19. 3.13Hello Elizabeth and all,
Thanks for this very engaging post.( will post also with this WORD document attached as well due to some technical issues....)
As an older "design thinker" from a more traditional background, I like to think of design thinking as a broad engagement of people in processes to create , as Nelson and Stolterman ( 2012 The Design Way) suggest, the "that-which-has-not-yet-been seen"...I realize that in such a quick response there are many more ideas to unpack.I do not adhere to design thinking as one of three styles, or accounts, but rather a grouping together of several processes, and, depending on the discipline(s) a particular grouping together of processes with designers ways of thinking that are internalized and then externalized somehow when the design is manifested.
But this requires a much longer post. These are not "claims" (my huge caveat), just ideas and thoughts as I try myself to understand how design thinking occurs. As we cannot "know" what goes on in the mind, design "thinking" is a difficult concept to pin down. Yet we have many characteristics that you express really nicely here, and others such as Charles Burnette, Edouardo Corte Real and others have expressed on this list over the years.
Let me add something to the conversation - in my mind there is no dualism of "thinking and knowing" - I have, for some time, suggested that the design process , when engaging "thinking and doing" as somewhat concurrent processes, engages all the people involved. How this is done ethically, systematically, innovatively, etc is another layer added on, and in the past people such as Ken Friedman have advocated Buckminster Fullers' idea, or some have spoken of "onion layers".
Some time ago I did a workshop on creative/design thinking with parents in an elementary school - we engaged together in the issues of how to get their children to work together on their homework, and looked at it as how to creatively apply solutions to the problems. Through an engagement of different "design thinking" tools by the parents, including model-making, mathematical problems of mobius strips, drawing and collage, we explored how to do science of math homework differently.
Hopefully this is what design thinking can be for and how we might consider sending it out into the world.
best
Tiiu From a snow day in the blizzard....Montreal!
Nelson, H. & Stolterman ( 2012) The Design Way: INtentional Change in an Unpredictable World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Poldma, T. (2009). Taking Up Space: Exploring the Design Process. New York: Fairchild Publications.Poldma, T ( 2013) ( Ed.) Meanings of Designed Spaces. New York: Fairchild Publications.
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posted 19.3.13
Abstract
> The term design thinking has gained considerable attention over the past decade in a wide range of organizations and contexts beyond the traditional preoccupations of designers. The main idea is that the ways professional designers problem solve is of value to firms trying to innovate and to societies trying to make change happen. This paper reviews the origins of the term design thinking in research on designers and its adoption by management educators and consultancies within a dynamic, global mediatized economy. Three main accounts are identified: design thinking as a cognitive style, as a general theory of design, and as a resource for organizations. The paper then argues there are several issues that undermine the claims made for design thinking. The first is how many of these accounts rely on a dualism between thinking and knowing, and acting in the world. Second, the idea of a generalized design thinking ignores the diversity of designers' practices and institutions which are historically situated. The third is how design thinking rests on theories of design that privilege the designer as the main agent in designing. Instead the paper proposes that attending to the situated, embodied routines of designers and others offers a useful way to rethink design thinking.
> Elizabeth Guffey
> http://openscholar.purchase.edu/eguffey/
> ondesign
>
> Founding Editor
> Design and Culture
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