A few months back, on this forum, Don Norman wrote a great piece that drew back the curtain on the ever-expanding blur that is design thinking. Norman's piece eloquently articulated a number of criticisms surrounding design thinking, but as I thought back on the article, I couldn't help but feel dissatisfied. For all the chatter the piece solicited, there was something left unsaid; something insinuated but not pursued. This fact gnawed at me for months, but I think I've come to recognize the source of my discomfort. Buried deep within the messy cloud enveloping 'design thinking' is the ever so faint echo of design's deep-seated professional insecurity.
So many design articles today seem content to throw the intuitive core of design under the train of its more rational self. They imply, by varying degrees that design fits neatly into two camps: aesthetic pursuit and intellectual analysis. Just as prevalent are the pieces that chastise design for purporting to own creativity. From where this perception arose—I have no clue. Perhaps it's the unintended consequence of selling design process (aka creativity) detached from the pedestrian world of results. Design and designers may have a lot to apologize for, but their advocacy of creativity is surely not one of them. If design is guilty of annexing creativity more effectively than other professions, so be it. There are worse accusations I can imagine.