Dear Arjun,
Thanks for this good post. This requires deep thought. In many cases, I find that the general term “design” functions well, while more detailed phrases describe specialties.
So I agree with you in great part, but I also have a sense of hesitation. Three issues occur to me.
First, there is not general consensus on a scholarly or scientific definition of the term “design thinking.” Since there is no consensus, it’s not clear that the public understanding of design thinking differs from a scholarly or scientific understanding.
Everyone is ambiguous in defining design thinking. That includes researchers, professionals, and business people alike.
The term is a rough and somewhat problematic term. We use it to describe a puzzling and ambiguous process. The fuzzy term and the process it describes nevertheless have value.
The second issue is also simple. These concepts do not rest on the market place. They are workable, reasonable, and valuable in their own right.
The processes represented by IDEO; by Bill Moggridge and David Kelley; by Stanford d.school, Hasso Plattner Institute, and the Stanford ME310 program; by Larry Leifer, Christoph Meinel, and Hasso Plattner are all excellent.
No scholarly or scientific definition would be all that wrong if it described precisely and explicitly what these individuals and institutions represent.
The third issue is slightly more complicated. What we sometimes call “design thinking” appears under other designations. The practices associated with these other terms work well. They often map over onto design thinking. Many of the thought leaders associated with these other terms are also associated with design thinking.
This is the case for Helsinki Design Lab and the term strategic design. Marco Steinberg, Bryan Boyer, Justin Cook, and Dan Hill are all exemplary practitioners of design thinking. They label their approach “strategic design.” This is my label, as well, and that’s what I used in Norway from the late 1980s on.
It is also the case for Rotman in Toronto, and Roger Martin – one of the most respected business professors in the world. While Martin is a central figure in design thinking, he uses the label “integrative thinking.”
IDEO involves a professional practice with many skilled practitioners. It also involves affiliated thought leaders. These include the IDEO Fellows such as Don Norman and Barry Katz.
It seems to me that these organizations and these people represent a solid and responsible constellation of issues and processes that probably describe design thinking well. Despite the ambiguity and fuzziness of this heuristic term, I’d argue that all the definitions are equally fuzzy. The term “design thinking” as most scholars or scientists understand it is no more clear or precise than the term as anyone else seems to understand it.
This explains my hesitation in agreeing with you. At the same time, I don’t disagree.
Niels Bohr famously said that the opposite of a small truth is a falsehood, while the opposite of a great truth may be another great truth.
The idea of design thinking is probably not a great truth of the kind that Bohr intended to describe in this concept. Nevertheless, the challenging realm of describing these processes often poses great truths one against the other as we seek appropriate modes of explanation.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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Arjun Dhillon wrote:
—snip—
This is an interesting conversation. We’ve already had some of the historical and practical context of design thinking outlined in this thread; I post now to supplement this with a phenomenological account of ‘design thinking’ in the United States (plus a semi-formal argument).
In the US, the term ‘design thinking’ is overwhelmingly associated with a process popularized by David Kelly through his firm IDEO and the Stanford d.school. I think most of us are familiar with this process, so I will not go into more detail here (it is easy to google, after all). This is a simplistic but I think, for our purpose, accurate interpretation; the majority of designers, business people, and educators in the US who are familiar with the term understand and define it within the domain of this rough perspective. If you google ‘design thinking’, the majority of the results you will get via web search, image search, blog search, and news search all come from the same perspective.
I agree with Ken when he said in his most recent post that he “[doesn’t] believe that the marketplace ought to determine what we do in a research group”. Yet later in his post, Ken said that “Worrying about the marketplace isn’t our concern.” This is a fair point, taken in its context, but I’d like to take it out of context for just a moment. My disagreement with this miscontextualized quote is based on a working draft of an argument we can formalize as:
P1. The common conception of ‘design thinking’ in the US (and maybe other areas) is substantially and importantly different from scholarly definitions of design thinking.
P2. Design research and scholarship has little ability to intentionally direct design practice and/or the public perception of design, at least not on topics and definitions that have gained the buzz status that popular ‘design thinking’ has achieved.
P3. Design scholars do at least have the ability to change the perceptions and definitions of concepts within the design scholarship and research community.
P4. It is important that design research/scholarship be intelligible and accessible to design practitioners and others, and that these parties be involved in design scholarship in various ways.
C. Design researchers and scholars should concede the term ‘design thinking’ to the popular definition, and instead seek to explain their concepts through another lexicon. I suggest simply ‘design’. The unqualified term ‘design’ is, I believe, surprisingly available as a domain name.
In short, I suggest we flip Stef’s original position and instead understand ‘design thinking’ and every other qualified version of design as simply a variety of design. We can leave the qualifications where they belong: as specialties
—snip—
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