Design thinking

A recent post on the Fast Company Design site has got us worried.

www.fastcodesign.com/can-innovation-really-be-reduced-to-a-process

Have we missed the debate on the application of Design Thinking to business or was it a US concept that didn’t travel over here until one of its biggest proponents decided to move on to another proposition? (Creative Intelligence, in case you’re wondering: www.fastcodesign.com/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next)

Well, no. It seems the debate has been had here, at least amongst Design Council members, but it was surprising to find so little in UK creative publications about the concept, following our quick scout around. Design bods in this country have been banging the drum for a while about the importance of design for the UK economy, therefore you’d think Design Thinking and its application to business would have been latched on to more. Let us know the community of people who are avidly talking about it in the UK if you’re in the know.
However, if you’re feeling a bit behind the thinking on Design Thinking too, then we’d recommend going back a few steps and reading the transcript of Tim Brown talking about the role Design Thinking had at IDEO. We like the way he describes his revelation that design is an inter-disciplinary activity and a collaborative activity, a position he arrived at because of colleagues who introduced him, as he terms it, to the human factor in design, psychology and ethnography. He says: ‘It completely disabused me of the notion of designer as the all-encompassing author, as the single person responsible for the outcome.”

That sounds all right to us. We like to get different kinds of thinking around the table at Zephyr. But we have to agree with @HelenWalters, the writer who drew our attention to the subject of Design Thinking today, when she says a major part of the problem is getting people from different disciplines to work together effectively. We argue it’s often people with the title R&D or Innovation who are the worst at collaboration because they don’t like the idea of their territory being open invitation. Many try to make innovation a scary thing, prohibiting others getting involved. Crowd-sourcing should (eventually) see an end to that.

We do disagree with @HelenWalters, however, when she says business should give up trying to introduce Design Thinking. She implies it’s just as impossible as trying to make curly hair permanently straight and that attempting to convert design into a replicable process ultimately undermines it.
Many aspects of the design approach are replicable. Design contains a lot of rigour and straight line thinking as well as leaps of faith and explosions of thought. The combination of these activities design offers is perhaps why businesses turn to design so often to sort out their challenges. The best designers are very good at defining the problem and the change that’s required. The means to the change is the bit they like to go wild on.