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Dear Klaus, A perspective of design thinking from a design instructor. It’s wrong to obsess with the word “thinking” in “design thinking”. Simply put: Design thinking (DT) is NOT especially about “thinking” techniques or processes. It’s a very practical “design process”. As I tell my students, it’s obvious (in a sense), and direct. It’s not mystical nor secretive. DT is neither more nor less cerebral than other approaches to designing. And the literature (that I’ve read) makes no such claims. As David Sless wrote, DT hasn’t added anything to our arsenal of design methods. A superficial enquiry into DT will discover that it’s a “process” undertaken by interdisciplinary teams consisting of these steps: Empathizing: research and observation into users/stakeholders of the system Defining: the problem or opportunity to be pursued Ideating: is brainstorming in groups using sketching Prototyping: making tangible examples of things for demonstration and testing Testing: in the hands of users/stakeholders Now that can’t be bad. Combined with other approaches such as co-designing, this might be something of a revolution. Why? To keep this post short, contrast the above with what I experienced in design education and practice: No meta-thinking on design processes, for example: “What approach is better for this kind of problem?” Zero inter-disciplinarity. Nothing but superficial market “research”. Little opportunity to be creative in groups (and no training). Prototyping of “appearance models” was the norm. Testing, only in the hypothetical future. Perhaps you are confusing “design thinking”, the process coined by IDEO, with other concepts. Regards, Alex Velasco industrial designer . design manager . design thinking instructor . educator . curriculum developer [log in to unmask] . http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexjvelasco Pune +91 950 310 0259 . Lisbon +351 93 232 5200 > On 20 Nov 2015, at 09:24, Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > [snip] design thinking is a rhetorical strategy that does a considerable disservice to the design profession > > · nobody can know what someone else is thinking > > · evidence of one’s thinking resides not in someone’s inaccessible mind. > > · designers need to be able to explain to others what they are proposing > > · everything that designers need to learn to practice -- has to be communicable > > · design thinking cannot be taught > > · claiming superior mental abilities [is] posturing. > > · designers won't be taken seriously when withdrawing into design thinking > > stop getting high on the mentalist concept of design thinking > > > klaus ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------