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Jude - There have been numerous blog posts arguing against the received
notions of Design Thinking as practiced by the large design firms today. I
don't blame IDEO for integrating it into their widely-publicized processes.
We should also recognize that a smart design firm does not serve their
projects by deploying a cookbook approach to designing, whatever they
promote as process. Design Thinking, even as executed by IDEO, is not a
given process.
A couple of months ago on this list I think it was Mauricio Meija has posted
this about Buchanan's original theory (1992) of what design thinking was a
practice of designers adapting different placements of artifacts and signs
to relevant forms and objects. Buchanan - and others before him - argued
pretty clearly against the adoption of a design process framework as a
design activity. Mauricio I think was the one I cite here since I liked his
characterization even better:
"Buchanan argued that design categories such as graphic design, industrial
design, architecture should be reinterpreted by places of invention that
include signs, objects, actions, and thought. All designers move among these
places of inventions. Placements are diverse changing patterns without
boundaries. Placements orient design thinking but, instead of frameworks,
help to create new possibilities."
That is not the staged approach represented by design thinking in business
schools today. I also argued for a flexible adaptation of principles and
knowledge to design methods in systems and design thinking in a 2009 article
found online at:
http://www.archive-ilr.com/archives-2009/2009-08/2009-08-article-jones.php
I'll cite a little of it here, because I just left a wonderful Festschrift
in honor of Stu Card, where Stu put on a video of his mentor Alan Newell's
last lecture, about the power of following distractions, of which Stu said
he was one. I cite Newell in the first paragraphs, as it's both helpful and
honorable to respect your sources:
Learning the Lessons of Systems Thinking: Exploring the Gap between Thinking
and Leadership
(After half a page or so ...)
Why then were some practices much more successfully adopted than others?
Russ Ackoff shares many stories of successful applications, but then his
approaches (for example, Idealized Design) reformulate deep theory into
simple working language and structures for action. He has participated in
the front lines of organizational decision-making, unlike other systems
theorists who step in and out of the arena of committed action. Ackoff’s
approach is identified as a design for a reason. His school of systems
thinking is explicitly framed as designing and I consider it the progenitor
of today’s design thinking. Finally, Professor Ackoff also demonstrates the
capability to think independently—to not be attached to the belief systems
he himself may have constructed. I will add that systems or design
'thinking' must be dynamic processes, not just frameworks of ideas, to be
considered thinking. We must free it up from the belief systems accrued from
its theoretical development and (often limited) validation.
Many systems thinkers explicitly oriented their theories to designing, at
least starting with Newell, Simon and Shaw’s (1958) The Processes of
Creative Thinking. Ackoff’s basic principles—such as starting from an ideal
envisioned outcome and generate scenarios for reaching that vision—fit many
of the practices espoused by firms such as IDEO, Jump, and Redesign
Research. We may have dressed up the methodologies and supported them with
design research, but design thinking is indebted more to systems thinkers
than to traditional (industrial) designers. (Which may explain why design
thinking is, unfortunately, rarely presented with the “designerly” richness
it deserves).
I would push the argument one step further. It appears Dr. Collopy advocates
that we avoid the belief systems associated with systems thinking and adopt
the toolkits of design that emerged from its sister meta-theory, design
thinking. These methods include problem framing, divergent idea generation,
visual thinking and expression, human-centered scenario creation, and so on.
The argument follows that, if we forego attachment to the theoretical
frameworks and build a rich arsenal of methods and tools, we might then test
their applicability in practice to the many different problem areas we face.
We can crowd-source their R&D, and inductively develop a more resilient
working framework based on empirical observation of application.
I'll close by saying Stu emphasized to the group and to me that we need to
focus on and recover the power of theory in HCI and interaction design. I'll
reinforce that by relating that the very informal session on design theory
at CHI pushed over 70 people to an overflow room. However, there is no
replacement for Stu Card on the horizon today.
Peter Jones
Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Strategic Innovation Lab
Faculty, Strategic Foresight and Innovation
http://DesignDialogues.com
-----Original Message-----
From: CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 2:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: IDEO design thinking
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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