Part 2: Characteristics of Design Thinking

An excerpt of my research paper titled “The Backside of the Loop: Design Thinking as a Strategic Resource For Change.”. This is a 2-part story on Medium comparing strategic thinking and design thinking. [Part 1]

Design is a word used to describe many things, in many different ways. A fashion designer, a systems engineer, and a UI designer all “design” things and yet each has different ways of designing and produces different outputs. Buchanan identifies four main areas of design: symbolic and visual communications, material objects, activities and organized services, and complex systems or environments for living, working, playing, and learning (1992). This list illustrates the outcomes of design, but not the thinking of design. The concept of design thinking has shifted and changed throughout the last few decades. In 1982, Nigel Cross adapted the term satisficing, from Herbert Simon’s The Sciences of the Artificial (1969), to design as a “process of ‘satisficing’ rather than optimising; producing any one of what might well be a large range of satisfactory solutions rather than attempting to generate the one hypothetically-optimum solution” (p. 224). More recently, from Van Alstyne and Logan, “design refers to an intentional, human, creative process,” in contrast with emergence which the authors see as creative but not intentional (2007, p. 121).

While there is a lot of literature on what design thinking involves, and the methodologies it likes to use, here is a compilation from various authors on how to think like a designer.

1 A design thinker must be both hypothesis-driven, and solution-oriented. Design thinking relies on cognitive processes associated with the scientific method, in that it explores hypotheses through abductive reasoning and iterates on solving the problem. However, Nigel Cross has posited that “scientists problem-solve by analysis, whereas designers problem-solve by synthesis” (1982, p. 223). The analytical approach attempts to find possible solutions and systematically explores each one to better understand the hypothesis and context in which it operates, the synthetical approach biases toward finding a range of probable solutions and systematically eliminates each one to find the most effective solution for the hypothesis and context in which it operates. A design thinker uses and mixes both abductive reasoning and deductive reasoning, a particular combination of skills that Martin places at the centre of integrative thinking (2009).

2 A design thinker must be recursive. Design thinking is generally not linear, and while problem solving in design requires an iterative approach, it is also recursive (Dubberly Design Office, 2009). One of its main tools, rapid prototyping, draws on an iterative approach, but it is intrinsically tied with creation as well. Design thinkers formulate designs, create rough representations to test viability, then formulate other designs, etc. However, complex problems — in particular that class defined as wicked problems — are unique and generally have no beginning or end (Rittel & Weber, 1973, Buchanan, 1992). They exist across multiple systemic boundaries. Any formulated solution changes the context that contains the original hypothesis and invalidates that hypothesis as it is “solved.” Any formulation of a solution requires re-formulation of the problem. This correlates to strategic thinking based on the need for systems thinking and time-based thinking.

3 A design thinker must be particular. Design thinking is concerned with hypothesis validation and effective application. By finding solutions that are context- and hypothesis-specific, design formulations are inherently unique and irreplicable for other contexts and hypotheses; solutions are project-based (Brown, 2009). In addition, two particular concepts constrain designers: the ideas of bounded rationality, which Herbert Simon describes as “the limits upon the ability of human beings to adapt optimally, or even satisfactorily, to complex environments” (1989, p. 12), and sensemaking, which is interpreting data through a particular perspective (Klein, Moon, & Hoffman, 2006). Design thinkers are human; they are both empowered by, and limited in, their knowledge and their perspectives. Two people approaching the same problem will likely solve it in different ways due to a difference in how and what data they gather, and in how they interpret that data.

4 A design thinker must be concerned with novelty. Design thinking attempts to find new solutions to problems. If each solution in the past has been a particular solution to a problem, then a new context will change the problem, and will require a new solution. Martin describes three stages in the knowledge funnel: mysteries — “things in our environment that excite our curiosity but elude our understanding” (2009, p. 11), heuristics — “open-ended prompts to think or act in a particular way” (p. 11), and algorithms — “performance [guarantees] that come along with using them” (p. 11). If design thinking is concerned with wicked problems, which are unique, then each presentation of a problem requires designers to go back up the knowledge funnel for potential solutions. This is why design thinking is generally associated with innovation — if organizations provide opportunities and contexts for mystery-seeking behaviours to flourish, then they also provide possibilities for innovations to emerge (Van Alstyne & Logan, 2007).

5 A design thinker must be empathetic. Design thinking is truly meant to solve human-centred problems; as Tim Brown puts it, solutions must be desirable. Liedtka & Ogilvie explain further: “Design thinking assumes the primacy of personal experience. … Decisions in this world are seen as driven by emotion more than logic; desire is a far more powerful motivator than goals” (2011, p. 10). Many of design thinking’s methodologies — observation, collaboration, and visualization, as examples — are popular because they allow design thinkers to frame and reframe their perspectives and to reduce bounded rationality to create effective solutions (Lockwood, 2010). Addressing an argument put forth by Natasha Iskander that challenges the top-down approach to designing solutions (2018), design thinkers are increasingly becoming less craft-based designers and more design facilitators to the stakeholders involved (Jones, 2018). The concept of everyone in an organization having strategic thinking capabilities seems relevant here as a comparison; can we teach all stakeholders involved to have design thinking capabilities?

6 A design thinker must be strategic. Design thinking must produce something feasible, which Lockwood describes as “anticipating what new business activities may be required … as well as the resources it may require and the competitive landscape in which [a new offering] will appear” (2010, p. XII). This means a designer thinker must also be a good strategic thinker, with all of the characteristics outlined in the last section.

These design thinking characteristics are interrelated. We can also see more clearly how strategic and design thinking intersect now. They are both integrative thinking processes, and both require synthesizing knowledge to accomplish their goals. These two processes have vastly different historical backgrounds however, and by understanding how they were shaped, we can see how they diverge. Strategic thinking is thinking about how to accomplish a goal in which the solution is not guaranteed, and the goal is consistently out-of-reach and in need of continual reframing. Design thinking is thinking about how to solve a human-centred problem, one that is constantly changing and also needs continual reframing. Strategy has historically been forming a vision; design has historically been solving problems preventing that vision. So I now ask the question; where does design thinking fit within strategy formation?

This is an excerpt from “The Backside of the Loop: Design Thinking as a Strategic Resource For Change.”

References

Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation (1st edition). Harper Business.

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5–21.

Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies, 3(4), 221–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694X(82)90040-0

A Model of The Creative Process. (2009, March 20). Dubberly Design Office. http://www.dubberly.com/concept-maps/creative-process.html

Iskander, N. (2018, September 5). Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/09/design-thinking-is-fundamentally-conservative-and-preserves-the-status-quo

Jones, P. (2018). Contexts of Co-creation: Designing with System Stakeholders. In P. Jones & K. Kijima (Eds.), Systemic Design (Vol. 8, pp. 3–52). Springer Japan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55639-8_1

Klein, G., Moon, B., & Hoffman, R. (2006). Making Sense of Sensemaking 2: A Macrocognitive Model. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(5), 88–92. https://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2006.100

Liedtka, J., & Ogilvie, T. (2011). Designing for growth: A design thinking tool kit for managers. Columbia Business School Pub., Columbia University Press.

Lockwood, T. (Ed.). (2010). Design thinking: Integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value. Allworth Press.

Martin, R. L. (2009). The design of business: Why design thinking is the next competitive advantage. Harvard Business Press.

Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.

Simon, H. A. (1989, September 23). Bounded Rationality and Organizational Learning. Defense Technical Information Center. http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA225615

Van Alstyne, G., & Logan, R. K. (2007). Designing for Emergence and Innovation: Redesigning Design. Artifact, 1(2), 120–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/17493460601110525