Tim, Stefanie and others, I agree: Design thinking as it is understood in our field needs to be reattached to designing.
Besides that I think the current interest in design and the way design is practiced is in its sum positive. One of the more substantive contributions to my mind is the concept of the Systems Architect as suggested by Maier and Rechtin (Rechtin, 1999)(Maier & Rechtin, 2000).
They don’t talk about design thinking but suggest a managerial role that is inspired by the architect’s ability to handle fuzzy, and ill-defined problems in an holistic manner. They are both systems engineers (Rechtin died in 2006) and realized that traditional systems engineering management had its limitations.
I first learned about this from the current chief of staff at the Norwegian Defence Research Institute who before was the project manager of a mine sweeper ship building project where the managerial problem was to keep a holistic overview and to balance numerous experts. Traditional “hard” project management alone came short and he turned to Systems Architecting as a role in addition to the project manager.
I think this is an example why other people turn to design-like approaches and I don’t think there is anything negative in that as long as they and we understand its nature, its potential and limitations. Most important its not one nicely defined thing and getting inspiration from how designers work is not a quick fix. Maier and Rechtin call it ‘The Art of Systems Architecture’
Thanks Erik for the initiative.
Maier, M. W., & Rechtin, E. (2000). The Art of Systems Architecture. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Rechtin, E. (1999). Systems Architecting of Organisations: Why Eagles Can’t Swim. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press LLC.
Birger Sevaldson (PhD, MNIL)
Professor at Institute of Design
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
www.birger-sevaldson.no
www.systemsorienteddesign.net
www.ocean-designresearch.net
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