Hi, Habr! I present to you the translation of the article "
The divisiveness of design thinking of the author " by Jon Kolko.
Design thinking is “like syphilis,” writes Lee Vins from the Stevenson Institute of Technology in his recent popular article (1). Other common views on design thinking are Natasha Jen: “Design thinking is nonsense” (2) and, as early as 2011, Bruss Nassbaum: “Design thinking is a bad experiment. What's next? ”(3).
If you are not familiar with design thinking, here's the definition from Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO Design Consulting Firm, “This is a people-centered approach to innovation, inspired by design techniques for combining the needs of people, technology capabilities and requirements for business success.” "(four). It takes a process that designers used to make chairs, cars, toasters, and applied to business strategies and the tasks of large systems.
Special moments:
- Design thinking has a rich and informative history.
- Design thinking has become flat and empty.
- It is impossible to separate design thinking and creating things.
It sounds very good. And here syphilis and nonsense? In this article, I want to explore the split between the value of design thinking and the backlash, and see if you can still restore the value of this powerful way of working. Be patient with the lesson of history - it is useful for understanding how design thinking has been distorted into something superficial.
Comprising
Throughout history, design has been tangible — you can clearly see or touch the result of this creative process. You can sit in a chair, use a toaster, consider a building or read a book. However, the design also has other, not so obvious fruits. The design of the workspace includes much more than just the physical ordering of the building. The processes used, working and operational hours, job titles of employees, the corporate hierarchy, the compensation structure are all the result of design, often top-down, and all this is introduced by a central source of authority. However, there are situations when design decisions are made “from the bottom up,” and people are involved in making these decisions, and sometimes they are promoted, people who will come across these same rules and principles in their daily work.
Researcher Pal En describes the bottom-up approach as a democratic process where the gap between designers and users is bridged. He cites examples from Scandinavian software design, systems, and the workplace. Scandinavian countries have a rich history of social involvement, so it is not surprising that in these areas we find examples of what EN calls participation (involving design workers who are usually not trained in design) and liberation practice (exempting workers from regulatory structures). In the En model, “all those who are directly influenced by the system, all stakeholders are involved as participants in the design process ... A designer is one who, with the help of inspiration and elimination of difficulties, allows participants to more effectively understand organizational disorders” (5).
A collaborative approach changes problem-solving activities that are familiar to designers. Instead of creating ideas in isolation, joint design requires cooperation with people who are not trained in design, and, perhaps, who don’t even know (or don’t want to know) what it is.
Instead of creating ideas in isolation, joint design requires cooperation with people who are not trained in design, and, perhaps, who don’t even know (or don’t want to know) what it is.
To work in this way, designers will need modesty. In a joint, inclusive and democratic environment, it is impossible for a designer to be perceived as a “person with an answer”. Instead, he must be a mentor or assistant who promotes the use of an alien creative process. To successfully fulfill the role of a teacher and mentor, the designer needs an emotional connection with the people with whom he works. This cannot be achieved by simply interacting with an employee of the enterprise. For this you need to intensively, meaningfully cooperate and point out vulnerabilities. To achieve this, it will take a long time, sometimes whole months and years.
Looking at the practice of collaborative design, one can see how empathy (empathy) stands out as the first pillar of design thinking - by developing the correct, meaningful and emotional connection between users, so that they cease to be consumers of design and instead become co-designers.Research tasks
In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an increase in the amount of research in the field of artificial intelligence and learning, which explored how people solve problems. Problem solving was presented as a rational, rational activity, which led the researcher Herb Simon to the theory of bounded rationality. Within its framework, it was suggested that people, solving problems, make rational decisions, but they lack the ability to know all possible solutions to this problem. In the light of this new view on human behavior, the word design implied that a person at any time is trying to make a somewhat less optimal situation somewhat more optimal, within his rationality (6).
However, an alternative approach has already been developed in creative areas; one that described problem solving and design not as something rational, but as fun, illogical and creative. Alex Osborne, an advertiser, systematized the now-popular brainstorming idea. This basic theory of creativity uses four principles: avoid criticism, encourage extravagant ideas, give preference to quantity rather than quality, combine ideas and build from individual ideas - groups. In the Osborne methodology, illogical free associations should be encouraged, not tamed, (7).
Similar is present in the work of the psychologist Edward de Bono. He describes vertical thinking as a generally accepted logical process that “has always been the only respected type of thinking. In its highest form, logic, it is the recommended ideal, and it is imperative that all minds strive for it ... computers are probably the best example. ” This is what de Bono calls “straight-line thinking with a high probability” - a high probability due to the fact that sound logical analysis has a high probability to lead to the desired predictable result.
He compares this with lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is when one specifically looks at a situation from an unexpected and sometimes insane angle. This form of thinking can be caused explicitly (for example, with the help of a hint in the form of random words or a stimulus in the form of images) or it is formed implicitly in an entertainment format to surprise, shock or disrupt the current situation. He compares this with “temporary insanity”, but describes the difference like this: “in lateral thinking, the process is strictly controlled ... it is chaos driven by control, not by lack of control” (8).
There was another point of view, which began to explain how architects solve design problems. Philosopher Donald Shon points out that in architecture “action and thinking complement each other ... one nurtures the other, and both set boundaries to each other” (9). For Sean, the creative process is represented as a loop with the impulse of moving forward. The designer sees the constraints that surround the tasks that he solves, and then does something. This “something” gives rise to new restrictions and so on. This is phenomenological, since the context of the decision depends on the structure provided by the designer, which is entirely based on a unique subjective experience.
In each approach - limited rationality, brainstorming, lateral thinking and repetitive structuring of the problem - the human mind solves the problem by creating things in the plans (this word is used in a general sense) that have not yet existed. These things can be small interactions in well-defined contexts, such as calculating the appropriate amount of change when buying at the supermarket; may be larger things in fuzzy-defined contexts, like sketching a new software interface; or with huge things in terrible system contexts - such as designing a new transport system for a medium-sized city. The created thing can be a physical object, a place, a set of laws or rules, or an organizational structure. In the process of developing these things, people make decisions for decisions. The study of the problem can be logical and analytical (it can be made vertical or confined to a limited rationality), or it can be unexpected and entertaining (lateral or extravagant).
Task research is the second pillar of design thinking. It is a mixture of logical, linear thinking and illogical, inconsistent research — and the designer’s ability to switch between these ways of thinking freely and often.
Repetition of ideas
The 1970s presented a new growth in the use of IT in the context of work. Computers were for experts. They were big and clumsy; usability was far from the first place for people who programmed them, because programming itself was initially a grueling exercise. Because these were highly specialized systems, and there were no financial incentives to develop convenient systems, they were only for functional ones.
Over time, computers became increasingly dominant in business, and it became obvious that complex systems used caused expensive errors. The area known as “human factors,” which initially addressed military ergonomics issues, migrated to IT to help reduce the effect of these usability issues. Researchers in this field spoke on behalf of users, identifying defects and inefficient user-friendliness components. Their method was to create extremely detailed models of human behavior. They identified each keystroke and each cognitive decision process, and tracked them at the exact level of specificity (often down to milliseconds) in order to identify inefficiencies and problematic features.
These human factors studies were long, exhausting, and, as a response, “discount” convenience methods were soon developed (such as observing living people using software, instead of constructing cognitive models of theoretical use). With their help, it was possible to quickly determine in which place the program is difficult to use. With the proliferation of computers in non-business contexts, this form of rapid convenience testing has become more and more important. Convenient software was described by the word friendly, which became the goal of home applications.
By the 1980s, when user interfaces became easier to develop, and for end users it became more accessible to work with them, the need arose for tools to quickly develop and research software design. As a result, tools such as Hypercard. These tools helped interface designers not only create prototypes, but also quickly test interfaces instead of testing a whole product development. A new generation of IT has evolved, which was philosophically oriented towards people, although it was still based on logic and structure.
This approach — doing things at a low level of accuracy, testing them with real people, learning from testing and repeating — is an approach to ensuring a continuous search for a balance between the thing the designer is working on and the people who will buy, use or test it.
For the third pillar of design thinking, the following is characteristic: do things at a gross level of accuracy; to test them on real people in order to understand how comfortable, useful and desirable they are; and use the prototype to get across the value proposition.
Attempt to understand the world
Such a combination of empathy cultivation, task research, prototyping, and solution testing is what design thinking is about. This design thinking, because it is inextricably linked with thinking, it is associated with intellectual themes and intellectual research. But at the same time it is design, because you need to do things.
There is another component of design thinking. While these very practical ideas of design thinking appeared, a special theoretical view on technological progress emerged - a look at design as a cultural phenomenon. Design as a problem solving considers the world as a sequence of problems to be optimized. He evaluates optimization, correctness and logic. This different perspective reflects on the world as a place that is known through experience. Here design is a prism for human experience, through which history is assessed (for example, an understanding of how technology has shaped the world around us), significance (for example, the role of objects in determining our values, ethics and morality) and humanism (for example, communication with human conditions).
In this world, design is not only an occupation of specialists, focused on creating artifacts, such as objects, furniture and posters. It is also a way of understanding the world, which is in constant motion, the humanization of technology, the creation and formation of culture. Such a view is consistent with the work of Pal Ahn, rather than Herb Simon.
In this model, design skills help us to perceive the world through the prism of experience. When we do things and appreciate the things we have done, we are able to cope with all the difficulties that come with new technologies. Models and sketches are not used for the realization of innovation, but rather for the contextualization of emerging innovations, and thus we can play our role in modern culture. In this context, design is a humanitarian science, since the creation of things serves as a basis for active communication with the world, just like reading literature or researching science allows us to make our contribution as a member of society (10).
Design thinking with depth
We have countless examples of real and meaningful examples of empathic immersion in the context of social problems - people are engaged in design thinking, as described above, without even naming it so. Among them is the work of Lauren Seroty in Myanmar, aimed at understanding the products associated with the cultivation of rice, the financial inclusion and the use of mobile money (
laurenserota.com ); this and the work of Robert Fabricant in Dalberg in numerous countries (
dalberg.com/our-ideas ); and work on introducing Internet services into African countries by Eric Gersman at BRCK (
brck.com ).
We have educational institutions such as Design Matters at the Center for the Arts with dozens of teaching examples of design thinking in action in a number of contexts (
designmattersatartcenter.org ).
We have solid examples of design services created through design thinking, often with an emphasis on civic participation and humanitarian influence. For example, the work of Carl DiSalvo in Georgia Tech, focused on socially involved design and in the media, are examples of work in reality, not just in theory (
carldisalvo.com/bio ). Designer Sarah Brooks was the chief design officer at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where her team used design thinking to improve the services provided to veterans (11).
Design as a problem solving considers the world as a sequence of problems to be optimized. A different perspective reflects on the world as a place that is known through experience.
These examples have in common that people who perform this work have experience in studying and practicing design, and not just in studying and practicing design thinking. Serota studied industrial design, worked in consulting firms Lextant and Frog, and spent the last four years working in field conditions in Myanmar. The factory was the vice president of creative at Frog. DiSalvo was an interaction designer at Meta. Brooks was a producer, and then a director in Hot Studio. Natasha Jen - partner in «Pentagram». Even Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, who popularized design thinking, studied design at Northumbria University and the Royal College of Art, and worked as a practicing designer.
In all these cases, the designers mentioned had tactical and practical experience in creating things. They learned the skills and then applied them — in endowing with form, in repetitive prototyping, in such fundamental things as composition, the theory of light, making sketches, and in creating things that people actually use. - , , .
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It is safe to say that most people who use popularized design thinking did not explore the psychology of problem solving, the history of trade union interventions in Scandinavia, or the idea of design as a humanitarian science. And why is it to them? The intellectual basis of this work is highly academic, published in journals only for initiates, and has only an abstract connection with application in practice. Such a text is too complicated for many people to enjoy, and we will never see it in the popular Buzzfeed (“The top 3 things you need to know about design as a human science are to click here, the results are breathtaking!”)Likewise, they probably did not spend years drawing, building and modeling, giving detailed form to complex ideas. Again, what is it for them? I draw well, but I don’t want to make an effort trying to become a brilliant philosopher. However, I can read philosophy and appreciate it. As I can develop the taste and ability to assess the humanities, without being an expert in this discipline, so there is no need for others to become competent designers to develop the taste and ability to evaluate design.However, inspirational seminars and day-long courses, a business that urgently needs ways to innovate, as well as the popularity and lectures of TED, have contributed to the fact that more and more people go beyond taste and appreciation, and proceed directly to the design of things - however, without rich baggage skills and knowledge described here.As a result, instead of empathy as the result of a long-term immersion in culture, as is the case with Pal Ahn’s work in Scandinavia, we have two-hour interviews with “subject matter experts”, in which we gain a superficial understanding of business needs. Instead of Osborne’s review of structured brainstorming, we have “work sessions”. Instead of Simon’s methodical understanding of how the human brain works, we get a test-and-break culture of repetition in the form of “snap-break,” which renounces the proactive reflection of reactive changes. Instead of looking at design as a way of understanding culture and attentive, careful and skillful putting it into shape, we see it as a way to promote innovation in the relentless pursuit of novelty. And instead of beautiful, comfortable, meaningful and appropriately designed things,we get “canvases”, “reproductions” and “design sprints” - and many, many papers for notes., . -, . -, , - « , . „ — “, - , „ “ »(1). , -, , , , , . - .
Next, Winsel describes how design thinking has become a way for us to feel something good, but not to do something good in reality. Sessions of the formation of ideas encourage positive thinking at the cost of critical thinking - design thinking is presented as a fun work, rather than a serious one. Osborne's brainstorming or de Bono's lateral thinking is funny by mere accident; first of all - this is a serious activity. The thinking practitioner described by Sean works diligently and continuously for many hours. And the main message of En’s work is to improve the social conditions of the world around us, and not to get on the cover of Forbes magazine., -. « , - . . - . „ “, . — »(1). , - — , .
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It takes a thoughtful, complex, repetitive and often erratic process, and greatly oversimplifies it to make it more understandable.- It diminishes the role of production and creation of things, which is fundamental to the design process.
- He promotes "light empathy" - as if an empathic and meaningful relationship with people can be built in a few hours or even days.
- It became a tool for consulting firms to sell its services, and not to be a real driving force.
This criticism of design thinking is fair, as well as the emerging response of designers and design organizations against methodology. If you look from the point of view of the historical sources that I have highlighted above, the current design thinkers lack practical skills, lack intellectual base and they cannot create things.-
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References:
1.
Vinsel, L. Design thinking is kind of like syphilis—it's contagious and rots your brains (- — , ). Medium. Dec. 6, 20172.
Jen, N. Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullshit. Aug. 20173.
Nussbaum, B. Design thinking is a failed experiment. So what's next? Co.Design. Apr. 5, 20114.
IDEO. Design Thinking. IDEO U5. Ehn, P. Work- Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts. Sweden, 1988.
6. Simon, H. Theories of Bounded Rationality. North-Holland Publishing Company, 1972.
7. Osborn, A. How to Think Up. McGraw-Hill, 1942.
8. de Bono, E. The Use of Lateral Thinking. International Center for Creative Thinking, 1971.
9. Schön, D. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, 1995.
10. Buchanan, R. Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues 8, 2 (Spring 1992), 5–21.
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Arieff, A. Designs on the VA. The New York Times. Feb. 24, 201712.
Kolko, J. Twitter. June 1, 201013.
Kolko, J. Twitter. April 10, 201314.
Academy of Art University. A Conversation with Don Norman and Jon Kolko. Nov. 1, 201115.
Kolko, J. Design should be a liberal art. USI Blog. May 11, 201616.
Kleinfeld, NR Industrial design comes of age. The New York Times. Mar. 10, 198517. Kolko, J. Design thinking comes of age. Harvard Business Review (Sept. 2015), 66–71.
Author(
www.jonkolko.com ) Modernist Studio . 15 . — , — «Creative Clarity» (« »). jkolko@gmail.com