. . . this column is a response to your post of June 25th, titled, Design Thinking: A Useful Myth? I believe in the utility of design thinking, but reject the idea that it is mythical. Thank you for triggering this rich discussion, with over fifty comments. You always find a way of arguing a case with enough controversy to wake us up and generate responses, but I think your idea of "myth" is in itself only a half-truth.
Design thinking harnesses the power of intuition. It is a process, evolved gradually by designers of all kinds, which can be applied to create solutions to problems. People of any background can use it, whether or not they think of themselves as designers. It uses the subconscious as well as the conscious mind, subjective as well as objective thinking, tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge, and embraces learning by doing. I like the analogy of an iceberg that has just a little ice above water level, with a vast mass submerged. Rigorous explicit thinking, of the kind encouraged in institutions of higher learning, limits people to conscious thinking and hence to using just a tiny proportion of the potential in their minds - like the ice above the water. The design thinking process allows us to follow our intuition, valuing the sensibilities and insights that are buried in our subconscious - like the ice below the water. This process is capable of generating solutions to complex problems, developing subtle qualities, and helping us move towards better solutions to "wicked problems." If we try to solve these problems with explicit thinking alone, our heads hurt and we are unable to respond holistically.
There's more to design than design thinking. As you said in the Epilog to your book "Emotional Design," "We are all designers. We manipulate the environment, the better to serve our needs. We select what items to own, which to have around us. We build, buy, arrange, and restructure: all this is a form of design. When consciously, deliberately rearranging objects on our desks, the furniture in our living rooms, and the things we keep in our cars, we are designing." When someone chooses what to wear, how to decorate their home or layout their garden, they are exercising skills of general design awareness. It is about how to choose rather than how to generate new design solutions. Everyone makes design choices, but that doesn't imply that they are fully-fledged designers or design thinkers.
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