Deepening Design (Thinking)
The following is an excerpt from a book I wrote as part of my Masters in Design at Carnegie Mellon University to support novices in navigating ‘design thinking’. You can take a look at the full book here.
Questioning Design
The sudden popularity of design thinking has stirred up criticism both within and outside design. Despite disclaimers from its advocates about design thinking being intended as a useful framework rather than a prescriptive blueprint, it’s easy for both practitioners and participants of design thinking education to neglect deeper consideration of what might be involved in retrofitting new approaches to particular contexts and existing work cultures. When shiny new ways of thinking and doing are demonstrated to those whose current ways of working feel stagnant, design thinking facilitators (of mostly short-term learning experiences) report a magical moment when design thinking ‘clicks’ and even the most sceptical participants exclaim sincerely “we should do this every time we meet!” Although, when facilitators forget to use these moments as an opportunity to qualify their message, the risk is unintentionally discrediting the value of legacy work cultures, and perpetuating the underestimation of what it takes to truly transition a system.
To be fair, drop-in consultants who offer a designerly tool or method are often invited by eager insiders who are certain it will be of value to the company, and who recognise that the training is just a peep into design thinking, and not a panacea. However, in order to convince people to purchase and partake in design thinking education there is an understandable temptation to side step making its limits explicit, and over-promise its impact to people who sign up with starry eyed hopes of big fast changes to come.
In their defence, many proponents of design thinking likely understand the difference between selling an educational experience as a solution, and selling an educational experience as the site of first exposure — a doorway to developing ways of working that have the potential to bear deeper insights and impact if pursued thoughtfully.
With this as a basis for dissemination, design thinking moves away from over-hyped woo-woo, toward becoming a powerful democratizing tool for non-designers to meaningfully participate in the remaking of the world we live in.
Defending Design
Many designers have themselves expressed disapproval of an educational movement that appears to be diluting their expertise to enable mass export. Practitioners who have spent years, or decades developing technical skills and situational knowledge may feel cynical and perhaps defensive about the assumption that everyone is (or can be) a designer. Some might also worry that the buzz about design thinking leads non-designers to perceive design thinking education as a replacement for, rather than a supplement to, hiring, contracting, or consulting professionals. Strategists, researchers and user experience designers already have a tough job making their case to potential clients, funders and employers. The value they bring is less tangible than that of visual designers who produce beautiful things, the methods they use are more ambiguous, the embedded rigour is often invisible, and their tools for working are easy to misapply.
In which case, there may be good reason to argue that commodified design thinking is in direct competition with expert design skills. For example, when potential clients are looking for innovative user-centred ways of approaching a problem, they might choose a one-off facilitated ‘sprint’ over expensive outsourced expertise. When a user-centred design process is rushed like this, and a well-intentioned team employs rudimentary usability testing after foundational design choices have already been made, the value of the process is questionable and unconvincing. This is what Jon Kolko (2017) and others describe as ‘empathy lite’ — the underestimation of what it takes to meaningfully integrate interventions with the needs of humans that interact with(in) them. Kolko, however, doesn’t think we should do away with design thinking. Instead he believes that design thinking, when executed thoughtfully, legitimizes (and leads to) professional design work.
Deepening Design
Criticism has forced defenders of design thinking to reflect on what it is exactly about design that can be reasonably packaged and passed on to bring value to its recipients. Even soft skills like problem reframing and cognitive flexibility require the kind of (situated) practice that a two-day intensive can’t necessarily deliver.
It’s not a sexy selling point for design thinking, but ultimately, innovative, impactful, lasting work demands that teams expend collective effort reconfiguring their approaches, habits and cultures over time.
Richard Buchanan hints at this challenge in 1992 when design thinking was only in its fledgling stages. He writes, “the challenge is to to gain a deeper understanding of design thinking so that more cooperation and mutual benefit is possible between those who apply design thinking to remarkably different problems and subject matters.”
A more recent and seemingly under-acknowledged paper by design educator Lucy Kimbell (2011) rigorously and respectfully poses the right questions. “Without extensive comparative data, we may wonder how useful it is to generalise across design fields as different as, say, architecture and computer science”, and suggests that perhaps there isn’t anything unique to which design as a generalised field can lay exclusive claim. However, she argues, if we focus on “situated, embodied material practices, rather than generalised ‘design thinking,’ we may shift the conversation away from questions of individual cognition or organisational innovation. Instead, design becomes a set of routines that emerge in context.”
Integrating designerly ways of working involves understanding how designerly work really gets done. In a sense, design is as varied as the ecosystems on the ocean floor.*
There are levels of abstraction that support design’s translation for beginner audiences, like categorising specific kinds of creatures or terrains, but ultimately, to really understand any particular part of the ocean calls for inquiry into the ‘culture’ of particular habitats — the unique creatures, their textures, their rituals and interconnected niches.
In order for workplaces to adopt new methods, mindsets, values, or practices, a cultural shift of some kind is required. Even the smallest shifts are connected to bigger systems that resist change or snap back to status quo. In an organisational setting, these systems include the calendar a company keeps, the resources available (time, money, white boards, post-it notes), the kinds of roles assumed between colleagues, leadership styles, or even the pushback from jaded curmudgeons from middle management. Without consistent exposure or ongoing practice, new skills, mindsets, and habits fail to develop, and might in some cases be a distraction from current ways of working that have emerged and embedded in their own time.
The potential for designerly ways of thinking and doing to drive change is clear, but it is not necessarily the kind of cultural shift that can be deployed to great effect without situated curation of tools or workflows, and perhaps also, guidance from practitioners who have embodied experience in process, implementation and production.
In this sense, the act of creating and disseminating educational design thinking content is itself an act of design.
Those involved in its proliferation can do justice to democratising design by remaining reflective and transparent about the limits of theory and frameworks, and rigorous in their pursuit of serving the situated needs of their clients.
Ceda Verbakel is a design researcher and strategist who helps organizations make sense of fuzzy human stuff to make better products, services and systems.
Kolko, Jon (2017), “The Divisiveness of Design Thinking”, in Interactions
Magazine, XXV.3, May-June 2018.
Buchanan, Richard. (1992) “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”. Design Issues. Vol. 8, №2, p 5–21.
Kimbell, Lucy. (2011) “Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I”. Design and Culture. Vol. 3, №3, p 285–306
