the last two posts struck my cord.
the current fashion to celebrate design thinking rather than design practices is a rhetorical strategy that does a considerable disservice to the design profession. consider these simple epistemological facts:
· thinking is a personal experience. nobody can know what someone else is thinking. for designers to define themselves as design thinkers makes them vulnerable not to be taken seriously.
· unquestionably, i know what i am thinking – so i believe. and i would even go so far to say that designers think unlike accountants, market researchers, bankers, taxi drivers, and politicians. but evidence of one’s thinking resides in articulations of what one is thinking or in actions taken together with arguments for their justification – not in someone’s inaccessible mind.
· designers need to be able to explain to others what they are proposing. this may take the form of drawings, written action plans, research results, compelling presentations to clients, prototypes, and exhibitions. designers need to demonstrate their competencies in order to enroll stakeholders into their projects of improving something to the better or innovating something that makes a difference to the stakeholders of a design.
· design theories, design research, design methods, design ethics -- everything that designers need to learn to practice -- has to be communicable, using linguistic, visual, performative media, or demonstrations.
· design thinking cannot be taught. design teachers cannot possibly make a student think in a certain way. they have no trouble observing and evaluating whether students are doing something that is related to what they had been teaching.
· claiming to have mastered design thinking, being a design thinker, is rhetorically strategy not unlike claiming to possess unique aesthetic sensibilities that ordinary people do not have. it is successful only when such claims are made with authority (by someone recognizable, having a title, being associated with a famous institution – IBM was mentioned). design thinkers’ fame fails as soon as they cannot deliver. incidentally, claims of exceptional mental abilities are also the trade mark of fortune tellers. they can maintain their claim to see the future only when convincingly denying this ability to their clients who are taken for a ride as long as they believe in the fortune teller’s mental ability. claiming superior mental abilities boils down to a game of posturing.
· designers who work in interdisciplinary development teams are unlikely to be taken seriously when withdrawing into their subjectively convenient design thinking abilities, implicitly denying this ability to team members from other disciplines. If designers want to be creative players in any context, they would have to be able to articulate defensible theories, models, and research findings and able to argue for or demonstrate that their design could be become reality.
I am suggesting to stop getting high on the mentalist concept of design thinking and instead work toward improving our design discourse, research, theories, methods, and practices by which the extraordinary role of our profession on the 21st century can be advanced.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CHUA Soo Meng Jude (GPL, PLS)
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 12:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Design Thinking is not design article
I agree with this, and do think that DT is quite often just a permutation of neoliberal thinking. Whereas Design is certainly not to be simplistically identified with that.
But moving forward, in order to critique these associations between D and "DT", I would say that we need to motivated by a scholarship of, rather than a politics of design. This is probably not the best way to put it, but suppose I reject the association DT has with D - it that because I have a political agenda - to save designers from being tainted by the embarrassing (for some?, socialists perhaps) connection to neoliberal, marketized thinking, or is it because of scholarly reasons, say because my theory of design suggests it should not be the same. I feel it should be motivated by the latter.
Meaning, whatever designers want for themselves, their critique of what design is not or is, should be a intellectual, rather than a political project
Best
J
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marcio Dupont
Sent: Thursday, 19 November, 2015 6:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Design Thinking is not design article
Dear all:
Please read my article "Why design thinking is not design" that might have some answers to the questions here. The article reflets my perception about design thinking as a designer, and surprisinlgy the feedback has been positive, I was waiting some stress from "design thinking" evangelists - radicals.
I believe that design thinking is only valid if you have a designer from start to end, otherwise it is just a "refined brainstorming" with no "design validity" and probably poor results no achieving the miraculous and marvelous results that the company expected.
At Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-design-thinking-marcio-caballero-de-carranza-dupont?trk=mp-author-card
Please let me know if you don´t have Linkedin access to send other site.
*Marcio Caballero de Carranza Dupont*
*DESIGN FOR THE GREATER GOOD!*
*Innovation - Sustainability Expert*
Brasil SP / México DF / United States Chicago /
*Linkedin* <http://www.linkedin.com/in/marciodupont>
TWITTER <http://www.twitter.com/maducao>
MY DESIGN RESEARCH PORTAL DRP <http://designresearchportal.wordpress.com>
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