If there are wicked problems, there must also be good problems and also, perhaps, bad problems – those not quite so wicked. If there is such a thing as design thinking, there must also be other types of thinking. Is there a form of thinking that is used by designers that is different from other forms of thinking? Is it possible to design without thinking?
The phrase design thinking originally referred to a way of thinking about complex (wicked) problems – problems that are poorly defined and intertwined with solutions, a definition suggested by Horst Rittel, a mathematician, design theorist, and university professor at the Ulm School of Design in Germany in the 1960s. Such thinking is routinely used by expert designers, artists, and craftsman. However, in recent years, the phrase has been hijacked by the likes of IDEO and Stanford University’s design school (called d.school), to refer to a simple design process that can be easily taught to novices in a couple of days. Blogger Lee Vinsel compares the corporate spread of design thinking, somewhat inappropriately, to the spread of an infectious disease (syphilis), and suggests that design thinking as it is now taught in schools is just “design lite.” Natasha Jen, a partner at the design firm Pentagram, in her talk “Design Thinking is Bullshit,” complains that design thinking has become a meaningless buzzword and facetiously suggests that the complex process of design has been reduced to a single tool, the 3M Post-It note. She notes what is often missing, and in this I heartily agree, is critical thought.
The phrase design thinking originally referred to a way of thinking about complex (wicked) problems – problems that are poorly defined and intertwined with solutions, a definition suggested by Horst Rittel, a mathematician, design theorist, and university professor at the Ulm School of Design in Germany in the 1960s. Such thinking is routinely used by expert designers, artists, and craftsman. However, in recent years, the phrase has been hijacked by the likes of IDEO and Stanford University’s design school (called d.school), to refer to a simple design process that can be easily taught to novices in a couple of days. Blogger Lee Vinsel compares the corporate spread of design thinking, somewhat inappropriately, to the spread of an infectious disease (syphilis), and suggests that design thinking as it is now taught in schools is just “design lite.” Natasha Jen, a partner at the design firm Pentagram, in her talk “Design Thinking is Bullshit,” complains that design thinking has become a meaningless buzzword and facetiously suggests that the complex process of design has been reduced to a single tool, the 3M Post-It note. She notes what is often missing, and in this I heartily agree, is critical thought.