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Dear David,

While I agree with the need for evidence and action, but thinking is neither cheap nor easy. Good thinking requires evidence and background knowledge. This makes useful thinking costly. The fact that thinking takes time and care means that thinking is not easy.

The term “design thinking” is problematic. It’s a bad term for a genuinely interesting or useful range of issues. Because the term is already in use, people use it. Stefanie’s posts address some of these issues.

The term isn’t new. Peter Rowe’s book titled Design Thinking was published back in 1987. The Design Thinking Research Symposia date back to 1991 at Open University and Technological University of Delft. It’s like naming a youngster David or Ken – at the end of the day, the name comes to indicate us. It stays in use whether we’d have chosen the name or not.

[Full disclosure: Erik Stolterman and I edit a book series for The MIT Press titled “Design Thinking, Design Theory.” With our encouragement, The MIT Press decided to use the label “Design Thinking” despite problems inherent in the term. We chose it to delineate a territorythat people have come to understand in a certain way.]

Your post and your linked blog address terms rather than underlying concepts. Your post criticizes “design thinking” and your blog criticizes “Big D Design” as numinous and ill-defined entities. My view is that one must define what we mean by the terms “design” or “design thinking” before arguing that the concepts these terms indicate are over-blown and problematic.

Instead, your blog shifts from a focus on the numinous and vague use of the word “design” to criticize nearly everything in which the word “design” appears.

First, you challenge the “Big D” without defining it.

The new Singapore University of Technology and Design also uses the term, “the Big D.” They mean something quite different to what you seem to mean:

http://www.sutd.edu.sg/thebigd.aspx

Your blog also criticized the 2002 proposal for a university design school for failing to provide evidence when the proposal itself was based on and presented substantive evidence.

You wrote: “In 2003 there was a high-powered online conference about a proposal to run a new undergraduate and postgraduate program in design at a leading university. Some of the best minds in the field were involved in the construction of the courses and in the conference. All the key buzz words were on the table: ‘sustainability’, ‘customer focused’ etc etc. But one term was absent. You guessed it, the big E, evidence. When asked for evidence that could be used in support of the proposal to demonstrate the benefits of design, there was a deafening silence. This is not unusual in design circles, and it is the most telling symptom of possible death following deliriums of over enthusiasm.”

The conference titled “Design in the University” took place here on the PhD-Design list. It started on Friday November 14, 2003, and it ran through Monday December 22. Anyone who wishes to review the conference can do so by going to the PhD-Design list archives. Click on the year 2003, then organize by date and start on November 14. There was no deafening silence – I recall the conference. [Full disclosure: I convened the conference and served as moderator.] People had the right to ask any question that interested them, and everyone was free to respond. This was a conference rather than a normal thread, with invited presenters who answered most of the questions that we received over the five weeks of the event.

The university design school to which you refer was a proposal for the University of California at Irvine. The full proposal presented a great deal of evidence for the issues and ideas behind the school. The conference involved an online conversation among self-selected participants. Some participants in the conference were thoughtful and reflective. Others were not. The University of California at Irvine was notresponsible for what people posted to the conference.

In contrast, the University of California at Irvine was fully responsible for the report. The report involved over a year of work by an expert committee of professors in dialogue with the senior management at one of the world’s best research universities and external consultants as well as expert advisors on many detailed issues.

At the University of California, evidence is required at every stage of a process that leads to a proposal such as this. Full proposals require proper development supported by evidence. Only after careful review and vetting does the university release a proposal for wider comment inside and outside the university. This is fundamental to the nature of such a proposal.

While I can agree with your point on the need for evidence, I disagree with your comments on the report. And I disagree with the statement “When asked for evidence that could be used in support of the proposal to demonstrate the benefits of design, there was a deafening silence.” There was no lack of evidence in the conference or in the report. I’m guessing you disagreed with some of the conference commentators – that’s your right. I’m also guessing you did not read the 188-page report: if you didn’t, it’s unfair to complain that it lacked evidence.

If you or other list members wish to read the University of California at Irvine School of Design Report, I’ve placed a copy at the bottom of my web page:

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html

[Another full disclosure: I served as an external consultant to the University of California in developing and reviewing the proposal prior to its release.]

Design is a process. Reflecting on Jerry Diethelm’s recent notes and a question that Francois Nsenga asked earlier, I reviewed Herbert Simon’s definition of design: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design” (Simon 1999: 111).

Any of the professions are subject to the skeptical questions you ask about “Big D” design. But similarly, all professions that serve human beings do so because the service they offer provides benefits.

Professions serve human beings. To do so, they meet human needs. Because professions meet needs, they are open to abuse. Professionals can extract rents on expertise and potential monopoly status because they have what the rest of us need. Adam Smith (1976 [1776]: 144) stated this nicely where he wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

This describes consultants selling design thinking, it describes many practicing designers, and it describes much of what you criticize.

This doesn’t mean that all design processes or all designers suffer from the flaws you criticize. The University of California provided evidence for the proposal, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design web site shows real value in the SUTD interpretation of “the Big D.”

With respect to the uses and benefits of design, I recently published an article in the journal Visible Language titled “Models of Design” (Friedman 2012). While the focus of the article was design education, I framed it in a perspective on the benefits that design process and the design profession can offer to the larger economy and to our fellow human beings. If you’d like to see my take on these issues, you can download the article from my web page.

While I applaud your skepticism with respect to the numinous quasi-religion labeled design, I’d ask for deeper reflection where serious people put their shoulders to the wheel.

Yours,

Ken

Reference

Friedman, Ken. 2012. “Models of Design: Envisioning a Future for Design Education.” Visible Language, Vol. 46, No. 1/2, pp. 128-151. Available at URL:

http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html

Simon, Herbert. 1999. The Sciences of the Artificial. Third Edition. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Smith, Adam. 1976. [1776]. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

David Sless wrote:

—snip—

Thinking is cheap and easy. But it is no substitute for action and evidence. The popular demise of Design Thinking may be inevitable.

Is it time for the wake, resuscitation, or resurrection?

https://communication.org.au/blog1/the-death-of-design/

—snip—

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