Hi Stephanie,
Thank you for your message. We've been here before.
The approach needed to delve backwards into understanding these issues is a bit like archaeology.
At this point its perhaps good to distinguish between direct and indirect evidence. Direct evidence is usually preferable to indirect evidence
Direct evidence is for example witness evidence of people who were there.
Indirect evidence is things like writings about what happened later. Or even more indirect and unreliable, is trying to distil understanding from what is missing from the written evidence. Think of the design literature from the 60s onwards being only the later part of a period after which things started to get written down. Before that you need to look in a different way. There are plenty of us around who were in engineering design in the 60s and remember what happened.
Second, it is useful to look at the process of analysis, particularly in terms of hidden biases in how one filters evidence. A test, I've written this before, would a person writing in German about design thinking be excluded from the history of design thinking because they used the German term for design thinking rather than the English 'design thinking'? If not, then how do you choose to include or not from the history , those who discuss design thinking in English yet use a different terminology - e.g. 'design cognition', 'self-conscious design', 'design process'?
Pushing this line a little further, Its not unreasonable to suggest that what was discussed under the rubric of 'design process' is what we now often call 'design thinking'. It required both thinking about the processes by which design is undertaken and thinking about the ways that the 'thinking whilst designing' was undertaken. Discussion of design processes goes back a long way in engineering design to the time when engineering design activity involved more than a single person. Another point of entry into understanding the use of design thinking was the making explicit of design thinking that came with the use of mathematical analyses in engineering design from the 16th century onwards. This required making conscious the thinking of engineering designers in order to identify when and how it was useful to include mathematical analyses. This latter is somewhat similar to the much more recent inclusion of mathematical analyses in the work of graphic designers that has involved those creating graphic design software to make explicit graphic designers' 'design thinking'. Actually, I remember one of my PhD students found that that was probably the other way around. It was more a case that engineering designers, using their understanding of 'design thinking', developed software products for use by visual designers and called it 'graphic design' software. Then, later, some visual designers who had begun to use the graphic design software started calling themselves 'graphic designers'?
The development of conceptualising design has been a rich historically complex evolution. Looking at the literature only provides part of the story and is often misleading AND to understand the evolution of these issues it is also necessary to be fully conversant with the long development of design literature in engineering.
The simple picture, which I presented at the DRS conference in Melbourne some years ago is that developments in theory about design and design thinking in the Art and Design fields are about 50 years behind similar developments in engineering design.
This is easily identified in terms of design practices. I'd suggest the burden of proof for those from Art and Design is to identify ANY aspects of design theory that have been developed in the Art and Design realms before they were identified in engineering design. Can you think of any, and provide evidence?
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of stefanie di russo
Sent: Friday, 22 August 2014 7:57 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subject: Re: How 'Design Thinking Research' and 'Design Thinking' are related (or not)?
Hi, Terry,
You wrote:
"As I understand it, it was amongst engineers (engineering designers) the term 'design thinking' first came into common use. I suggest, historically, it was more that engineering designers encouraged designers from other fields into the practice and concepts of design thinking."
Since this statement is a relatively grand claim that may influence the way we understand the history and development of design thinking, it would be irresponsible of me as a researcher (writing on such history) to not request for evidence that supports your claim.
Terry could you provide to the list evidence to both: 1. that design thinking was first used by engineers and 2. that it was popularised by engineers encouraging and influencing other designers to use such a term.
This would have a great impact on my research and others who are working on the topic of design thinking.
Kind Regards,
-Stefanie
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 11:42 PM, Maria F. Camacho < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> Dear Stephan et al.,
>
>
>
> I think we are all discussing many matters at the same time, though
> all related to design thinking. In my view, some things depend on your
> end aim: what are you trying to achieve with your
> communication?: Inform?, Sell design thinking?, Make a best-seller?,
> Contribute knowledge for the growth of the discipline?. Your
> audience’s needs, as in any design endeavour, are important to
> acknowledge in order to decide how to present a topic.
>
>
>
> I’d categorize the matters in stake in the following way:
>
>
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> A. Contemporary design thinking for the
> public
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> B. Research on design thinking, within a
> research audience
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> C. Origins of design thinking
>
> D. Proprietorship of the term design
> thinking
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> I will build only a bit on each item as
> time is short. Only enough to (hopefully) make the matters understandable
> and
> debatable.
>
>
>
> A. Contemporary design thinking for the
> public:
>
> Stephane, the information needs of your
> general audience are probably quite basic, if compared to the needs of
> design
> thinking researchers. Still, I sense there is a need from design thinking
> researchers here too: If you generalize design thinking to the general
> public
> as an IDEO construct or similar full stop, then people will stick with this
> definition and disregard the whole background, richness and complexity of
> design thinking, for good. You can communicate the most widespread
> concepts on
> design thinking as such, and hopefully also make the case for ‘the other
> side
> of the coin’. You’d have to be a great communicator and communication
> designer;
> as you say, “I believe
> that strong concepts can be clearly and simply defined, in a few words”…
> maybe
> also through infodesign J. Nonetheless, design thinking is still to
> become a robust, unique and unified concept.
>
>
>
> B. Research on design thinking, within a
> research audience:
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> The debates of the design thinking research
> community can be made available to the public if simplified. Still,
> researchers’ audience is mainly other researchers. In this domain, design
> thinking is something like a teenager… we still don’t know exactly what it
> is,
> and it tries to be one thing and the other and we can’t stop it. We are all
> working on building it as a field of knowledge. It’s unstable for now.
> There
> are the cognitive issues on the way designers think, which for obvious
> linguistic reasons end up being called design thinking. Also, then there
> are
> the developments of entities like IDEO and Stanford who are broadly using
> the
> term: the former, as a practising entity, and the latter as a research,
> education and practice entity. IDEO and Stanford practice “their” design
> thinking, and Stanford does much research about it too.
>
>
>
> C. Origins of design thinking
>
> Point B leads me to this next matter.
> Lately some colleagues and I have been concluding that there is no single
> origin for design thinking. Designers and design engineers have been
> somewhat separately
> and simultaneously developing design thinking which finds itself in a
> juncture.
> In Spanish, we have a word that I have discovered does not exist in
> English:
> ‘coyuntura’. Discussing it with colleagues in Australia and the US I have
> got
> two nice interpretations: ‘the alignment of the stars’ and
> ‘synchronicity’. I
> believe this is the time in history in which it all has to come together,
> for
> many global reasons. It is important to know the origins for historical
> constructs, but we could all benefit from being more open and less
> apprehensive
> as to who, which discipline, and where created design thinking.
>
>
>
> All for today!
>
> Hope to continue getting thoughts.
>
> As Stefanie, I am working on my PhD thesis
> at Swinburne University, focusing on design thinking matters. All these
> discussions are helpful.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Maria F. CamachoDoctoral Design Research FellowPart-Time lecturer –
> Swinburne Design FactorySchool of DesignSwinburne University of
> TechnologyMelbourne – Australia
> [log in to unmask] +61 (0)434 267 297
>
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--
*Stefanie Di Russo*
PhD Student
Faculty of Design
Swinburne University
*twitter:* @stefdirusso <https://twitter.com/#!/stefdirusso>
*linkedin: public *profile
<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stefanie-di-russo/35/16/a84>
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