Dear Chuck,
While I agree with your general view, I don’t think Erik "tarnished the *concept* of 'design thinking’.” I think he disputes the term. Many people have said that “design thinking” is a confusing and problematic label for a genuine and potentially valuable concept.
Since Erik is series editor of a book series from The MIT Press titled Design Thinking, Design Theory, you have to acknowledge that Erik also uses and embraces this problematic term. (Full disclosure: I am the other editor of the book series from The MIT Press titled Design Thinking, Design Theory.)
Given the fact that you have done a great deal of pioneering work under the rubric of design thinking, I can see that you are happy with the term. The issues and processes you identify as design thinking are important and genuine. I also have a couple PhD students whose work focuses on design thinking — and they use the term. I’m torn between using the term and avoiding the term.
My compromise is to say that the term is a bad label for a valuable process. Because people use the label and it has some kind of meaning because people use it, I use it despite my problems with the way that the term has also been misused and abused.
If it sounds as though I am confused and ambiguous about this issue, I may well be. In general, though, Erik was discussing serious problems in the field, and not dismissing the concept of design thinking as you use the term. In my view, however, he was dismissing the term as it is often misused — I have heard too many presentations and market offerings that essentially boil down to something like the claim, “I am a designer. I think. Therefore I practice design thinking.” That’s a crude caricature, but it is that kind of misuse to which I think Erik objects — the notion that all designers practice design thinking, along with half the management consultants.
If everyone restricted the use of the term design thinking to an identifiable process of the kind that you describe in your research, there would be fewer problems. Maria Camacho’s doctoral research focuses on the common elements of a different number of models of which some are labeled design thinking and some are not, and many of the models in some way resemble your model. If this were common practice, I doubt that folks like Erik would question the term.
Of course, I am not speaking for Erik, just offering my two cents.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
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Chuck Burnette wrote:
—snip—
The way in which you tarnished the concept of "design thinking" in your response to Don’s remarks was unfortunate. Of course inappropriate goals, inadequate methods, and unsatisfying outcomes from the thinking of a design team or designer are worth noting as Don rightly did. But I fear that your response denigrates and will harm a still emerging understanding of what goes on in a designer’s mind as they attempt to understand and improve a problematic situation, or respond with imagination and creativity to a need of desire of interest or concern. It seemed to me to invite diminished attention, research, and exploration regarding designing and its role in human affairs, an interpretation I am sure you did not want to convey.
It reminded me of Bruce Nussbaum’s 2013 attempt to replace the term design thinking with "Creative Intelligence”,doing so without defining either concept or how they might work together. Frustrated with the approach to “Design Thinking” at the time, he cited references and examples of creative intelligence, and repackaged them into components that he thought indicated the way toward "a new economics of creativity.” In my view Creative intelligence is simply another way of labeling and looking at Design Thinking.
Everyone wants design to be purposeful, forward looking, aware, and effective. We must be careful to define design thinking in a way that anyone can access it and learn through it. Each person's designerly thought should be made more understandable and effective, not diminished.
—snip—
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