Dear Jude, Rob, Peter, Bob and Elizabeth and all

Rob's two issues make good sense for situations in which designs and design
contexts are 'simple' in systems terms. This has been the case for almost
everything to do with design practices and outcomes in the realm of Art and
Design design fields. In fact, by observation, there is a close correlation
between designs that are not 'simple' and design failures.

Rob's comments also make sense, however, a different kind of sense, if one
focuses on complex design situations.

Taking a step back. One of the crucial aspects of design is to be able to
accurately predict the behaviour of design outcomes. This is a core issue
and one that is often overlooked. If one doesn't need to predict the design
outcomes, then it is likely the design work is either trivial or useless.

Why is it important to predict the'*behaviour* of design outcomes? In any
significant design project, design outcomes will vary considerably over
time. Knowing the dynamic 'behaviour' of those outcomes is an important part
of understanding whether a design is likely to be successful or not, of
calculating its ROI, and for a whole bunch of other purposes , including
selecting between potential part-solutions during design activity.

Common theories about design (including 'design thinking') and design
methods and practices assume consequences (design outcomes) are close in
time and place to causes and that consequences can be simply and directly
inferred from causes. This is obvious in the standard model of design
thinking, where the weight of focus is on idea generation, and the design
thinking process assumes that participants and consumers can readily,
deontically, identify whether a design works as intended. Emphasising
creativity and presuming the understanding of how a design works is
similarly assumed in most design processes taught in the Art and Design
design fields. In all of these fields, it is assumed the difficulty is in
creativity and ideation, and once one has creatively innovated a new and
wonderful solution, it is obvious whether it works or not.

Complex design situations are those in which the dynamic behaviour of design
outcomes varies as a result of multiple feedback loops with delays. In these
cases, consequences (i.e. design outcomes) are indirectly connected to
causes; are remotely connected in time and space to those causes; and the
consequences are dynamically changing as a result of feedback from multiple
factors that are also changing dynamically as a result of their
relationships with other factors in the situation. This makes it very
difficult to predict the behaviour of design outcomes (as well as the
behaviour of the design itself)

For complex design situations, the balance of effort in the design activity
is very different from simple design situations. In complex design
situations, the significant problem focus is on predicting the dynamic
behaviour of design outcomes. In contrast, idea generation and creative
thinking is much less of an issue. In fact, in many complex design
situations, the idea generation/creativity aspects may be relatively
trivial as many aspects of designs are dictated by the design context
itself.

The problem of predicting the behaviour of design outcomes is the big hurdle
- because humans can't do it no matter how creative or intelligent they are.
This lack of biologically-based ability is the heart of the issue in terms
of understanding design

Empirically, it is clear that humans are not capable of mentally or
emotionally predicting the dynamic behaviours of design outcomes of complex
design situations with multiple feedback loops. It is an incapability that
appears to be due to biological limitations of our brains. The limitation
is easily observable by simply giving someone a situation with multiple
feedback loops and asking them to predict its behaviour. This constraint
applies no matter how creative or talented the individual is.

In this context of complex design situations, the model of 'Design
Thinking' doesn't work. It simply doesn't have the necessary component
elements in the Design Thinking process, and if they were added it wouldn't
be the same process.

The alternative Rob proposes, using the innate skills of creative
individuals, also doesn't work for complex design situations. Creative
individuals, like anyone else are incapable of predicting the dynamic
behaviour of complex multi-feedback loop design situations. If one doubts
this, please test it. It is easy to set up a simple experiment that does
this test. If you find evidence to contradict the above, *please* let me
know!

ROI issues are also different for complex design situations. To calculate
ROI accurately for complex design situations requires extending both the
breadth and depth over time of the ROI investigation compared to simple
design. It requires increasing the breadth, because any complex design when
actualised and operating results in changes in multiple factors as a result
of the feedback loops. There would have been different dynamic changes in
these factors were the design not implemented. Hence these dynamic
differences are sources of difference in terms of costs and benefits;
contributing to or taking away from return on investment. These changes to
factors, and the changes to the world that are the dynamically changing
intentional and unintentional design outcomes occur over time. Sometimes
they occur over a long time, which can be decades. Hence it is important
that ROI for complex designs are measured or calculated over the
necessarily long time scales.

Why is differentiating between simple and complex design situations
important?

First is that the design approaches and skills of creative individuals that
work well for simple design situations typically fail for complex design
situations. It is obvious, and has been for several decades, that
conventional design methods such as 'design thinking' do not apply to
complex design situations in terms of offering any means to predict the
dynamic behaviour of design outcomes . An example is the longer term adverse
effects of the implementation of education as a means of increasing national
competitiveness. These kind of complex design situation problems and this
difference between simple and complex design situations has been
documented from the earliest days of system dynamics research.

Second there is an increasing assumption, fuelled by the 'design thinking'
movement and others, that design thinking and the design approaches used for
simple design problems also apply to complex design problems. I suggest this
is likely to result in swathes of design failures as one would expect if
designers, sponsors and consumers cannot predict the dynamic affects of
outcomes and results of designs when implemented.

The above indicates that in discussions about design it would be helpful
to explicitly specify the complexity of design situations.

[Jude - I've written about this in a variety of contexts, see
www.love.com.au ]

[Note: I've used the conventional categories and terminology of simple and
complex from systems dynamics (simple, complicated, complex, chaotic,
unknown). Don Norman has recently published a book on similar issues and Don
uses the terms complicated and complex slightly differently]

Best wishes,
Terry
===
Dr. Terence Love
[log in to unmask]
www.love.com.au
Tel: +61 (0)8 9305 7629
Fax: +61 (0)8 9305 7629
Mob: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
===

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rob
Curedale
Sent: Wednesday, 11 May 2011 3:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: IDEO design thinking

I would like to see comparative research of the results of projects
following the design thinking process and projects following other processes
from the perspective of ROI and other measures of success. Designers tend to
use isolated case studies rather than quantitative comparisons of many
projects. It may be possible that there is a lower return on investment on
average by following the design thinking process as outlined by IDEO.

Another potential weakness of the design thinking process is that it doesn't
seem to take into account that some people are more creative than others as
a result of their inherited capacity to be creative. I am not sure that a
group of uncreative people can be creative if they follow the design
thinking process.

Beyond these qualifications I think that it is a process that has been
followed by many professionals over the last one or two decades before it
was called design thinking and it is a good process.

*Rob Curedale*
*.....................................................................*

*email: [log in to unmask]
url: www.curedale.com
address: PO Box 1153 Topanga CA 90290 USA
cell: 616.405.8074
skype: rob.curedale
profile: http://tiny.cc/92p9t*
*twitter: @designresearch*

*.....................................................................*



On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:18 AM, CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS) <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Friends
>
> I am writing something critical about IDEO's understanding of what "design
> thinking" is, and wanted to ask if you might have written anything in that
> respect, I'd be very interested to read it.
>
> I have colleagues who are great fans of IDEO, as am I, but I am worried
> that it's notion of design thinking converges too quickly and seems to
> narrow designerly thinking's potential for emerging new ideas and
paradigms,
> given its concern with user needs and human centeredness--both ideas seem
to
> presuppose a fixed notion somewhat of what it means to be human, and so
> directs us to these; whereas Simon for instance speaks of designs'
potential
> for emerging new preferences, and perhaps new ways of being human.
>
>
>
> Many thanks
> Jude
> National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
>
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