Pros of design thinking are:
- It is meant to be exportable. The core idea is those who have specialized knowledge about a domain, like city planners have specialized knowledge in urban planning, can use lean design thinking methods to think creatively, outside the box and run experiments fast.
- It can be innovative. Generating lots of ideas quickly, testing them cheaply, and iterating based on feedback has proven to be a good tragedy for software development.
Cons of design thinking are:
- In some domains, we cannot afford to fail. We cannot build a bridge fast in hopes of learning from its first failure because that will result in significant loss of lives and property.
- Design thinkers often sit in their ivory towers and have little to no knowledge or relationship with the people they want to serve. This is specially true for service aimed at helping underserved communities.
- Design thinking, like most things, is a business. These companies sell consultations, corporate thinking retreats which have an opportunity cost of putting actual hours to work.
- Design thinking can make people self delude themselves into thinking they actual knowledge how to solve a problem, or at least, they will experiment their way out of problems, which can create problem for sensitive field like medicine or poverty alleviation.
Case Study of design thinking harming an underserved community:
- IDEO was hired to consult Gainesville, one of the poorest cities in America, to be an economic hub. IDEO suggested the city to change it’s brand, look-and-feel, and start a department of doing, which would help/train people to open their businesses.
But the problem was that Gainesville is among the least racially equitable in its distribution of income and resources. Black residents comprise 22% of the city population and suffer from lack of grocery options, dilapidated transportation, and basic amenities like street lighting. High school graduation rate for Black residents are 18% lower than that of white residents. Simply changing the brand, logo, or a department of doing in the best case widens the inequity that exists, and in the worst case breed failure and loss of scarce tax resources by proving to be ineffective.
What should the designers have done differently?
- Include more representatives of underserved communities in their needfinding.
- Before jumping onto bandaid solutions, be more thorough in their research.
- Be deliberate in asking if they have actually understood the city’s deepest problems.
- Realize that agile software methodologies are not universally applicable in everything.
