’s Design” which translates as choice and intent. This encompasses both emotional and intellectual constraints.
You are wrong in one aspect though. Artists, Designers and Architects DO use design thinking for as long as the end of the 19th century.
Do all of them use it? No. And especially in today’s society so driven by shape the objects importance precedes that of the method. That is not to say that the RIGHT way of doing Art, Design and Architecture is not by using a Design Thinking reasoning system.
Another thing that you sometimes come close and others drift away is that Design Thinking is not workable with “traditional business methods”, “traditional business methods” are PART of Design Thinking.
As an example, if one understands constraints as planes Architecture then exists in the void left by the political, economic, scientific, technical, functional, formal, aesthetic, biological, intellectual and emotional planes after intersection.
The only way to deal with all of this juxtapositions is by a Design process.
The problem is that for too long we have believe in the omnipotence of the Scientific method and discriminated the Design method. Ironically they are one and the same. The Design process only has to deal with more variables.
And this is why most people do not get Art, Design and Architecture, they lack the mental constructs needed to understand them and ask what is the purpose of Artists, Designers and Architects (when we have Engeneers for instance). Hopefully this will change with the new interest around this thinking process.
Sorry about the long read.
i’d say design thinking was around before the end of the 19th century… i mean, you could say da vinci was a design thinker…..and so was the guy who ‘invented’ the wheel.
as far as design thinking being a part of a traditional business method…. yes, i stated that it is:
“In that vein, design thinking is about the interaction between feasibility (what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future); viability (what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model); and desirability (what makes sense to people and for people), with an emphasis on the people for which the product or service is being designed.”
what you said about understanding constraints as planes….. this is exactly the thing! you can’t understand these things without context. you can’t appreciate them, and you can’t navigate them. that mental construct is vague or nonexistent or confused. and your last two words summarize it for me – “thinking. process.” to me, this really can’t be something superficially understood or memorized…. it’s an internalization that requires learning, thinking, adaptation, and is a process, so it’s iterative, changing, and non-linear. people generally are not taught to think in this way… so until we can retrain our own brains, to create this new construct, this will not work.
When I referred the end of the 19th century I meant as the Design process applied to Arts. The wheel and DaVinci’s inventions are exactly that, inventions, and much more in the realm of science than in the arts. My references were the Vanguards starting with Van Gogh for intance, when painting abandoned replication of reality and began to be more conceptual.
As I said both processes are the same, the scientific method and the design process, both act on a hypothesis and verification system, trial and error.
And it sure is a “thinking process” and most schooling neglects it completely and classes give much more relevance to a pure memorization and replication practice (like the tradicional painting discipline).
However in Architecture more than in any other art students are encouraged to think this way (and are scorned by much of the population for it instead of the engineers technological view of structures), of course some students learn it, others do not. And the teachers do not concern themselves too much with this, they encourage it, but then evaluate only on the finished product more than in the iterative process.
A maxim I always heard several times is “Architecture cannot be taught, it must be learned!” that demonstrated the very interior learning that one must accomplish by himself on how to understand the constructs that allow him to navigate the conceptual dimension.
People do not like to think they prefer to be told. We must change this!
Vanessa,
My $.02 is that the difficulty of finding just the right word to both capture the reality and be a guide for thought as opposed to a token that is the focus of further definitional dispute is based on the fact that humans have always used “design thinking” as a natural part of making tools, refining tools and being changed by the tools they’ve created.
The new reality is that the tools of making the specific communicative objects created by “designers” are now accessible to much larger audiences. Massive quantity does make a difference. As with similar explosions of communicative objects in the past, most of what is created is junk.
The invention of print in the West lead to lots of really terrible looking print. What survives and is now treasured are the ones with enduring value. Similarly with the invention of steam powered powered print there was a massive increase quantity. Most of the books produced in Victorian England were awful. Again with mass market paperbacks.
The same dynamic is playing out with the web. Huge numbers of blogs. The overwhelming majority are awful. I think I read someone who said that the average blog has 1.5 readers. Same story with videos on YuoTube and with self published books. etc etc.
My opinion is that “designer” and “design thinking” were much more useful when they pointed to the craft expertise that was inaccessible to most. Going forward it obscures more than it clarifies. As any professional knows, “Everyone thinks they are a designer.” In fact they are right.
But where are the words to indicate that mostly they are very bad designers?
Perhaps the easiest way to get around this is to go back to the concrete words before the craft became a profession. Commercial artist instead of designer. One might say communication artist, but every artist produces art in the service of communication.
The real problem is the use of terms in the service of self image and status vis a vis the population at large. How many designers or even more to the point design schools would agree to call themselves Commercial Artists or schools that teach Commercial Art?
Design thinking? To me it’s either the scientific method applied to communication or perhaps what “communication engineers” do to earn a living.
Michael: So as to resolve the dissonance from your post that has disturbed me, I thought I’d clarify with you “My opinion is that “designer” and “design thinking” were much more useful when they pointed to the craft expertise that was inaccessible to most.”
My issue is in aligning “designer” in the same discussion as “design thinking”. Generally everyone who should come together to engage in a design thinking effort should be ‘craft capable’, representing various perspectives of their own crafts. Someone, somewhere, has to help codify the findings/agreements and also bring to the table artifacts to clearly understand and evolve the possibilities. Depending on the desired output, there may be no one with an actual designer title and/or there may be multiple designers.
The bottom line is that “design thinking” is more about architecture as design than it is about “designers” (kudos for Nuno for detailing this considerably).
Rotkapchen,
First, I have to say that “Resolving the dissonance that resulted” is a lovely way of describing it.
Secondly, “The bottom line is that “design thinking” is more about architecture as design than it is about “designers” We completely agree with the understanding that we are using the word “design thinking” in the same way. Based on this context, what I infer from your words, I believe we do. But..that’s between us and people(LikeUs)
I think you’ve hit on an important point with “Generally everyone who should come together to engage in a design thinking effort should be ‘craft capable’” . In my experience that should be true, but much of the conversation ignores this essential reality. At least in my experience in the States.
Consider:
“Generally everyone who should come together to engage in a thinking about a solving a real world problem should be ‘craft capable’” What precisely does “design thinking” add to the precision of the words?
The only thing I can see is that it somehow increases the value of those who are described or self described as “designer.” Unfortunately “design thinking” has become the buzz du jour among design school administrators and “educators.” Words can become devalued just as currencies can lose their value. Fighting for the value of an inflated dollar will probably have the same outcomes as trying to re establish the precision of a word that is quickly becoming bullshit.
In a previous post Nuno says “Design is actually the best word. It is more a problem of common understanding of the word than of the term itself.”
It brings the question to my mind “What precisely is the purpose of a word if not to clarify common understanding?” To me, “problem of common understanding” is a bit like blaming the customer in business and blaming the high school student for dropping or being pushed out of formal education.
It points to a real problem in that “common understandings” evolve to be ambiguous. Scientific understandings evolve to be precise.
The way I read the original question of this thread is as an attempt to solve the same problem faced by science writers. How to use language to increase the precision of common understanding. To that end, using words that don’t precisely point to real world experience hurts, not helps.
Michael: Beautiful.
I’d be particularly interested in more detail around “At least in my experience in the States. ” If it can be put into words and/or simply share specific artifacts/experiences that somehow add up to that observation.
I spent 30 years as Print Broker to the “Design Stars” in New York City. Then 7 years at Parsons. Which included a one term stint as “Acting Associate Chair” of the Communications Design Department. In the service of communicating where I’m coming from, I graduated from Columbia College in 1967.
Print Broker is the lowest status level of the Print Industry. The common term on the ground in the 1970’s was “scumbag printing broker.” The heavy metal printers saw us a freelance sales people, the globals saw us as “buying and marking up.” But the really creative indies saw us as the folks who got it done.
My most notorious client was M & Co. and Tibor Kalman. Tibor once said to me that the reason we did business together over a long time was that when he described a new project to most printers the usually said “Oh.” My reaction was almost invariably “Oh Wow!” Not great for making a living. But what fun. As an aside, I could never make money from Tibor. But I did learn most of what I know about production by trying to figure out how to do his annual Xmas package for the lowest possible cost with no time.
What I think I observed during my time at Parsons was an adminstration that devalued craft skills in pursuit of more lofty pursuits, that also had the benefit of driving admissions. To be clear, they are all good people. Merely distracted and confused by the buzz du jour. The pursuit of the Next Big Thing created too much noise for the signal of craft capable as a primary focus.
What I think I learned from Tibor was by watching him choose the absolutely best talent he could get, give that talent the space and rewards to succeed. It was a post graduate environment through which many of the great NY designers moved. (My business grew because of the relationships I built with those designers as they moved on and started their own enterprises.)
Tibor started in the business as a retail manager for Barnes and Noble. He didn’t have the “benefit” of credentials awarded by a “Design School.”
In the States, “design” is a huge educational industry. Not a surprise in a communication society with an Everyman culture. All good as far as it goes. What is dysfunctional (2me) is the notion that craft skill is easy and that experience is much less important than “being connected” to the Next Big Thing.
It’s bullshit in exactly the sense that Frankfort describes in On Bullshit. The purpose of the words is not to communicate or even to try to point to at the truth. The words are uttered to serve some personal purpose.
I think the faster the design professions eliminate this kind of bullshit, the faster we will be able to bring the insights earned to make the world better, much faster and put the profession on a sustainable path going forward.
And that well may be the issue of ‘disconnect’. The focus of “design thinking” is design — not designers. It’s a continuous gathering of craftsmen to engage in design.
Such design is further facilitated as a continuous method via infrastructural elements: methods, research (esp. a body of knowledge that is ‘validated’ for these conditions), and other architectural elements that support such continuous efforts (as opposed to the typical project initiative that starts from scratch each time).
This is a very interesting (kind of) off topic discussion. However I was away and now I have so much to comment I have no motivation… (yes I am a little lazy, lol).
So to keep things short:
– the scientific method IS design thinking. applied to everything. being engineers or designers or architects or scientists we all use it.
– design thinking is a controlled process of reasoning that the human kind has used since the dawn of time.
– it it based on the trial and error system (hypothesis and verification).
– knowing the craft is of the utmost importance as without the subject of study a thought process means nothing.
– it is called “project methodology”, or more commonly “systematic problem solving” (another expression very fashionable a few years ago).
– should be used by everyone, but since it is not and designers (architect included) have it has a primordial tool in their practice it got called Design Thinking as of late.
– about the name Design, I feel it is te best choice because no other term can be as all encompassing as it.
“- about the name Design, I feel it is te best choice because no other term can be as all encompassing as it.”
The problem with Design is that it is too all encompassing, when what I think we need are words that are more precise.
Nuno,
A couple of thoughts:
You say:
“the scientific method IS design thinking.” I agree.
“applied to everything” I disagree.
I suggest that it is the scientific method applied to creating objects that communicate. Designers understand and have the craft experience to know that form and color of buildings, typography, music and video can be harnessed in the service of communicating ideas and emotions.
The scientists have only recently discovered the power of scientific visualization. Tufte’s work with visualizing data sets is the best example that comes to mind. But the sub specialization of information design has been exploring the tools for quite a while.
“should be used by everyone, but since it is not” and “being engineers or designers or architects or scientists we all use it.”
I think that highlights a way out. The fact is that engineers and scientists have a rich history of reflection on the uses of the scientific method. Probably lots of lessons that we can use by studying that literature.
It might be useful to go back and look more closely at the insights of the Constructivism and especially the thought framework they used. Their challenge was to make sense of a world that was changing as fundamentally for them as this one is changing for us.
It’s interesting that El Lissitzky framed himself as a “engineer” or “artist” in the service of creating a better world. I think, but don’t know, that he didn’t consider himself a “designer”. I think, but do not know for sure, that “designer” gained ascendancy in the 1920’s as mass market industrialism was growing rapidly.
Now that the mass market is evolving into highly differentiated masses of niche markets probably on it’s way to ever changing communities of interest, it might be time to jettison a word that has outlived it’s usefulness.
Michael: Now I’ll clearly take sides with Nuno on this. Your description “Designers understand and have the craft experience to know that form and color of buildings, typography, music and video can be harnessed in the service of communicating ideas and emotions.” is a classic example of why we have so many challenges having Design Thinking conversations. That is a ‘classic’ but ill-suited definition of a designer. That’s a great definition of people who call themselves designers but who cannot apply their skills to ‘everything’, as Nuno correctly postulates. That makes them ‘decorators’ and not designers.
Design is the ‘middle’ between art and science. It embraces the dichotomy — it is the emergent paradox. All optimal design is found in the embracing the paradox. Many self-professed designers know nothing of such capabilities or possibilities…they’re not designers at all but self-aggrandized decorators.
I consider Tufte to be one of those. I was able to affirm this ‘hunch’ about him by speaking at length with one of his long-time colleagues at IBM, who described the very non-designerly behaviors of Tufte when interacting with people on projects. This individual was the silent partner behind the scenes who had to clean up the carnage Tufte left behind on his projects. Design is first and foremost about optimizing solutions for people. Tufte lacked these skills.
Rotkapchen,
Fair enough. This might be a good example of the confusion of the D word.
Consider:
Artists understand and have the craft experience to know that form and color of buildings, typography, music and video can be harnessed in the service of communicating ideas and emotions.”
Commercial artists are able to create communicative objects on deadline and with in budgets.
Project managers are able to lead teams of appropriate craft experts to solve real world problems on deadline and within budgets.
Entrepenuers identify and assemble the resources to create elegant sustainable solutions to real problem.
Researchers and theorists use the insights of the human sciences to point to appropriate solutions for human problems.
I think this more precisely describes the reality more than calling anyone a “designer”.
“Project managers are able to lead teams of appropriate craft experts to solve real world problems on deadline and within budgets.”
Not just this statement, but the whole list that you outlined is fundamentally the antithesis of design thinking. There’s nothing here to suggest how it all comes together — project managers are the least capable of synthesis across craft experts — and are often the primary cause for the wrong or insufficient breadth of craft experts being gathered.
“the whole list that you outlined is fundamentally the antithesis of design thinking.” Guilty as charge. I don’t believe “design thinking” is any longer useful way to point to things that happen in the real world.
There are two other items in my list that you don’t mention.
Entrepenuers identify and assemble the resources to create elegant sustainable solutions to real problem.
Researchers and theorists use the insights of the human sciences to point to appropriate solutions for human problems.
The point I’m trying to make is that power defines the problem to be solved. If their really good they use real data from the real world. The best way to find that data is by using the lens produced by researchers and theorists. In the professional world everything “below” this level of power is about intelligent sensitive implementation.
My sense is that what is usually referred to as “design thinking” is actually research, theory and entrepreneurial attitude. To be clear, commercial artists, project managers can take on those roles at different times in different contexts.
But, if a Uni sets the task of outcomes that have “design thinking” graduates, they would be well advised to train entrepreneurs, researchers and theorists.
“they use real data from the real world. The best way to find that data is by using the lens produced by researchers and theorists.”
Is it? Such research is the means by which to frame the scope, but everything everything else is the testing of those findings specific to ‘this’ problem’s context. At that point the ‘real data’ is the findings gathered by immersive ‘possibilities’ — dipping the potential solutions (or portions thereof) into realworld settings to be tested for viability and the gathering of data more relevant to ‘this’ situation.
You can use all the realworld data you want, but it will never suggest that you’ve postulated the wrong question to begin with.
We agree:
“You can use all the realworld data you want, but it will never suggest that you’ve postulated the wrong question to begin with.”
Consider that most entrepreneurs crash and burn. Many who run successful businesses don’t act or think like entrepreneurs. But is it “design thinking” that has a process for focusing on the right question? Or is it more precise to call that a robust entreprenuerial outlook with a good track record?
Michael: Indeed Design Thinking IS fundamentally focused on validating the question itself. The distinctions are clearly outlined in the hour-long presentation given by Roger Martin, as summarized in this post “Reliability vs. Validity” (with a link to the presentation): http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009/08/07/reliability-vs-validity/
Rotkapchen,
I think we are in raging agreement on the content. But disagree about the word to describe the reality of the content we both see. I just can’t see the utility to describe the state of affairs by “design thinking.”
Consider:
Roger Martin at the Article at Business Week:
“Design posseses an inherent bias toward validity. Great designers seek deep understanding of the user and the context, which entails consideration of many variables.”
Are Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Sirgey Brin best described as designers or CEO’s who see the world as entreprenuers?
I must say that from the outside of the “design world” it seems as if the industry and the educational institutions that support it, cling to “design thinking” in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is no longer useful.
For the institutions I believe it is maintained because access to top caliber talent in the worlds of research, theory and entreprenuers is expensive and limited. To compound the problem, most institutions are reluctant to partner with best in class, no matter where they work.
In that context it should not be a surprise that IDEO grew at Stanford and the Media Lab at MIT. My understanding is that D School does not give degrees. Rather they are an activity that brings together stars from the Standford faculty. I don’t know how Media Lab works, but would not be surprised if there were some kind of similar kind of arrangement. I think but don’t know that Media Lab doesn’t offer undergraduate degrees.
For many of the other schools that are trying to march under the banner of “design thinking” the inconvenient truth is that most do not have either the culture of open cooperation or the in house expertise to make it more than a marketing slogan.
Given this fact, I think it would do everyone a favor to find a different term that cannot be so easily misused.
Michael: You will get no arguments from me on the issues of the related degree programs or the many ways in which it is ill-applied. But I find the same thing with Systems Thinking. Thus, I spend considerable time trying to unravel what it is of Systems Thinking that is useful and what is ill-practiced.
“cling to “design thinking” in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is no longer useful.” Really? Is it evidence that Design Thinking is not useful or the ways in which it is erroneously being practiced that are not useful?
These are the conversations needed to correct that.
As to the quote from Roger Martin, I address this directly in my post:
“While Roger (probably for great ‘making a point’ purposes) puts business on one side and designers on another, I fundamentally believe that optimal design is actually in the middle (middle, not being a spacial thing, but somewhere other than one of the ends).”
I find it ironic that almost everything I use to make a credible point about Design Thinking is based on something that Roger Martin has introduced, and yet when he takes these fundamental principles and moves them forward he synthesizes them in ways of ‘limiting effectiveness’. I’ve detailed this in a piece that is being published in print, but is not scheduled for release until March 1st.
Rotkapcehn:
I knew we agreed. 🙂
My take is that banners of “design thinking” and system thinking/knowledge management/business MBAs along with much of what passes for “education research.”
While there is value, the primary function of these memes is to support the guild that produced them and use them to assert, instead of create, their value going forward. The credentialling of education is well described by Jane Jacobs in Dark Age Ahead. http://ilnk.me/19f8 It’s not a pretty picture.
You ask,
“Is it evidence that Design Thinking is not useful or the ways in which it is erroneously being practiced that are not useful?”
The problem I see that is that very usefulness of words is critically determined by how they are used. e.g “socialism” and “free market” in the United States have no discernible meaning. They have been devalued precisely because they are banners in the fight for power, which can be framed as market reach. In politics, it’s votes. In edu it’s tuition and brand value.
If a Uni charges $25,000 a year a kid it’s hard to justify that is fair value without the benefit of (xyz thinking.) Plus consider all the conferences and publications.
Once a currency or word has been so devalued the best path is to give it up. Find words that are more precise and use them to get to where we all want to go.
As a defender of cognitive relevance, I absolutely agree with your premise with terms. But language is merely an approximation of reality. It is never exact and cannot truly communicate meaning.
Where I attack specific terms is where the inherent goals can never be achieved: “knowledge management” (you cannot manage knowledge) or “User Experience” (making someone a ‘user’ makes them subject ‘to’ the thing, which is the antithesis of the intended goal). I do not find these issues with the term Design Thinking — otherwise I’d be the first to be on your bandwagon. And I’ve not found a suitable alternative (also a criterion for an anti-argument).
Indeed, the use of the term “Design Thinking” is actually the classic argument against the use of the term “Design” by itself, because it is so badly encumbered with misnomers…although it is in reality the more appropriate label as Nuno postulates.
Rotkapchen:
“But language is merely an approximation of reality. It is never exact and cannot truly communicate meaning.” True. But the constant struggle that is the essence of good design, writing and research is to find just the right words to be able to focus on just that slice of reality to improve what needs to be improved.
eg. I’m sure that bottom of the pyramid education in the States could take a big jump forward if design sensitive practice and intelligence were applied to the problem. Instead we have Teacher’s Colleges selling credentials that are widely agreed are relatively useless. And hard working teachers trying to use the well defined insights that we’ve earned.
My bet is that it’s going to be solved by entrepreneurs – not “design thinkers” both within and outside of public education.
I have a feeling that it would make most sense for us to agree that we will continue to have some disagreements about the usefulness of “design thinking.” I feel a little uncomfortable about filling this comment threadm which has been so rich and useful.
If you want to continue the convo. Your blog or twitter works for me. It’s @toughloveforX
“it’s going to be solved by entrepreneurs – not “design thinkers””
That’s a contradiction indeed. Design Thinking fundamentally embraces the first part of your statement. Design Thinking is not equivalent to “thinking about design” — unless of course your definition of design is as broad as Nuno suggested (clearly not the description you offered earlier).
And yes, there are many who want to define/control its meaning for their own purposes. But this has been an issue for some time and will only be mitigated by challenging these efforts as I did years ago (and obviously continue to do so now, all for no gain on my part):
http://totalexperience.corante.com/archives/2007/08/31/design_thinking.php
Power to the Possibilities
Guys you are really killing me here… everytime I come to check on this I have tons of text to comment on.
As it is take my opinion on almost everything as Rotkapchen’s words.
I just wanted to add:
“Once a currency or word has been so devalued the best path is to give it up. Find words that are more precise and use them to get to where we all want to go.”
And this is why we are always cycling through Fashionable trends of wording and naming. My opinion? Just stick with what we got and try to clear it. A devalued word or expression is no longer fashionable and therefore can be used in its true meaning without inflation (correct or incorrect).
Another thing is I feel some concepts are being mixed. A CEO or an entrepreneur is how one chooses to take part in the market and such positions can be occupied by a varied array of professionals. They are not all Designers (nor should they be).
Should the name of Designers be changed? I think so. Should the term Design Thinking be changed? Not as I understand it.
Design is a process in which you solve a problem limited by any number of constraints, which is much more encompassing than a current Designer position, i. e. Architects are also designers because they use the same method to project.
Commercial artist is just wrong since any artist that sells their work would become commercial.
In fact designer is such a broad term that noone just says they are a designer (when they really are… wannabes use it very often I expect) they explain they are graphic designers, industrial/product designers, etc.
Can you apply Design Thinking to a business? You most certainly can (in fact you should). Does that make you a Designer? Nope.
And there are much more I could say, but I have gone long enough.
As a side note, maybe this subject is interesting enough for a google wave? Just a thought since it would make for a much more structured and readable discussion.
Nuno :
So that means you don’t think Sergey or Jobs or Bezos use “design thinking” to figure out how to get from here to there. I just can’t figure out what I’m missing. No kidding around. I really don’t get it.
“and obviously continue to do so now, all for no gain on my part): ”
So I’m just saying give it up. The struggle just ain’t worth it. Don’t have all that much to do with where the world is going to wind up anyways 🙂
It is only by going ‘through’ the struggle that all purpose in life is found (“by the sweat of your brow” was a blessing in the context of moving from an immortal to a mortal state, not a curse).
Nuno: The liberties taken in GoogleWave (esp. redefining simple things like the scrollbar) make it far less effective for me than existing technologies.
I applaud your focus. I’m retired so I now have the luxury of dipping in and out again. But I’ve always suffered from some version of ADHD. It’s just one of many reasons I’ve always been on the outside looking in at the magic of the great designers.
I have to say I use Wave as a noob probably… lol
Why would we need to redefine the scrollbar?
My viewpoint is if it can be used exactly and as simply as google mail and google docs, why not just use it that way until we develop better skills?
I have to admit I do not understand the majority’s discarding of Wave…
Michael:
If they use it or not only they know, it is a mental process. I assume that the companies at large do use Design Thinking (market research is design thinking, ui design involves design thinking, etc.).
My point is exactly that. They can use Design Thinking to improve their business but that does not make them designers. Or more correctly no more than any other that uses the same process.
If your concern is that the System controls titles based on schooling then I am afraid your problem is not just with Design.
No question that my problem is not with Design.
In fact I’ve spent my professional life working with designers and communications. My problem is when words are used not to clarify reality, but to obscure it in the service of some other purpose. Most important to me is that it pollutes the public discourse about important issues. But in almost every discipline it has a similar effect.
To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that any comment on this blog is guilty of that activity. Merely that the stuggle to redefine words that are used in the interest of bs marketing and branding is a battle that may not be worth the time that goes into when there are such pressing problems that must be solved.
This is the one time I must take issue w/Nuno “(market research is design thinking, ui design involves design thinking, etc.).”
Market research can be leveraged in Design Thinking (although the typical methods of conducting market research are fundamentally flawed and generate grossly inactionable findings) and ‘better’ UI will embrace design thinking. But neither of them IS design thinking. Both would be greatly enhanced by extending/replacing many of their practices based on design thinking principles.
I might not have explained myself clearly for sure.
Market Research – the choice of a tight target audience and the use of market research in the process of creation is how I relate it ot design thinking.
UI – did not say it was, but that it was involved, theories of proximity, etc apply.
market research DATA << in the…
OK, everyone, time out and look at some trees. There is a poetry around language used simply, but evocatively, to release naturally rich, complex solutions that continually generate new growth, and there is an overthinking of the complexity of language that creates artificially simple structures that are high-maintenance and short-lived.
Harry Seldon’s blog : Controls vs Chaos, a simple illustration – http://ow.ly/17FGS.
I think this is closer to what I would refer to as “design thinking.”
Just thinkin…
I found a blog post on Knowledge Management that might help clarify the point I’ve been trying to make. The link is http://ilnk.me/1a32
A snippet follows:
“At Environmental Resources Management (ERM), we don’t start with Knowledge Management (KM), we start with business issues and then look at ways in which the KM team can resolve them.”
If Knowledge Management is replaced with Design Team it points to “entrepreneur” as the driving force for innovation. And Design Team in their role as harnessing that force with objects that communicate.
My takeway from Ken’s useful comment is that a successful entrepreneur has to see the world as one of Controls vs Chaos, a simple illustration – http://ow.ly/17FGS The unique position of an entrepreneur is that success metrics are very clear. That sharpens the thinking and the execution. Sub optimal thinking leads to crash and burn.
Well, actually, in my bumbling way, I was trying to introduce a different perspective to reframe a discussion that I felt was veering near the cliff of a religious war over semantic precision. And although I haven’t personally met any of the folks engaged in this particular thread, I deeply appreciate both the sense and the passion behind all these comments. Gotta respect Venessa et al. for some very serious and in-depth thinking, for the most part based on down-to-earth experience.
That said, I don’t believe we’re coming or will ever come to common ground in slicing and dicing the differences between “design thinkers” and “entrepreneurs.”
Nevertheless, about those darn trees…Michael, I’m going to try addressing your concerns, since as a curmudgeonly old white guy who has been around the block once or twice myself (at some level, I KNOW you man, and I respect who you are and what you’re doing with clickable print–thanks, but I’m going to call you out just a little, because I respect you). I think underneath it all, you really do, in your heart of hearts, know exactly what Venessa, Rotkapchen and others are saying, but you will never get them to abandon their understanding of “design thinking” for “entrepreneur” because they are speaking as precisely as they can (and, frankly, as precisely as appropriate) from a universe of experience and understanding in which DT includes vital aspects of entrepreneurship, but is not bound by the traditional parameters or associations with that term. And in my limited yet growing understanding (still catching up in so many ways), I agree with them. A simple substitution of terms just doesn’t ring true.
Ok, I’ll fess up, in another portion of my day I’m a writer/rewriter/editor, so I do have a professional appreciation for the appropriately precise selection of terms and phrasing. And yet I thrive on the “sloppiness” of language; I love it when someone uses a new term or applies an “old” phrase in an unexpected way to open even a slightly different sense or perspective on what I had thought I already knew.
You’re trying to force a living, evolving concept into a level of precision that is like trimming circular trees. Scientific thinking is always bound by the appropriate level of precision, a healthy and reasonable “margin of error” that is greatest during periods of the highest uncertainty…and highest creativity.
Is the term, “design thinking” a little messy right now? Yes and no; frankly, Venessa’s post and ensuing conversation (and remarkable patience for windbag digressions like this) have gone a long way to bring collective clarity. Is the term at risk of being co-opted by the marketing machines of opportunistic pulp authors and publishers? Sigh…this part of the language cycle has become so compressed that I dare not release even a smidgen of my own cynicism here. Nevertheless, the term has become more useful for me, based on the creativity and promise of creative solutions that have been so well alluded to in other comments and references. Will I rush to the barricades in it’s defense? Well, my days of rushing to any barricades are for the most part done, and certainly not for semantic purity. People are literally dying out there for practical solutions, and insofar as “design thinking” may release some of those solutions (as Tim Brown seems to suggest)–then go for it. I’m not going to call colleagues in this battle to account over what I think might be a sloppy use of terms.
Cut some slack, bro. There is a beauty in circular trees, but like trying to enforce excessive precision in the use of specific terms, you can and will be trimming forever to control those pesky offshoots with a mind of their own.
And thanks to one and all–especially Venessa–for opening up this discussion!
The point however is exactly that “Design Thinking” is NOT “Entrepreneurship”. They are completely different terms not even related in the same scale.
A design thinker is someone that decides to study a given object (can be non material) while analysing its effectiveness, efficiency, etc
An entrepreneur is someone that puts into practice a new product (material or not) by their own.
Can a design thinker be also an entrepreneur? Yes. Can an entrepreneur be also a design thinker? Yes. Are both concepts the same thing? NO!
A person can be both if the person making the study/research and launching/releasing the product are one and the same, but that does not make the two terms synonyms.
Ken,
The last thing I think appropriate is a religious war. We’ve all seen how that has played out in American national politics. Not pretty nor enlightening. I once heard some Wall Street type describe his attitude as “strong opinions, lightly held.” I think it describes the attitude that I have evolved to. As a young man, all my opinions were both strong and strongly held. That lead exactly to “religious wars.”
Having said that I am afraid that much of the public discourse suffers from a politeness that makes it much more difficult to get clarity on words.
The reason I think semantic discussions are important is in the service of how to get from here to where we want to be. In my case it’s a place of peace and a rich public discourse. If words are used to obfuscate – in this case primarily in my view – academics and institutions of “higher learning” they make it harder rather than easier.
Thanks to Vanessa and all the contributors who’ve entered the “fight” in the interest of the clarity we all need to harness the rich insights we’ve learned to design better ways to live and to fix so much that is broken.
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Here’s a nice video on how Design Thinking is penetrating education and helping students begin thinking more of how to create.
http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2008/10/roger.html
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See my dissertation on Emergent Design which might give you some new perspectives on Design Thinking at http://ura.unisa.edu.au/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=unisa42392 See also http://emergentdesign.net
Kent Palmer
http://kentpalmer.info
Great article !
It is just about to be 2011 and I needed a good injection of common sense ! Your article provided that !
Thanks !
glad you enjoyed it. can’t believe it’s been over a year since i wrote this!
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can i get references on yr articles, concerning designing
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