Friends,

The relationship between “design thinking” and other design activities can benefit from a deeper investigation of the economic and social context of design. I’ve given some thought to these issues over the years. In the course of revisiting articles dealing with knowledge management and the context of the information society, I found a few items that might be useful to readers of this list.

You will find PDF reprints of three articles in the “Papers” section of my page at Academia.edu

https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman

These are Friedman (1998a) “Building Cyberspace. Information, Place and Policy”; Friedman (1998b) “Cities in the Information Age: A Scandinavian Perspective”; and Friedman (2003) “Leaders for the Knowledge Economy.”

Design takes place within organizations and across organizational networks. The process identified as “design thinking” is a design process in the large sense of the term, Herbert Simon’s sense of choosing and working toward preferred future states. While design thinking is a design process, many design activities and design processes work in different ways. “Design thinking” is a rubric for a kind of process. Not all design processes use design thinking.

The process known as “design thinking” also goes under several other rubrics, including “strategic design,” “design-led innovation,” “integrative thinking,” and “design integration.” I expect a new term to join these soon. Kees Dorst has developed in an important new approach to design process that he labels “frame creation,” and this – like these other approaches, – can be bundled under the rubric of “design thinking.”

Whether we label the approach “design thinking,” “strategic design,” or something else, there is an apparent confusion between the process of design thinking, its application in any specific design activity, and the fact that there are several kinds of design activity that each may use design thinking or one of its variants. Each of these kinds of activity fit within range of applications. Any application may function within one among the four orders of design (Buchanan 1992, 2001; Golsby-Smith 1996; see also Friedman 2012) somehow negates, supersedes or replaces the others. This is not the case.

Each of the four orders of design has a purpose with respect to necessary goals and activities. Manufacturing remains vital to the modern world, and a strong manufacturing base is necessary to every industrial democracy. Eamonn Fingleton’s (1999) book In Praise of Hard Industries tells this story well. Nothing significant has changed since he wrote it, though there have been many changes in the larger context of the advanced industrial democracies.

The idea that services, information, or knowledge will replace manufacturing is a naïve concept. Consider, for example, the fact that manufacturing did not replace agriculture in the industrial revolution. Rather, the role of agriculture in society changed and the numbers of people employed in agriculture changed in absolute and proportional terms as manufacturing reshaped the modern industrial world.

Changes in the information society and the knowledge economy do not mean that earlier human needs vanish. Since common needs remain, organizations that serve these needs remain necessary and the designers who work in these fields remain vital. What is the case is that designers must learn more and develop a wider range of understandings to do the work required of them. It is also the case that designers who work in new forms of design – systems design, organization design, etc. – also require richer skills than was previously the case. The best short article written on this issue remains Don Norman’s (2010) blog post, “Why Design Education Must Change.”

Back in the early 1990s, I developed a series of strategic design courses in which business students could study strategic design and what is now called design thinking, and I also developed some courses to help designers learn more about organizations and working in the context of business, industry, or government.

Because I am revisiting and reworking some of these issues again, I expect to write more on these issues in the future. The articles I wrote around the turn of the millennium shed useful light on the economic and organizational context of design thinking, so I’m sharing them with the list.

As I wrote in an article on leadership for the knowledge economy,

“At the dawn of a new century - a new millennium, no less - one kind of economy is ending and another is struggling to develop. We find ourselves in an era that spans the end of the industrial economy and the beginning of the knowledge economy.

“Industry will remain a central factor in the new economy. Much as agriculture remained a central factor in the industrial economy, so the production of goods will remain vital to the knowledge economy. Human beings continue to eat, and they continue to need tools and other goods. It is the development of the latest generation of these tools - computers, software, informated machines and information machines - that gave birth to the new economy. The activities and services of these tools make it possible to define the knowledge economy.”

What is called design thinking has a role to play here. Because the term “design thinking” is confusing and not always helpful – other terms may be better suited – but the issues are important. Despite the vast amount of interest and the huge number of publications, we can do more to understand the process and how to employ it.

For the moment, these articles may be useful in understanding the context.

Yours,

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

References

Buchanan, Richard. 1992. “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.” Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring, 1992), pp. 5-21. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Buchanan, Richard. 2001. “Design Research and the New Learning.” Design Issues, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 3-23. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Fingleton, Eamonn. 1999. In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Available at URL:
http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Hard-Industries-Manufacturing-Information/dp/0395899680
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Friedman, Ken. 1998. “Building Cyberspace. Information, Place and Policy.” Built Environment. 24: 2/3, 83-103. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Friedman, Ken. 1998. “Cities in the Information Age: A Scandinavian Perspective.” In The Virtual Workplace. Magid Igbaria and Margaret Tan, eds. Hershey, Pennsylvania: Idea Group Publishing, 144-176. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Friedman, Ken 2003. “Leaders for the Knowledge Economy.” Intelligent Management in the Knowledge Economy. Sven Junghagen and Henrik Linderoth, editors. Cheltenham, UK. Edward Elgar Publishing, 19-35. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

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:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Golsby-Smith, Tony. 1996. “Fourth Order Design: A Practical Perspective.” Design Issues, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 5-25. Available at URL:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Accessed 2014 February 7.

Norman, Don. 2010. Why Design Education Must Change. Core77, 2010 November 26. Available at URL:
http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/why_design_education_must_change_17993.asp
Accessed 2014 February 7


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