Although design thinking allows for innovative designs to be created, I believe that it should be used with caution. As mentioned in the reading, “design thinking” is portrayed as an elegant, fix-anything solution. Places such as IDEO and the Stanford d.school make design look attractive. However, as the reading bluntly states, “Americans love design most when we’re afraid.” During tough times, people start turning to design thinking as this magical escape that will dig them out of their troubles. However, design thinking is not magic. And as seen in the case with Gainesville, it does not fix everything. The main peril of design thinking is its elusive appearance–design thinking can be used, but it should not be simply thought of as a formula that can fix anything without deeper probing on the user’s end.
The Millennium Tower of San Francisco is one example of a design fail. While beautiful and designed to be a luxurious new high rise for the people of San Francisco, the Millennium Tower is slowly sinking, and the projects underway to try and stabilize the building are having issues (some fixes are making the problem worse). While the designers of the Millenium Tower might have taken into account the types of buildings that people want to live in, the aesthetics, and how they want the rooms to be designed, they failed to account for the land that the building is built on. Unlike New York, which is built upon bedrock, San Francisco is built on clay, which is not as stable. Now, due to this one oversight, there are many projects underway to try and fix this issue, but the Millennium Tower today still stands with more issues.
