Hi Klaus, Stephanie and all, 

And this is the point where I think I should stop and provide you all with a far clearer definition of what social psychology understands by a 'social representation', at the risk of popularizing social psychology in the eyes of the list, while addressing the popularisation of design (ironic, hey?). The meaning to the term 'social representation' is actually far more precise than many tend to assume, and with a very long tradition inside the discipline of social psychology. I'm currently trying to write a blog for popular audiences, so the risk of popularization is breathing close at the moment. Communicating to a list as this one, should involve a different kind of effort from communicating to a general audience. So, let me try my best. 

I don't have the time or the resources to illustrate to people in the list how we could go about dissecting Tim Brown's/IDEO as a 'social representation' of design, but I can ensure you that this would imply more than looking at it as a popularization in and by itself, the equivalent of the front end of a software, a simplified gateway of some kind or all of these metaphors combined. 

Klaus, in that sense, grateful for your kind remark, I don't think I am hitting any nail on the head by suggesting that "design thinking is a popularisation of what being a designer consists of". Firstly because others have suggested it before me; secondly, because if you take the idea of social representation seriously that is actually a small part of what am I suggesting. You talk of generative metaphors. Addressing something as a social representation can actually generate new meanings to the original source it derives from. Psychoanalysis may have known better days but inquiring into the way psychoanalytical metaphors were put into practice by non-psychoanalysts in everyday classification of others, has actually invited scientific psychoanalysis to move forward as a theory. Maybe it also affected its credibility in some ways, I don't know, but that was certainly not the only effect it had.  

Stephanie has provided what seems to be a very good way out of the conundrum by introducing a developmental perspective, going from experienced designers to non-designers. The problem with developmental studies, of course, is that one could find greater variability within each group than across the different groups (i.e., one could find more differences within the group of experienced designers amongst themselves, than differences between non-experienced designers and experienced ones). This kind of problem is common to developmental studies both in psychology and anthropology. Nonetheless, I do believe Stephanie's basic premise is worth exploring and by no means incompatible with the idea of social representation. Klaus, in your own words, maybe it could just add another layer to "(...) articulate what designers can do, demonstrated by replicable methods or actual results".

I digress perhaps, but I just need to clarify that I don't think I have the knowledge or the authority to suggest or support any claim in keeping or dropping "design thinking" as a term and/or an idea. Nor would like to claim that knowledge or experience. In tandem with Stephanie, I am suggesting a slightly different way to the problem. In times of Big Data and the primacy of computer science, however, I would imagine that for many in the list, true changes in the meaning of design will not come from pursuing a developmental ethnography of designers that looks into the relation between design thinking and design as a set of generative metaphors. It's not the fashion of our times to purse that line of query, I suspect. Try as we may, we are not immune to fashion. 

Still dissatisfied with myself for failing to convey to you what a 'social representation' means, I opt for shutting up my big gob, at least for the time being. 

Cheers.  

P. 

PhD Anthropologist, Independent Ethnographic Researcher 
I have a blog: http://anthrobiz.wordpress.com. 


On Wednesday, August 20, 2014 7:12 PM, Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 


stephanie, pedro, and other contributors to this thread

i think pedro hit the nail on its head when he suggested that "design thinking" is a popularization of what makes a designer:
<
1.4 Tim Brown's/IDEO as a popular representation (in social psychology terms, a 'social representation') of what "design" stands for to a much broader audience, namely what it stands for to the many non-designers who make pragmatic use of an idea of "design thinking", along with the kind of basic ideas and native semantic links used in its ordering; looking at this as a language in itself rather than mostly through a distance, expressed in correction or in-correction, to its original sources;  
1.5. To assume an idea of design research that is flexible enough to take 1.4. as an object of study, in and of itself;
<
to which stephanie added:
1.6) Research involving how non designers utilize a design process (the doing), in turn, develop and apply design thinking.
1.7) Research analyzing experienced designers, inexperienced designers and non designers (looking at both doing and thinking behind the doing)
1.8) What distinguishes the thought process of designers as representative of design thinking, and how is this type of thinking unique to design (as opposed to any other kind of thinking)
<
i think these additions points into the right direction. there is no doubt that designers proceed differently from, say, writers who combine words into comprehensible texts, plumbers who fix problems with available technology, natural scientific observers who theorize existing facts, unaware of creating them, and artists who create art objects that are valued culturally but avoid practical applications to the lives of their audiences. 

not too long ago, one would have identified outstanding designers as geniuses, possessing aesthetic sensibilities, creativity, ability to make novel connections, talent for simplification, sense of what goes culturally, etc.  all of these favorable attributes have populated public opinions about designers and been used by designers vis-a-vis their clients to claim authority on what is in fact difficult to operationalize precisely because they pertain to convenient popularizations of principally unobservable cognitive abilities. 

i think it is a mistake to jump on another popularization that merely replaces now less popular attributes of designers uniqueness. 
it is easy for designers to claim mastery in "design thinking," as opposed to how others think, especially when one cannot directly observe anyone's thinking.

the point is to articulate what designers can do, demonstrated by replicable methods or actual results. 

there are several concepts of design activities worth refining, operationalizing, or theorizing, for example distinguishing design moves such as finding problems, making sense of complexities, framing and reframing conceptualizations; searching for generative metaphors, metonyms; contextualiziations, and systems (including ecological) perspectives; productive conversations; enrolling stakeholders, testing in human populations, playing with representations of ideas, combinatorial techniques; applying critical perspectives to oneself; etc. 

surely, designers think but so does everyone else. the only access to anyone else's thinking goes through intelligible articulations, observable enactments of that thinking whether in the form of step-wise accounts, rationalizations, demonstrations, prototypes, or realizable plans of actions. 

if design thinking cannot be enacted in collaborations in design teams, be communicated in the form of education, ways to enroll stakeholders in designers' projects, executable specifications, or demonstrated by concrete accomplishments, i suggest that we better drop that concept for its epistemological inaccessibility and to avoid future ridicule by competing approaches.

klaus



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