An empty tomb for Design Thinking & Why do people keep saying Design Thinking is dead?
For the past few years, Design Thinking has been “dying” in the midst of change.
Meeting expectations is hard.
Design Thinking came with the promise that it can bring outcomes that users value. Empathy, a revolutionary backbone to discovering insights, would set the tone for market research that is grounded in more qualitative data. But DT stems from…well… design architecture — principles of design with “sense-making properties” for the mind and the physical spaces, now in the service of user-centric businesses.
But, really, Design Thinking was never new or innovative.
Nothing about “thinking” is new, either. Rediscovering ways of thinking about problems it’s quite an extraordinary activity, nonetheless.
The most common death of design is due to its limits.
Yes, design thinking is limited.
This is a nice summary of the main shortcomings observed:
Shortsighted
Linear
Over-simplified
Overly Democratic
Undisruptive
Reactive —from Design Thinking is Dead
It’s hard to disagree, but, honestly, what isn’t like that? What does it take for something not to be short-sighted? How much of a foresight must build to overcome the first limit. The author here tries to help reposition design thinking in a space where it can provide more value:
By replacing “design thinking” with “design foresight”, we consider future scenarios in the innovative process itself. It requires innovation leaders to reach a new height of well-rounded skills and knowledge since the foresight aspect inherently reduces reliance on external iterative inputs. Design foresight cannot be drafted on a timeline or roadmap. It consists of various forward-facing predictive outcomes based on assumptions. —from Design Thinking is Dead
While this may take care of certain issues that come with short-sightedness, it’s hard to say the problems will dissolve. The other highlighted limits can transform into quite unintended sources of problems if they are treated as “what is wrong with DT”: Linearity may turn into an ambiguous and arbitrary thing, without an internal logic but a made-up one, trusting the judgment of those in charge. Over-simplification paired with less iterative inputs (now at risk of heavy selection bias) may lead to less transparency or ability to track a pattern fitting your organizational processes. Overly Democratic could be downgraded and become the loss of clear communication and means of contribution. Undisruptive and reactive seem to contradict each other — at least in terms, but together they seem to be the loop that never breaks through for design thinking to be the problem-solving methodology that was promised. Yet, there’s room for worse, disruption doesn’t always enable innovation, nor the better alternatives to reaction offer courses of action.
Regardless, most criticism is valid. DT had to come with these limits for quick standardization and implementation at scale. Those with a good design education may have benefited greatly from finally having a minimum vocabulary to communicate to the non-designers. Improvements and tweaks could be made. Yet, frustrations only grew over the years. After all, a limited DT brings limited results.
But before DT went into any transformation, well…it died…again.
Here’s a different way to categorize causes of death:
Failing to change the mindset, the organization (even society on a larger scale) or the methodology itself
— Criticising the conditions in which we operate and make room for DT to breathe is another way to look at this complex debate. DT is dependent on the variables and resources it’s being fed.
Mindset failure
To embrace Design Thinking, we need to shift our mindset from control to facilitation, from knowing all the answers to being curious about the questions. It’s about leading by letting go, by creating an environment where ideas can flourish, and where failure is not a setback but a step forward in the learning process. From Design Thinking is dead… again
Getting clarity over what goes wrong with DT is not easy to pinpoint, especially when proposing the supposed changes that are required to overcome this challenge.
Let’s cut the crap. Really? “Design Thinking” and “Design Doing”? How about “Design.” Yes, just Design. Design is a mindset, an approach, a set of principles, a way of thinking and first and foremost a process of creation. Focusing on good design solves problems and sparks innovation. — From Design Thinking is Dead. Long Live Innovation!
At this point in time, it’s hard to envision something that doesn’t hold the seeds that DT cultivated for almost the past two decades.
Methodology Failure
The integration of AI in design processes is seen as a necessary and pivotal move to boost the speed and quality of delivery. However, the friction is quite high. Adding new dynamics is a great way to rework previous application of DT, but it hardly seems to be a departure point from DT itself, despite the claims.
The double diamond is no longer promoted by the Design Council, they have innovated their framework bringing in more significant aspects and trends, such as systems thinking. That said, AI is a design tool and tools are not apparent in any design framework because…Ehr… they are tools. You can still use AI to support any activity in a whatsoever framework, provided that AI is mature enough for that specific activity. — From The new Stingray AI innovation framework by Board of Innovation — the death of design thinking, announced once again
The Stingray here is still a double diamond stretched into a more asymmetric visualization, in my humble opinion though… The hybridization of DT with other methods and approaches such as systems thinking has been a very interesting experimental journey yet to prove a decisive stepping stone for the transformation of DT.
So, is Design Thinking really dying?
Societal Failure
Sometimes things cannot change because there are greater things in place holding them from happening differently. If not DT dying, a lot of initiatives to improve or transform it have died in the process.
A shiny new design methodology isn’t going to fix a broken system. And the system, of course, is capitalism. Creating genuinely compassionate and community centered digital services is not easily done when everyone is asking you how you will make money. And it’s going to take more than a new design methodology to achieve that. Evolving our design process is very important, but we cannot evolve our design process in a world that only cares about profit. A designers work exists within the larger context of economic systems, and when those economic systems are fundamentally uncaring, these economic systems need addressed before we can have discussions about how best to design with compassion. — From Design Thinking is not dead. Corporations are.
I’m sure I skipped plenty of versions stating the obituaries for Design Thinking, but I doubt there won’t be other future ones to bring to the table. DT is not really dying, but it’s struggling:
- To evolve and
- To survive in its current state.
One last mention that highlights three problems that need to be solved before any transformation is brought to DT:
We lost the North Star
To be a designer, you have to become a designer!
Design is a serious discipline, and it’s becoming more serious. — From Design thinking is not dead, but are we extracting its full potential?
Finding what variations work for us requires learning and not just brushing over. Quality results, require quality inputs and processes that have at least conceptual depth. Should we separate Design from Thinking, pairing it with Doing, or simply call it Design-ing?
Regardless of the change we want to make, it better be a comprehensive framework that doesn’t forget the roots of Design or Thinking, and of course, it is responsive to the problems we seek to solve. Calibrating our lens is one way to do it, changing the lens is another, or perhaps, needing no lens at all is also a great way.
Being bound to the narratives in circulation is counterproductive and misses the point of why Design Thinking took off in the first place. We can’t kill what is commonsensical about it, but it takes discernment and lateral learning to see the full and the real body of Design Thinking.
By no means an exhaustive list of resources tied to the debate:
Design Thinking is dead… again
Design Thinking is Dead. Long Live Innovation!
Design Thinking is not dead. Corporations are.
Design thinking is not dead, but are we extracting its full potential?
I’d love to know your thoughts, as I’m always looking for perspectives I haven’t considered yet. :D
