Coming from an article which left a lasting impression on me, I felt motivated to reflect upon the field I have only recently dove into. A field I consider highly interesting and holding a lot of potential for solving many problems, smaller and bigger ones. And yet a field I have no formal right to judge as my point of view is that of a person coming from a social science perspective on human computer interaction rather than from a practical craftsmanship. Being thrown into this new way of working, doing and even thinking, it is hard to actually critically discuss this promising collection of methods. They are often explained using nice, fluffy (business-) buzzwords, have produced great success stories and seem the next revolution in the innovation/design business. Helen Walters manages to lay out why this might not quite be the case. Here is my personal addition.
So, what about the hype of DT? After having read and talked about it to many people, I realized that DT can be
- a mantra to some (just think of the “rules” we follow at the school of design thinking, such as “build on the ideas of others” or “encourage wild ideas”),
- a means to an end like any other design process
- a greatly feared hype which brings design processes to the general public (i.e. anyone with an original profession other than design)
The latter attitude makes it a highly fickle and vulnerable sub-discipline in the eyes of those who try to restrict the evolution and possibly even the application of the design discipline to “properly educated” design professionals only. To quote Helen Walters who rephrased some designers’ fear: “Those extolling the virtues of design thinking are at best misguided, at worst likely to inflict dangerous harm on the company at large, over-promising and under-delivering and in the process screwing up the delicate business of design itself.”
So, from my perspective, what isn’t there behind the big words?
- a fixed paradigm
- a guarantee to quick success
- a recipe for solving all problems
And what is, in my eyes?
- a way of identifying the design or problem space from a user-centric perspective as well as structuring the idea and solution generation process (mind you, other design processes might be just as good at these aspects, I’m not the expert)
- an attitude towards life (life is a prototype, constantly evolving, there is a bias towards action, you progress through iteration, this equally applies to the concept of DT itself))
So, what isn’t Design Thinking good at?
- implementing ideas (anyone who has understood the process will be able to generate good solutions, but only professionals – IT people, business guys, engineers, lawyers, interface/interaction designers… – will then be able to take them further)
- when it comes to tasks that require the established workflow of professionals (e.g. there are well-proven methods for selecting the right software for a particular situation, and others to create that software. While empathizing with the user will certainly help with understanding the needs, an ideation or brainstorming session won’t help if you want to know what’s out there and how to adapt it.)
So, what is it good at?
- discovering “real” (as opposed to artificially created) needs and finding a way to formulate and generate fitting solutions
- learning from mistakes quickly and finding out early if a solution solves a problem or not
- generating empathy for your users while keeping your emotional distance from your solution, allowing you to “never fall in love with your baby”
- making use of various professions’ expertise in a team
- communicating ideas convincingly, coming from a real user-insight-need situation (look, he currently feels bad because of xyz, and with our solution he will be happy because we address xyz)
So, isn’t Design Thinking just a combination of useful and proven methods given a nice name?
I guess you could say so but many times good names are needed for complex concepts (many social sciences theories do the same) so everyone knows roughly what is meant. However, I do believe in the concept’s positive effects which it can have on the quality of solutions thanks to its focus on identifying real needs and the constant, fast iteration process. I personally wish that more design agencies don’t only focus on their immediate clients’ satisfaction (for obvious business reasons they always will have to to some extend) but much more on what it really is the end user will want to have (no, probably not the one-hundredths iteration of a bad GPS navigation menu, but something that doesn’t distract us from paying attention to the road while still being able to navigate). I also wish that NGOs working in ICT4D put more effort into researching why technological concepts which were designed in a western tradition are possibly not as easily transferred to a similar situation down south. Some good user research and empathy generation methods might help here. But that’s a different story alltogether.
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