Dear Francois,

Thanks for your reply. What I wrote was nearly the diametric opposite to your response. While I respect your right to have this view, you are suggesting a series of specializations based on the artisan crafts guild culture and educational traditions of the old design schools.

The notion of a “design doing” without thinking is exactly the method of behavioral modeling for inductive training used in master-apprentice relations. My position is that professional design doing requires design thinking based on a research-intensive curriculum (Friedman 1997: 16-18, 20-24; see also: Friedman 2012). This is also Don Norman and Scott Klemmer’s (2014) point.

I am not calling for designers to distinguish “design thinking” from “design doing.” For that matter, I am not calling for greater efficiency but greater effectiveness. Efficiency is improved performance with greater outputs for fewer inputs. Effectiveness involves the right choice of goals and strategy. I argue for effective design

Don and Scott (Norman and Klemmer 2014: n.p.) describe effective design well. Effective design requires 1) design thinking to ensure that design select and solve the correct problem; 2) systems thinking to cut across and encompassing all disciplines; 3) integrative design to blends practice and theory; 4) human-centered design to assure that people and technology work harmoniously in collaboration.

This is quite different to more efficient specializations.

It is my view that all professional designers of any kind without respect to their practice or their target field require a foundation in the same range of skills (Friedman 2012: 144, Fig. 2, Col. 1). The skills presented here can be mapped over onto the skills defined as design thinking: 1) problem solving, from problem selection, through heuristics, modeling, prototyping, trialing, and iterative reworking through solution, 2) interaction method, another label for a range of strategic design skills in interdisciplinary working groups, 3) coaching, 4) mind mapping and other thinking or heuristic support methods, 5) research skills, 6) analysis, 7) rhetoric, as an art of discovery, development, and disclosure, 8) logic, and 9) mathematics as a tool for use in some processes.

These processes also map over onto the first stages of Buckminster Fuller’s (1969: 319) description of effective design process. Fuller divides the process into two steps. The first is a subjective process of search and research. The second is a generalizable process that moves from prototype to practice.

Under the subjective process of search and research, Fuller outlines a series of steps starting with the preferred outcome. This is the issue he labels “teleology,” acknowledging that the first notions of a preferred outcome may be a fuzzy sense or a poorly articulated sense of dissatisfaction with the current state:

teleology —> intuition —> conception —>
apprehension —> comprehension —>
experiment —> feedback —>

Fuller then moves to generalization and the objective development that will lead to a practical outcome:

prototyping #1 —> prototyping #2 —> prototyping #3 —> ( . . . )
production design —>

From this point, the process moves from design to implementation. It is Fuller’s argument – and mine – that we require effective first steps to achieve effective outcomes.

production modification —> tooling —>
production —> distribution —>
installation —> maintenance —> service —>
reinstallation —> replacement —>
removal —> scrapping —> recirculation

While purely efficient outcomes may not be effective, effective outcomes will be efficient.

The challenge does not involve a need for design schools to educate specialist designers. We have enough specialist schools that teach specialist design skills in any of the three or four specialist fields that any one school offers. With around 30,000 or so design schools of some kind in the world, we have more than enough of these, and most of these programs specialize in methods or skills suited to another era.

There are a few top quality specialist schools with outstanding professional practice programs that specialize in specific fields of design practice. Despite their excellence in the specialist fields, they do not offer the broader range of skills and concepts that designers need. They may offer some skills and concepts tailored to and embedded in the specialism. They lack the broader intellectual foundation required outside the narrow silo of their specific practice. And even then, there are very few outstanding specialist schools compared with the vast number of merely good schools and the even larger number of mediocre and poor schools.

The most promising situation is for the best design schools to make the two significant transitions that mark the best business schools. The first transition is a broad transition from vocational and practical training to research-based professional education. Design schools face an added challenge, as we are far behind the other professions in developing strong research programs. This means that we also face a challenge that business schools do not face: we lack curriculum materials and textbooks based on serious research.

At the same time, several of the best design schools are becoming research-intensive. These have deepened their research culture to become serious centers of inquiry in design. But these are a few dozen schools among many thousands. To achieve the transition we require, more design schools require a broad base of conceptual skills as well as focused range of professional target disciplines.

We also require a second significant transition. Along with a strong focus on research, we ALSO need a deeper emphasis on professional engagement in the working world of design problems.

Designers today work across the four orders of design (see: Buchanan 1992, 2001; Golsby-Smith 1996). While no single designer can work across all four orders, many top designers work on projects that involve two, three, or even all four orders. This means that design schools must develop and participate in innovation centers, client-focused research projects, customer-focused research projects, and different approaches to engaged scholarship make a major difference. (Again, see Van de Ven 2007.)

On the side of professional practice and engagement, it seems to me that several program function effectively using one of several design thinking approaches. I heard a great deal about Stanford d.school and Stanford ME310. I seen first-hand evidence for the Aalto Design Factory, the Aalto Tongji Design Factory, and the Swinburne Design Factory. I’ve also heard good things about other programs such as the OCAD University Strategic Innovation Lab. There may be more.

One crucial aspect of these successful programs is that they are not old-fashioned design centers or design consultancies housed within a design school to give students the same kind of experience they’d get as junior designers working under the instruction and supervision of a senior designer. That approach is based on the artisan craft guild tradition. It continues the teaching and learning style of the ordinary studio school.

When design schools adopt the design thinking model, they organize students in interdisciplinary project teams. These teams involve students from faculties and disciplines outside design. The team will be closely connected with legitimate stakeholders and problem owners of the problems they attempt to solve.

And, again, they will 1) use design thinking to ensure that design select and solve the correct problem; 2) use systems thinking to cut across and encompassing all disciplines; 3) use integrative design to blends practice and theory; 4) use human-centered design methods to ensure that people and technology work harmoniously in collaboration (Norman and Klemmer 2014: n.p.).

What I argue for, therefore, is a platform of common skills and perspectives essential to all successful design; a platform of common skills and perspectives that links designers to the others in the teams that come together to solve problems; and then the specific target discipline skills that any one designer may need as a member of such a team.

Since the narrow specialist education of the guild tradition teaches deeply rooted skills through modeling and behavior modification, this forms an inadequate basis for professional design practice today. To focus on “design doing” without “design thinking” will not distinguish us from business schools.

The term “design thinking” is a fuzzy and amorphous designation for a range of vital practices that has not been articulated as well as should be done. Several terms may mean roughly the same thing – “design integration,” “strategic design,” “frame creation,” integrated thinking,” or even “value engineering” and “interaction method.” The point of this range of common methods is that problem-solving professionals of all kinds should be adopting and using them. This includes designers.

Warm wishes,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia

References

Buchanan, Richard. 1992. “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.” Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring, 1992), pp. 5-21.

Buchanan, Richard. 2001. “Design Research and the New Learning.” Design Issues, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 3-23.

Friedman, Ken. 1997. “Design Science and Design Education.” In The Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki, 54-72. Available at URL: https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Friedman, Ken. 2012. “Models of Design: Envisioning a Future for Design Education.” Visible Language, Vol. 46, No. 1/2, pp. 128-151. Available at URL: https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

Fuller, Buckminster. 1969. Utopia or oblivion: the prospects for humanity. New York: Bantam Books.

Golsby-Smith, Tony. 1996. “Fourth Order Design: A Practical Perspective.” Design Issues, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 5-25.

Norman, Don, and Scott Klemmer. 2014. State of Design: How Design Education Must Change. LinkedIn Influencers. Available at URL: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140325102438-12181762-state-of-design-how-design-education-must-change?trk=mp-reader-card

Van de Ven, Andrew H. 2007. Engaged Scholarship  A Guide for Organizational and Social Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Information available at: http://global.oup.com/academic/product/engaged-scholarship-9780199226306



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