Reflecting on Maggie Gram’s “On Design Thinking” article and Debbie Levitt’s summary, my sumarry goes as follows:
1. Design thinking was created to be a commodity that could be sold.
2. Design thinking is often done superficially and as theatre.
3. Design thinking can‘t solve wicked problems.
I agree that design thinking is far from being the quintessential solution for everything and epic failures are indeed well documented on the article – I guess wicked problems are wicked for a reason. On a related note, I find the historical Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test and/or the double Diamonds – overtheorizing upon a very simple process (same as lawyers would do using gothic literature). It make is unecessarily complex? Yes. But it allows you to charge considerably more to your customers.
Nonetheless, I find that providing a framework is to some extent useful to approach design challenges effectively. In that regards, I find the following most useful. A framework drawn upon two dimensions (abstract-concrete vs current-future), defining four quadrants and an iterative process that clearly define the designers mindset.
This being said. I won’t be the one that criticizes IDEO movement when their main business unit (i.e. product design) started aching. As per its effectiveness, results are unclear. Still, the are hired. What is what the customers are looking for? What is the reason why the pay a huge premium to access to its services despite unclear results? There definitely has to be something. And IDEO saw it. And they just keep doing (and billing) their jobs. I guess, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
