DEAR MARCIO and All,
I guess I had raised this question on DT in an earlier recent thread
flagged by Mr. Charles.
Well, I guess the designers and design professionals, educators..do
think...so how do they think...is there a unique way (for
example:...scientists have a way of thinking....observe/experiment/deduct
-or cause and effect thinking, Doctors have another way...diagnostics). I
am sure Design has some unique way (and I do NOT think it to be the design
process -esp because that process is not always linear and it is a process
not thinking...what/how do you think at each step of the process is missing)
It also does not help to say that it is difficult to define..such things
have made and kept design a mystery even after official 100 odd years.
Besides if we feel design can and should really be embraced by one and all
because of its power to change (and not just explain how) how things work
( as mentioned by Klaus and here I take to mean both the tangibles and the
intangibles) and thereby dignify and improve lives (as we believe design to
do), then I am sure it has to have some way of thinking unique to itself.
Shying away from it by the community of designers (who are supposed to know
better) lets the space open for anyone and everyone to use it to mean
whatever suits them best creating probably the commercialization of design
and making design capitalistic. One may see no harm there except that it
will make design even more mysterious (or too subjective to have mass
impact) and hence less accessible to all the real needy -the danger can be
that design will then just become synonymous with high life, 'artsy' and a
page 3 discipline rather than one that can make as much (if not more)
contribution as the 'mainstream' like science, engineering, etc. If anyone
can, it is this group that needs to put their heads together for finding
what and how do designers think and how is it unique from other disciplines
so that it can lay a claim of being a separate discipline.
Besides, I do not quite agree with Marcio "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."
I am sorry but that is too narcissistic and dare I say many designers
suffer from it...and further it shows the lack of understanding of what
design is (for who is not a designer just as who is not a scientist -though
one can be an amateur/professional about it). For, in science, whoever
follows the scientific thinking is a scientist then so must anyone doing
design thinking (and not just designing) is a designer and not just the one
who designs. I guess designers have long been beating about the bush about
such clarifications and it is high time, in the interest of the discipline,
that there be such defining factors else the most vocal but
dumb/capitalists will start calling the shots.
To me design in brief as a discipline 'integrates', synthesizes, optimizes,
synergizes the best of the contextually relevant knowhow (for the lack of
a better word) from all the various domains of knowledge to arrive
at/ evolve to the most apt outcomes that are not only functional but also
aesthetic and sustainable -dignifying life/ves and hence DT has to be (no
matter how incomplete -it is always possible to redefine as our
understanding evolves further -that's how science does it) about how to
think to achieve this integrative problem solving thinking ability.
krishnesh
national institute of design
india
On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 8:36 PM, O'Toole, Robert <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Apologies, I haven’t read all the messages in this thread, but I do have
> an alternative perspective on the question of Design Thinking, and I think
> it gets closer to its real value.
>
> Think of Design Thinking as an event as much as a concept, but certainly
> not as a business process or magic bullet.
>
> I argue that Design Thinking marks a “designerly turn” in how
> organisations work. And the historical phenomena of Design Thinking being
> an encouragement to think in a designerly way - but of course designers
> think with all their senses and instruments of agency, especially their
> hands. Design Thinking as a designerly turn is much closer to Tim Brown’s
> arguments in Change by Design. He is very clear about that. And he is very
> clear about why he wants to illustrate how his design teams work. The aim
> is unclog the messy, unproductive habits that many organisations have
> become stuck with. The aim is to rebalance openness and clarity (often
> enemies) in the ways in which we collectively decide on what we do, make,
> service etc - and most importantly, why we do those things. The designerly
> turn should at the very least encourage us to think through our design
> values, strive for better values and ways of implementing them in practice.
>
> In that way Design Thinking is not design. But it is a lot more than just
> a fad. And it is deeply rooted in the practices of real designers. As the
> world becomes ever more designable, and as we come across the imperative to
> design more often in everyday life, our habits need to be suited to
> designing effectively. If Design Thinking helps to spread those habits
> further and wider, as Brown hopes (but that doesn’t mean replacing
> professional designers), then we have a good chance of achieving a better
> world through design.
>
> Personally, and this is the reason why I struggle to keep up with the
> great conversations on this list, I work in an organisation that hasn’t
> made the designerly turn, that is clogged up with bad meetings that lead
> nowhere. We desperately need to get things in hand (literally) with the
> hands of a designer. We urgently need senior managers to stop thinking they
> can deploy slogans and Powerpoint shows to change the place for the better.
> We need to make the designerly turn. And if I can deploy the concept of
> Design Thinking to encourage that, I will.
>
> Those ideas are taken from my recent PhD thesis.
>
> You can read more about my research at: http://www.inspireslearning.com -
> there are links to my thesis on that site (which includes much more detail
> on this reading of Brown et al.
>
> Thanks for listening!
>
> Robert
> _________________________________
>
> Dr Robert O’Toole NTF
> Senior Academic Technologist
> University of Warwick
>
> BA Philosophy Warwick, MSc Knowledge Based Systems Sussex, PGCE ICT Warwick
> PhD “Fit, Stick, Spread & Grow: Transdisciplinary Studies of Design
> Thinking for the Remaking of Higher Education”
> QTS, WATE, NTF, FHEA, MoOoJ
>
> http://www.warwick.ac.uk/extendedclassroom
> http://www.inspireslearning.com
>
> 07876 876960
>
> ________________________________________
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of CHUA Soo Meng
> Jude (GPL, PLS) <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: 23 November 2015 07:00
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design Thinking is not design article
>
> Personally I quite like what Nigel Cross once suggested - which is that
> rather than speak of Design Science (which may suggest that design ought to
> be governed by the cultures of science, or a kind of scientistic study of
> design), we can speak of a "Science of Design" where science here means
> more broadly some form of rigorous study. I think this is a good way to
> proceed -- remember that science has never always meant what it means now
> (assuming it does mean something stably positivist, even though this is not
> always uncontroversial). Until just before the enlightenment there was
> still the notion of a science, a scientia, which was governed by deductive,
> inferential logic (rather than by abduction/induction). Hence even
> theology could be a science (you can read Aquinas' Catena Aurena, his
> commentaries on scripture or his commentary on the book of Job and you'll
> see him making syllogistic inferences on passages of scripture - not the
> usual way you would read the bible!), or say proofs of God's existence,
> these were also scientific demonstrations.
> Maybet the way to put it is this - if we are dissatisfied with DT, then
> the task for DT is for it to develop in the direction of a science of
> design. But then, as you might expect, what a science of design in turn
> means would be the subject of some tussle: what should belong to it, and
> what would count as focal or peripheral etc. But I think it's a very
> important question to answer, even if not always an easy one. What also is
> interesting perhaps is the diagnosis of the epistemological cultures that
> sometimes prevent us from answering that question well.
> 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
> Filippo Salustri
> Sent: Sunday, 22 November, 2015 10:19 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: ***SPAM*** Re: Design Thinking is not design article
>
> Interesting...
>
> On Nov 22, 2015 1:52 AM, "Francois Nsenga" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Klaus, you wrote:
> >
> > "any science explains how things work. designing means proposing
> > something that changes how things work."
> >
> > Could/should the proposed 'design science' be aiming at explaining how
> > 'design' activity proposes things (theories, methods, artifacts) that
> > change how things work?
>
> I've thought for decades that that's what design science was, as have many
> of my colleagues in engineering....
>
>
> National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
>
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