In popular conversation “Design Thinking” is all about the “Thinking” but Lucy Kimbell makes a case for considering it more deeply within the context of Design Practice.
This week I was given the task of reading and reflecting on Lucy Kimbell’s “Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 1”, a great paper that takes a deep dive into the scholarly literature around Design Thinking, and makes a strong argument around the Importance of understanding the way designers think within the context of their practice. Kimbell raises the importance of considering the various streams of design practice and highlights that lack of specificity in much of the public discussion on Design Thinking – is this coming out of the practice of Visual Designers, Architects, Industrial Designers, Interaction Designers? She asks if there is even a common way of thinking across these disciplines.
BTW – Here’s my sketchnote of the paper
One thing that particularly struck me in this piece was Kimbell’s criticism of the wider discussion of Design Thinking championed by Design & Management Consultancies. In particular she cites the perceived dualism between thinking and practice as a shortcoming of these conversations. I can’t help but feel that she’s missing the context in which these conversations are taking place, and the purpose Design Thinking plays in solving specific problems of Business and Society in the 21st Century. When Business and Social groups discuss Design Thinking the conversation is all about mindset, or the “Thinking”. This video of a presentation by Tim Brown speaks loudly to the purpose of Design Thinking in this context. Indeed some proponents consider the phrase “Design Thinking” as a temporary bridge for a new way of understanding and addressing the need for innovation (comparing the term to “Horseless Carriage” which was used at the end of the 19th century to explain the new/unknown in terms of the old/known). In effect, their discussions on “Design Thinking” are more of what de Bono terms the “PO” to create a lateral shift in thinking, with the purpose of finding a new thinking to solve the problems created with the socio-Industrial thinking of the 20th century. It’s seems to be trying to achieve one of those “English Bread” moments that I spoke of in my last blog. Marie_Claire Brady gave a great presentation at Customer Experience 2015, held in Melbourne in May 2015, where she focused on the importance of Mindset over Matter, warning of the dangers when Organisations pick up new ideas and focus only on looking only at new set of practices without challenging the way they look at either their current problems or how they consider solutions.
One of the final questions Kimbell asks is “Is Design Special?” – I would answer that it is, but that it is quite distinct from much of the wider conversations around “Design Thinking” in Business and Society. The two should be able to exist side by side and benefit from each other’s practice and insight – with the rigorous examination of specific design streams that Kimball calls for enriching understanding of “Design Thinking”, and the application of designerly approaches in wider Business and Social settings providing insights from practical application.
This post was generated as part of RMIT University’s Masters of Design Futures program, you can find out more at http://designfuture.me/
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