Talk:Design thinking

Needs attention

Google seems to report this as a current management fad of some sort, but the article needs a good workout. Cites, etc. Coren 03:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Design thinking is a mind set that should be explained in detail in the wikipedia. It is something along the lines with innovator, or designer.

This article should be removed or simply become a topic under design. Otherwise, it is just a buzz word and should be labeled as such.

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This is hardly a fad or buzzword. The current entry does not by any means represent the significance of the term.

We're planning an event in DFW and would like to get the entry cleaned up to synthesize the key elements of the concept for the event.

This is a term that has the potential to bring together different dimensions of design by helping to discover common threads -- and truly elevate design to the strategic role that it can play in fundamentally changing business.

General references here: http://del.icio.us/iknovate/DesignThinking

Start with two Roger Martin references, an interview: http://trex.id.iit.edu/events/strategyconference/2006/perspectives_martin.php

and a journal issue dedicated to Business Design (see his editorial and the first article): http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/pdf/rotman_mgmt_winter03.pdf

A clear distinctive element of design thinking is abductive reasoning: http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~wirth/inferenc.htm

Iknovate 21:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Design Thinking is the application of Design principles on other fields, such as engineering. There is an ongoing and active effort to build a "Design Thinking Community", so the term is definetely not a fad. The company IDEO has a strong influence on the development of the term as well as the culture and methods behind it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEO there are also various TED talks referencing "design thinking"

Sniggy 22:13, 11 December 2008 (GMT)

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The article needs to explain the origins and history of the concept. Where does this process originate? How did it develop? Who says that the words "design thinking" mean the concept described here and not something else? Leonard of Vince (talk) 02:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Academic legitimacy

The content of this article is very limited (primarily someone's personal take on design thinking), but I've added a comment and a link about ongoing academic research in design thinking. So it's not just a 'current management fad'! Nigel Cross

There are two academic institutes teaching Design Thinking: Hasso Plattner Institute of Design in Stanford: http://dschool.stanford.edu and Hasso Plattner Institute - School of Design Thinking in Potsdam: http://www.dschool.de - there is also ongoing research on "design thinking" --Sniggy —Preceding undated comment was added at 21:08, 11 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Seems like just a relabeling for promotional purposes. --Ronz 17:34, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

THINKING: Problem Solving and Creative Thinking knows 2 basic, fundamental, opposed forms of thinking: Analytical Thinking and Synthetic Thinking (According to Prof. Dr. Emil Brauchlin, Problemlösungs- und Entscheidungsmethodik, University of St. Gallen). Analytical Thinking is dividing, decomposing a problem in its smaller, constitutive parts to look at and understand them, and Synthetic Thinking is the opposite and refers to the process of re-combining these parts to re-construct a larger entity to find a solution to the problem. Going into depth and then coming back to surface. What actually Design Thinking could stand for is a way of thinking that looks at processes and the sequences of facts or events in interaction with (End)Users. I think this could give Design Thinking a legitimate place in a modern Encyclopaedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Francois Hutter (talk • contribs) 12:54, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup

While the article might be better off deleted/merged, if someone wants to take a stab at cleanup: the lead is much too long vs the size of the article, the ref should be at the bottom, the stages/steps should be referenced and made encyclopedic or otherwise removed. --Ronz 16:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've (drastically) edited down the introduction. The Simon quote allowed the following 'Design thinking is, then, . . .', which doesn't stand as an opening sentence in its own right. I've deleted the material about 'boiling down' problems, etc. because design thinking (as practised by designers) doesn't proceed from 'understand problem' to 'propose solution' - problem and solution co-evolve. The rest of the article still needs a lot of work! It's another example of a patchy, personal 'essay' rather than an encyclopedia entry. Nigel Cross 18:01, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added two main interpretations, but this page has been a backwater in wikipedia I think for a while. Also, the 7 step process is an example not they only way - and not a very good one (learn at the end, really? Edit was prompted by my blog discussion: please contribute if you like: http://designenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/design-thinking-does-it-exist.html#comments

- Tom Barker April 2011

Design Thinking has two interpretations: Option 1) Designers bringing their methods into business - by either taking part themselves in business process, or training business people to use design methods. Option 2) Designers achieving innovative outputs, for example: 'the iPod is a great example of design thinking.'

Option 1) has been described Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, at a TED lecture, though his blog also considers an element of 2). Business schools with an interest in innovation, such as the Imperial Business School (ranked 5 globally for innovation) also tend to adopt option 1). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.170.218 (talk) 23:27, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did some clean-up of the summary paragraphs in attempt to make them more encyclopedic and recognize the various uses of Design Thinking in engineering, design, business and education. I also added some headers to give structure to future additions to this article. PYRSMIS 23:50, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Analytical thinking

Unfortunately there is no working link to "analytical thinking"; so maybe this article could be extended to explain how it differs from analytical thinking? The "design thinking" idea doesn't seem to me as something very "revolutionary", but maybe a comparison with other thinking methods highlights some truly different and new ideas? 82.83.243.19 (talk) 11:35, 2 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Does the article, Analytical skill, help explain "analytical thinking"? Chimin 07 (talk) 03:35, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Herbert Simon?

I'm not sure why H Simon is referenced in this context of 'design thinking'. Did he advocate the creative resolution of problems through design thinking? Did he advocate the 'seven stages' process as given here? In this article these points are directly referenced to Sciences of the Artificial - erroneously I suspect. Nigel Cross (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The entry is decidedly devoid of the references to economics that should be included (Herbert Simon certainly qualifies). Why? Because fundamental to design and particularly to design thinking are the weightings and tradeoffs that influence choice. The fundamentals of economics are about choice: "Economics is a theory of choice and its unintended consequences." Devoid of an understanding of economics -- particularly of the Heynsian variety -- would leave anyone short-sighted in their ability to apply the principles of design thinking. Iknovate (talk) 02:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have the first edition of Sciences of the Artificial and I could not find either cite attributed to Simon; and I looked very carefully through most of the book. Yes, he has lots to say about the science of design generally, but I am quite certain he did not specifically articulate the seven stages attributed to him in this article. Nick (talk) 11:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Simon reference, which I've relocated to the opening sentence, is legit and good way to ground this article in something other than flimsy management-consulting jargon. The exact quote from the 2nd edition is: "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing circumstances into preferred ones… Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design.” (Simon, 1981, p. 129) Perhaps this quote would be good to include in the article, under Education. PYRSMIS 23:54, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see that Simon was referenced twice in the article. Indeed, the second is erroneous and I've deleted it. PYRSMIS 23:56, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to say that anyone who writes about design as a general concept is necessarily writing about "Design thinking", The process of design in a very generic sense is ancient, the particular methodology here is a recent formulation. Unless the term is actually used by an author in the sense used in this article, I don't think a quote is relevant DGG ( talk ) 23:36, 13 July 2011 (UTC)mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm[reply]

New Suggestions

This page is currently IDEO's process as documented on Nightline in the 'Deep Dive.' The process is not wrong, however, it isn't the only approach in terms of process. Nor is process the only aspect of design thinking.

Suggestion: 1. As design thinking is more solution-based thinking than one example of a process, we suggest to keep this page as is with the topic heading "Design Process". And then other firms/scholars could add other processes out there. 2. Then wiki could create a new page called "Design Thinking" to encompass the methodologies and metacognition. This page would have the history and creation of Design Thinking from the 1960s citing scholars from the field like Nigel Cross, Bryan Lawson and Horst Rittel. This page would also start to address the differences of Design Thinking, Science Thinking and Art and Humanities Thinking. 3. Link to Wicked Problems page and links to Design Process page. As design thinking addresses wicked problems.

24.18.233.52 (talk) 20:15, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rewrite 8/15/11

We have posted a complete rewrite of what design thinking is. We hope this sparks a better, more neutral Design Thinking Wikipedia page.

The page that was here previously with IDEO's design process steps is good information as well. There is currently a design methods page, and there should be a "Design Process" page as well where others can add their processes. I am not sure how to "move pages" with all the history, or if it can be done with the previous iteration. Hopefully an administrator of the Design Thinking page can make this happen.

ShonaBose (talk) 22:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC) in collaboration with Salon |e| Aspire[reply]

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: there is no consensus to move the article GB fan 01:17, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Design thinking → Design Process – Relisted. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 17:56, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The section "Design Thinking as a Process for Problem-Solving" that has been added back shows one process, and contradicts what is said in the "Methods versus Process" section in that there are MANY MANY MANY different processes that people use to do design thinking, and even use to do design thinking for problem solving. The ebook How Do You Design by Hugh Dubberly names at least 130 different models of process.

So again, I would argue for the need of a "Design Process" page where all (or some) of these models can be showcased. The one on this page can be the "Design thinking as a Process for Problem-Solving" and should be attributed to Koberg and Bagnall (from The All new Universal Traveller) and to the Stanford D.School who uses it to understand design thinking in the 21st century.

Thanks, ShonaBose (talk) 17:30, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Not sure if the article should be moved or not, but if it is moved it should be to Design process per WP:CAPS. Jenks24 (talk) 09:47, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

AFD?

The lead still contains no reference that substantiates this as a legitimate topic for an article, rather than promotion. If one (or preferably more) can't be provided I'm afraid that the next step is AFD. Comments welcome. Andrewa (talk) 04:14, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article is badly written, structured, etc. But design thinking is certainly a legitimate topic for an article - as witnessed by the many references included to the work of academic authors. The article needs a lot of attention and rewriting, but not a threat of deletion (nor renaming/moving). Nigel Cross (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:00, 2 October 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Pile of Hooey

I've been a designer all my life (many years) and this article strikes me as a big pile of baloney. It has nothing to do with actual design processes, and is the designer equivalent of the management-speak baloney when the suits speak in buzzwords. The marginally intelligent and marginally talented will always invent such baloney to make themselves seem insightful -- without the substance that real insight entails.