EP#26: The Past, Present, and Future of Design Thinking

Design Thinking, where did it come from? How is it being used today? What will its purpose be in the future? Join Dr Dani and Designer Peter as they delve into the history of Design Thinking and explore its prospects. 

In this episode, you will 
• Learn about the roots of Design Thinking 
• Hear stories of how Design Thinking is being applied today 
• Understand the future potential of Design Thinking 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:07

Welcome to the Design Thinker podcast, where we explore the theory and practice of design, hosted by me, donnie and Be.

Speaker 2 0:16

Peter. Hey Peter. Good morning Donnie, how are?

Speaker 1 0:23

you Good? How are you?

Speaker 2 0:24

Well, very well, thank you. Yes, looking forward to our conversation this morning.

Speaker 1 0:29

Yes, we're kicking off some back to basic episodes.

Speaker 2 0:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1 0:33

What are we kicking off with today?

Speaker 2 0:36

Well, our back to basics episode conversation. Today, donnie, is going to be about design thinking, where it came from, where it is and where it's going.

Speaker 1 0:45

Awesome yay.

Speaker 2 0:47

Hopefully our little snow will be as interested in this as we are.

Speaker 1 0:52

Hopefully.

Speaker 2 0:54

I like this kind of knowledge. I really enjoy understanding where something came from, and then having a conversation about where it's at the moment will be great to have. And then, yeah, keen to hear your thoughts on where things are going. I've got a couple. It'd be great to share those with you.

Speaker 1 1:08

I am excited about this episode. So as part of my research work like all, research work begins with a literature review, and I spent a good chunk of my life going back looking at the history of design thinking and I traced it back. I think my work went back to the 1960s. The only reason I stopped there is basically because my goal wasn't to do like a full history of design thinking although I think it would have been really cool to keep going back and back but my committee felt otherwise, so I had to.

Speaker 2 1:50

I think that I've been a PhD in itself. As to trace design thinking and its origins and the human mind back to reptiles coming out of the sea, maybe Absolutely.

Speaker 1 2:03

I think we could absolutely trace it back. So should we start with? I've been kind of going back and forth with like, should we start with defining what design thinking is, or do we talk through the history, like the evolution of design thinking, and then yeah, we tend to start our conversations with what is it with the definition.

Speaker 2 2:30

So I can see why that would be good and we can kind of go backwards and then forwards. But I also like the idea of just starting the story where it's at and we will discover the definition of design thinking in the same way that I suppose it emerged from the different sources at different times. So we'll break our structure for this episode. One of those specials it's like a Christmas special about TV series.

Speaker 1 3:05

Yeah, this could be a well, we are going back to basics. So sometimes when you go back to basics, you've got to break the model right. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 3:13

I reckon, pick it apart, put it back together again.

Speaker 1 3:16

Cool. Where do you want to start?

Speaker 2 3:19

Well, dr Danny, in preparation for this episode, I was lucky enough to start reading some of your PhD. What do we call it? Is it thesis? Is it a dissertation? It's almost a book, but what's the correct term for it?

Speaker 1 3:39

So I think the term change is depending on what part of the world you're in. So in the US, phd is a dissertation Okay, but I think in New Zealand and other parts of the world it's a thesis.

Speaker 2 3:53

Okay, well, that's the thing you produced to demonstrate your PhD research. I read it, I read part of it and I was really. It was a nice kind of refresh of some of the knowledge I had and also a couple of new insights. You start, I think, with someone called Simon, so maybe we'll start there in a second. But one thing I want to say about that you're even that short segment of your PhD where you recognise a lot of the books that you've read. I don't think I've read much of the academic literature that you have, but I've read a lot recognised and I have read a lot of the books and I was very impressed with your ability to compress a 250, 300 page book into a single paragraph so amazing distillation and summarisation. That must have been quite tough. So he says not giving a chance to answer.

Speaker 1 4:53

Well, I appreciate that you recognise that, because the understanding of what it takes to write a dissertation gets lost if you haven't done one and it is. You spend a lot of time in the beginning part of your research reading Other people's work to understand what the gap is, but then you've got to be able to synthesise all the work that's come before you, especially if you're in a very meaty topic. That's a lot of material to cover, right?

Speaker 2 5:21

Yeah, I reckon so. Yeah, why don't we start with them? And by the way, listener, the dissertation is quite formal, so there's certain names only. So I'm going to have to ask Danny to elaborate on who some of these people are. This Simon person I'm going to guess that that's a surname. I think that's the Simon in the 60s. Tell us, let's start there, give us the story and I'll do some listening. But my interjection again to ask you some questions to help us understand more.

Speaker 1 5:53

Yep, so Hubert Simon and the work that Peter's referring to. Simon published that. I think that in 1969. What he talks about is that the work of designers is concerned with transforming a current situation into a better one. So he talks about how design is concerned with how things should be, whereas the natural sciences, they're concerned with how things are. Then he goes on to talk about the fact that structured logic and rule-based analysis and mathematics have a purpose. But when it comes to some other disciplines, like business for example, he says that because the idea of business is like if you set up a corporation or company, you're in the business of solving a problem. You don't sell a product, you don't sell a service, you sell something that fixes somebody's problem. And what Simon is saying is that if you are in that field, your concern shouldn't be how things are. Your concern should be how they should be, or you should be focused on the desired state.

Speaker 2 7:14

The future state yeah.

Speaker 1 7:16

So I of course read his work and this was like, oh my God, this is my purpose of life. So when I did this literature review, simon's work is the latest piece of work I went back to Then. So we go from Simon in 1969, so almost 1970, a guy named Nigel Cross in 1982.

Speaker 1 7:45

And Cross talks about? He talks about designers as problem solvers that solve or tackle ill-defined problems, and he talks about designers as being solution focused and they're able to take abstract requirements and turn them into concrete objects. He also argues that these qualities of designers being able to translate abstract requirements into something physical and tangible, being solution focused and being able to solve ill-defined problems he argues that these are things that not only should be taught to designers, but they actually should be taught in general education, and in my research he was one of the he kind of kicked off this campaign, if you will.

Speaker 1 8:43

The campaign of including broadening teaching design skills to non-design disciplines. Okay.

Speaker 2 8:49

Okay. So we've got Herbert. He's Simon who's saying if you're in business, then you're solving problems. You've got Nigel Cross, who's saying designers tackle ill-defined problems and generate solutions. And then he's also saying let's take the skills that designers have and let's teach them more broadly. Okay, there's a puzzle being solved here or a picture coming together here.

Speaker 1 9:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:11

Okay.

Speaker 1 9:13

So then in 1987, a guy by the name of Peter Rowe. He does research with architects and urban planners to understand their process. Peter Rowe's work is where I found the term design thinking appearing in the literature for the first time. So up until this point it's just talked about broadly as design. So he's the first person that I found that distinguishes between design and design thinking. Okay, so according to Peter Rowe, design is a broad term used to describe making something, for example, if you so he worked with architects. So he would say architects were concerned with designing buildings. Then he said it's the act of creating the building that's known as design, right? So architects design buildings. That act is design. Then he says that design thinking is a narrower term that describes the process that's used by designers to create the thing. So in this case, with architects that are designing buildings, the process that they go through to design that building is design thinking. So that's like you and I read that that's.

Speaker 2 10:35

I think that's quite a helpful distinction. Maybe go over it one more time.

Speaker 1 10:41

So design is about what is being created Okay Whereas design thinking is the how it's being created, the process that's used to create, like the mental process that's followed to create something.

Speaker 2 10:58

Yeah, I guess mental, hence the term design thinking. I guess that's where it's.

Speaker 1 11:03

Yeah, and then later on we learned that it's the translation of mental hand-heart-mind thing. But we'll get to that.

Speaker 2 11:14

We'll get to that. Yeah, nice foreshadowing. I'm looking forward to that okay.

Speaker 1 11:18

Now we're leaving the 80s and we're coming to the early 90s. A guy by the name of Richard Buchanan raises the idea that, while design thinking involves integrating art and science-based disciplines to solve problems, he also starts to call for design thinking to be taught beyond the traditional design disciplines into the business world. Okay, he really starts talking about look, if we start teaching these design capabilities to other fields, we can actually get better at solving complex problems. So in the 90s, richard Buchanan starts talking about hey, we really need to start moving design practices into these non-traditional, into the business world specifically. And then something interesting happens from the 90s really into like the second decade of the 21st century, there's a lot of research and publications happening about design and design thinking and then in the 90s it sort of dies down.

Speaker 2 12:34

Okay.

Speaker 1 12:35

But then in the early 2000s it starts to pick back up, it starts to gain a lot of media attention okay particularly around bringing design thinking into the mainstream, particularly the business world.

Speaker 1 12:50

So the way I like to think about it is the people that were talking about and writing about design thinking up until the 90s were really arguing for expanding design thinking from an academic teaching perspective to different fields and then from the 2000s on, and then there was a little break, and then from the 2000s on, the people, all of the people that were talking about design thinking was really looking at how do we bring design thinking into corporations?

Speaker 2 13:21

All right. So a shift from using it in education to attachly, yeah, integrating it or using it in business.

Speaker 1 13:31

So then in the early 2000s, and you would have heard of this little company, IDEO.

Speaker 2 13:40

Yeah, I've heard of them.

Speaker 1 13:42

Tim Brown, david Kelly. They're really credited for bringing design thinking into organizations right, and this is when we really started to hear about design thinking in the mainstream world. Outside of the line, ideo was really focused on using design for innovation with organizations for social causes, so they were really linking design thinking to create innovative solutions for various problems. And then there was a bunch of research that happened that really helped to support how design thinking and adopting design thinking would help drive innovation in organizations. And then, as that was happening, there were other people that were looking at how else might we use design thinking, for what other purposes could we use design thinking? So? And then also looking at like, how do we really embed design thinking in organizations? So you've got this is one of my favorite books that I've read Managing as Designing.

Speaker 2 14:52

Oh, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 14:53

By Richard Bowlin and Fred Colopy. They really argue, for why do we need to teach design thinking to managers? And I'll just read you this one sentence and see how you feel about it. So, according to Bowlin and Colopy, what is failing managers is their training being too focused on decision making and too little on idea generation. They call for design or sensibility in both management, education and practices.

Speaker 2 15:26

Yeah, that makes sense to me. I can see that in the real world for sure. When was that book written?

Speaker 1 15:32

So this was written. This specific book was written in 2004. Right, and then I'll read you another bit, because I think this helps set up some of the other scholarship that's come after this. It goes on to say business schools tend to focus on inductive thinking based on directly observable facts, and deductive thinking, logic and analysis typically based on past evidence. Design schools emphasize on abductive thinking, imagining what could be. So what they're arguing for is if we start to teach so if we're already teaching inductive and deductive reasoning and we start adding abductive reasoning teaching abductive reasoning, where people can start imagining what could be then the combination of those three skills would lead to better problem solving.

Speaker 2 16:31

That makes sense and so that's 2004. That's kind of around the time that IDEO and maybe media attention and design thinking is becoming a bit more of a mainstream idea and maybe actually something that's not being defined but actually being, I guess, practiced. So that's the right word and maybe yeah, is that when it starts happening, being practiced as something distinct from designing by designers.

Speaker 1 17:04

Okay, Because, you're starting to move it away from this, Because I think it's also important to note that there are people that go to school to become designers of some sort. So graphic designers, interior designers there are these professions that train you to be of a design profession. I think it's important to understand that being a design thinker doesn't necessarily make you a trained designer of some discipline.

Speaker 2 17:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good thing to make clear.

Speaker 1 17:39

Yeah, because I think where we have gotten to a little bit is that because we're trying to make design thinking more common and we're selling design thinking as something everybody can do, which everybody can do, which everybody can. But I think that somehow diminished the value and the training and the craft of designers Like you can be a design thinker, but that does not make you a graphic designer.

Speaker 2 18:10

Yeah, most definitely.

Speaker 1 18:11

Okay, so then. So, building on from Bollen and Colopy, we go. So there's the guy named Charles Owens. So now we're in like around 2005. He starts to. He kind of builds on this idea of multiple ways of thinking and how design thinking introduces another way of thinking by comparing it to scientific thinking. And what he argues is that when you combine scientific thinking with design thinking, you have a more complete set of tools for addressing problems. And what he really argues for is that the more ways of thinking that we teach people, the better they become at problem solving. And this kind of comes back to that basic idea of like if the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, you think everything is a nail right, whereas if you've got a hammer and a wrench and a you know or I think you call them spanners here and a screwdriver, and you've got this whole set of tools, then you start to be able to see problems better.

Speaker 2 19:19

So that was Charles Owens 2005.

Speaker 1 19:22

Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:23

Does he describe any more other than scientific thinking and design thinking? What other types of thinking does he describe, or does he not do that?

Speaker 1 19:31

So in my work I only found the pieces where he talked about scientific thinking, but he is a well-published author and researcher, so there's some great things that he's published that I really recommend reading.

Speaker 2 19:46

Okay, I'll look him up. Could be my takeaway for the week.

Speaker 1 19:53

Now what kind of coming towards we're in 2009, 2010, that timeframe? Guy by the name of Roger Martin.

Speaker 2 20:05

Oh yes.

Speaker 1 20:07

So he starts to argue that design thinking requires you to be able to engage in both abductive, deductive and inductive.

Speaker 1 20:18

Sorry, abductive, inductive and deductive reasoning. So again, this is kind of building on the works of the previous people we've talked about, but he starts to get very a little bit more focused on the types of reasoning and how design thinking requires all three of them, which means that we really need to be teaching all three of them if we want people to be able to be design thinkers and create better solutions. And then what he says is that much of management education focuses on deductive reasoning. But what we also have to do is we've got to teach people how to kind of engage in that generating ideas before we can go to deductive reasoning. Right, which is what we do in design thinking. Right, we generate a bunch of ideas and then we engage in deductive reasoning to go to kind of evaluate those ideas to see, okay, what are the ones that we think are the most viable, which are the ones that we think will meet the desirability, viability, feasibility measures. So this is where these ideas really start to crystallize.

Speaker 2 21:33

Yeah and yeah. So he's the first person that says actually, it's not one of these three over any other, so they're bringing all three together in a particular sequence to go from what's the problem to or some solutions, and then finally, here's the solution we're gonna actually implement.

Speaker 1 21:50

I wouldn't say he's the first one, because Bill and Colopy were arguing for that. Richard Buchanan was arguing for that, it's just that he starts to talk about it in a more tangible way.

Speaker 2 22:01

Got you. Okay. I know when I first came across his thinking and writing and his angle, I guess, on design thinking was distinctly about this is what it means to your business. Without being prescriptive which again maybe we'll come on to because I picked up on something in your thesis around around that but yeah, okay, so we've got Roger Martin. I don't know whether I'll leave a gap here so that we can edit this out, only because it's a bit of a tangent. Every single person you mentioned so far as a man, hence the pause, and maybe this is a tangent, but there's all sorts of questions arising from me around why that is, how come, what the consequences are, how you felt about that when you were researching.

Speaker 1 22:48

I mean. I think it's fair to real. We do have to accept that women's voices, scholarship and research and publications haven't been inclusive for many, many years. That's changed. I remember reading something way back when about how often women researchers had to publish their work under their husband's name or their brother's name because they weren't allowed to publish their own work. This is also why I am an advocate for getting my work published in papers, because I have to play a role in changing that. If I want more women's voices in publications, I have to play an active role in being a voice in publications, but also I teach it to universities, encouraging students to publish If we want to change that, because now we are in a situation and there's all kinds of issues with publications that I do recognise, but the more that we encourage each other to publish. If you're a grad student out there working on your PhD, your master's degree, I'm encouraging you to submit your papers to get published, because that's how we start changing and becoming more diverse in our research.

Speaker 2 24:08

I love it. Thanks, danny. I won't apologise for taking us on that tangent and that actually makes me think of this whole episode or series about voices. I feel strongly about people in our position who have more of a voice than others. Our job is to give other people a voice, so nice encouragement. Coming back from that tangent, I like one back on to Roger Martin's where we left off, with his three types of logic and his focus on design, thinking and business.

Speaker 1 24:39

That tangent was well placed, because the person I'll talk about is Heather Frazier. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 24:52

Just saying I'm not that smart.

Speaker 1 24:55

One. So her research was really around using design thinking for business processes like strategic planning. This is the first time that I saw in the research where we're starting to apply design thinking to something that historically has not been applied. It wasn't a big leap to go. Let's use design thinking for product innovation or let's use design thinking for service innovation, but to take design thinking from that space to something like strategic planning was a big leap. So that work in her paper is very fascinating. So I really encourage you to read that work. Janine Ledka she's actually got a new book out another thought leader in the design thinking space that is female, so I'm going to call that out.

Speaker 2 25:51

Yeah cool.

Speaker 1 25:53

Her research was also very instrumental in thinking about how do we apply design thinking in the workplace. So another one to check out. So at this point we're in the 2010 to 2015. And this is also when more and more research starts to come out about different ways that we could apply design thinking to different disciplines within the business world and also taking it beyond the business world looking at public service, looking at non-for-profits, look at government work. But my work in unpacking the history of design thinking ended there because I did my dissertation in 2017. But since then, there has been plenty of other publications that have come out as well.

Speaker 2 26:46

Yeah, thanks, danny. That was a nice history. Like I said, I like to understand these things and the kind of evolution and the building of the thinking and then the doing and that kind of interesting emergence from application to education to then business, to then. I think sorry, maybe it happened in between time, but I think from my experience and awareness, in that 2010s interestingly did come back to education, because I know some teachers started using design thinking in some schools.

Speaker 2 27:19

Actually, design thinking or something, yeah, essentially is design thinking, might not be called it as part of their syllabus, and Roger Martin so that's primary school, secondary school in New Zealand started introducing it in some schools as well, embedded by now, and at the same time, roger Martin, who was at the time the thing that Dean of the Rockland School of Business is at the University of Toronto, I think, from what I understand, he was one of the first business school deans to introduce that into the curriculum for MBAs. So they were emerging from their program with a really good understanding and an ability to use all three types of logic instead of just the deductive and inductive that had been traditionally the case. So, yeah, so it's kind of going full circle from education to business, back into education and much further beyond, like you said.

Speaker 1 28:16

So two things I'll point out. So in my own research, so after my dissertation work, I published two papers, one on using design thinking for organizational development.

Speaker 2 28:27

Okay.

Speaker 1 28:27

OD work. That's another stream. So this is another example of how do we take something from design and apply it in a different context. And then in 2020, I did a paper on published a paper on applying design thinking to change management. Again, kind of taking that how do we apply this to a different part of? Because originally my research started on how do we use design to create better change. So another example of coming full circle.

Speaker 1 28:59

Cool yeah 65 years to figure that out. And coming back to your education pace, one thing I want to point out is that scholars started arguing for this back in the 90s, like business schools need to start, and it wasn't till, I want to say, around 2010, maybe a little bit earlier that business schools actually started to incorporate. So think about that time gap between the 90s to, let's say, mid 2000s.

Speaker 2 29:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1 29:32

That's how long it takes to take something from an idea to a thing that's happening.

The Current Application of Design Thinking

Speaker 2 29:37

To a reality and maybe let's say a kind of widespread, widely understood and adopted reality. Yeah, that's a great reminder. Yeah, that's almost. Yeah, that's the best part of a lifetime's work, isn't it? Yeah, nice reminder, and maybe that brings us on to so adopting or brings us on to where we are at the moment. So how has it been adopted more recently? Maybe because it is essentially really quite mainstream. Especially in the world of reasonably sized businesses there's a great deal of a mainstream awareness I suppose I would describe as not necessarily a full mainstream understanding, but because of that, I think it's quite rarely it's become a subject of debate and discussion. I suppose it's like what is this? And again probably going full circle what is this and why is it and how can it help us? It's like another kind of cycle or wave that perhaps is happening, but in a different context, with a different focus.

Speaker 1 30:39

Maybe we give a couple of examples, without naming names, of like how we used design thinking.

Speaker 2 30:47

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 30:49

Around ourselves and how's it being used today? Because, you know, we are practitioners in the field at the moment doing using design thinking in different ways.

Speaker 2 30:58

Yeah, maybe I mean my experience of it directly is some using design thinking to improve or create new let's call them experiences or services for customers of commercial businesses.

Speaker 2 31:13

I've got a couple of small initiatives to help non-profit organizations improve the way that they deliver their services to their clients or users the people who need them, and I guess the way I think of it is it's a way to bring people together to work on something.

Speaker 2 31:36

This isn't as concrete as you want it to be, I can tell, but yeah, basically bringing people together to work on something that is important that they talk about, but I haven't quite managed to find the right way to describe what it is they're trying to solve, to begin with, and then to help them discover. A great way to describe problems is from the point of view of the person experiencing the problem, which often hasn't been done up to that point, and then using, I think, if it is using the, I guess, the full potential of the human brains and bodies that are brought together to create something that really does solve the problem or problems in a sustainable way, and that probably wouldn't have been created had we not brought those people together because we hadn't considered all the different perspectives that a small group of people can bring, whether it's from their work, expertise or life experience, or untapped creativity.

Speaker 1 32:34

I think for me, the word that comes to mind as you're describing that is like using design thinking to facilitate the team process, because you are bringing people together and giving them tools of like. How do we talk about a problem without like blaming and shaming? How do we ask questions and really listen to the pain points that people are experiencing? So I think that's what you're describing.

Speaker 2 32:58

Yeah, and then you know, and using it as a way to kind of break the deadlock, if you like, or disrupt the dynamics with an organization that resulted in just staying still or going over and over the same problem and not actually solving it. You know, one of the things that design thinking can do is kind of even just temporarily flatten out any power dynamics in an organization and put, unavoidably put, the most important group of people kind of at the center of decision making. In that group of people is the one that you're trying to solve the problem for, not, you know, stakeholders, or shareholders, or management or leadership.

Speaker 1 33:41

It's actually shifting the power paradigm of decision making right.

Speaker 2 33:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.

Speaker 1 33:49

In my work, most of my experience has been using design thinking to help organizations create change. I've applied that to everything from like problems like retention and attrition challenges to implementing new technology or large digital transformations. I've used it to create regulatory and compliance change. So that's kind of been my the way that I've been applying design thinking.

Speaker 2 34:20

Nice, yeah, we've. Hopefully we've kind of brought it to life enough as much as we can with it, giving any really concrete case studies or stories. Maybe we'll do that in another couple of episodes, danny, but yeah, that's our experience and I think, at the same time as experiencing that, we've been part of this wave or cycle because we worked in reasonably large organizations. We've experienced the demand for, you know, the design thinking practice or activities, and we've seen successes and failures and we've lived through satisfaction and the frustration of doing those things. What sort of things have you observed, beyond the work that you've done in terms of, maybe since your research concluded and that left us? We are here to now, if we're talking about what's this current state of, or what has been the current state of, design thinking?

Speaker 1 35:19

The current state of design thinking. I think that from the time that I started my research to the time I finished my research to now, the adoption of design thinking has expanded. The awareness of design thinking has brought in, because I find that now when I talk to people I don't like. When I started this work, my starting point was always explaining what design thinking is. Now, most of the conversations I have, people have a base level understanding of what it is. But the question now is becoming how do I apply it? How do I bring design thinking to my work and adopt it to my work? And that's the current challenge.

Speaker 2 36:05

Yeah, I think my experience has been really similar to yours where, you know, initially it was like what is this thing, what are you trying to do? And as people started to experience it themselves and then also see it happening elsewhere and we collectively, I guess, started to get some good stories to tell people and show people, then it is like how do I do this and how do I apply it and how do I, how might we make it just part of the way that we do things, almost to the extent where, you know, we don't talk about design thinking anymore. It's just part of what it is. My experience has been a little bit and observations elsewhere, as it's and it probably goes alongside design as a discipline being, you know, kind of really recognised probably because some of the things we've talked about already but recognised as an essential component of any successful business in, you know, right now, in the 21st century, because design and design thinking enable us as people and organisations, therefore, to spend time really understanding what it is that they're actually trying to do and how to. So how do you really understand a problem and how to create the best solution to solve that problem?

Speaker 2 37:15

I think it's almost become, but it reminds me a bit of things like you know, let's call them fads, business fads, that like lean manufacturing, for example, when can't remember the names of the top med, but basically you know when that was kind of researched and codified into lean manufacturing. Then you know manufacturer organisations picked that up and implemented it kind of straight out of the book and, to you know, some were successful, others weren't. Likewise, you know you've got Six Sigma, motorola and GE really successful implementing that, and other manufacturing organisations and then service organisations basically took the book and started to apply it and at the same time, you know, consulting organisations picked up that kind of playbook, if you like, and you know, sold it to their clients for better or worse. And then you know, the next thing came along and the next thing and the next thing, and design thinking became one of these things that was quite rightly identified as a something that could help businesses shift from where they are to where they want to do or needed to be because of all the things we've described, that kind of picked up, packaged up and sold.

The Future of Design Thinking

Speaker 2 38:23

And I think you know we're kind of coming through the other side of that and we should be looking at what worked and what didn't, about that whole kind of concept and wave of big consulting firms picking up design thinking, either taking it straight off somebody else's method and applying it or making their own one up, and likewise, big consulting firms buying up design firms. What, what? Now we're kind of through the other side of that. What, what, you know, we should examine what was successful about that, what wasn't successful. But I guess where I'm coming to is that there's, you know, conversations discussion about is design thinking dead, for example, or you know what's next, and I don't buy into those. That whole question of is well, is it helpful to talk about this? Design thinking dead? Yeah, I think it's a question that comes from a place of slight misunderstanding of what design thinking is. It can never die.

Speaker 1 39:25

So a couple of points that all come in on there. So I think these large organizations that have taken design thinking and run with it the off the box, off the shelf or out of the box solution, what they have done really well is helped to increase awareness of design thinking.

Speaker 2 39:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1 39:44

Thanks great job for increasing awareness. Where I feel like they haven't done a good job is actually teaching organizations how to apply design thinking to their context Context. You know this. We really have to do an episode on context because it comes up almost every episode.

Speaker 1 40:02

But when it comes to designing anything, when it comes to solving a problem of any kind, context is very, very important. So you cannot teach someone how to solve a problem without context. There's no, there's no, not such a thing of like context agnostic problem solving. Like you have to, because the reason I say that is because a solution that works in one context, you could take that same solution and apply it somewhere else and it's not successful. This is why Toyota and GE Six Sigma worked there. They were able to scale it, be very successful with it, but and in other organizations it didn't, because the context was different, so the playbook had to be different. That's kind of my evaluation of like. Where design thinking needs to go is we have to start teaching people how to you, how to apply design thinking in their context. Yeah, nice.

Speaker 2 41:04

That and that, the whole, I guess, conversation, you know this, this kind of circle of conversation or this kind of sphere of conversation, about that we're talking about here. Something I read in your thesis really drew my attention and I think it's related to this and I think it's some oh, this is funny. Can I read some words back to that? You wrote in 2017?, did you say?

Speaker 1 41:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2 41:25

And, despite the success of design thinking, the way companies use it has come under some criticism for being too methodological and as being turned into an out of the box solution that is killing creativity. That was somebody who wrote it and you're quoting someone called Chandra 2013. Critics also see design thinking as the current fan that will soon be abandoned for the next big thing. I'm just laughing at my echoing of your thoughts, and maybe subliminal Reponents of design thinking argue that the journey of design thinking is just beginning and point to the potential design thinking after transforming organizational culture, redesigning business, education and rethinking communication and public relations. I'll show you that as a segue into what's the future, danny.

Speaker 1 42:07

It's really weird to have your words read back to you.

Speaker 2 42:10

Especially when they're so like what I was finding. Hold your response that what I was looking for. I can't find the words, but basically it was saying. You say design thinking. It essentially can't really be defined because it isn't a single, and this is maybe where this question of design thinking dead is coming from, a place of slight misunderstanding. Is that in my mind at least, and I think in your mind, design thinking is not like a singular kind of step-by-step or even cyclical process that you know it's not. It's not just say, like the D schools or ideals, 5, 5-step empathy, etc. Or anybody else's, 3 or 7 or 25. I think it it's almost by definition, devise, definition and Kind of pinning down to a particular specified framework that will never change.

Speaker 1 43:02

Yes, and I come back to where we started this conversation with Herbert Simon.

Speaker 2 43:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:09

You said that the work of design is concerned with transforming a current situation into a better one.

Speaker 2 43:15

Yeah, and therefore Everyone is designing.

Speaker 1 43:21

Yes, and therefore, until we create a world of utopia when no problems exist, the work of design will always continue. Yeah and this is why. So, then, my research was about, or is about, continues to be about, building design thinking capabilities, because I wanted to understand what are the underlying capabilities that enable people to engage in design thinking, because if we understand the capabilities which my research has uncovered, we can build those capabilities, and then the application of design thinking becomes much more fluid.

Speaker 1 44:07

Right, yeah given people the underlying capability. So, rather than teaching people just the process, yeah, you have to teach people the process like it's important. But if you want to take that, if you want to take the practice of design thinking further, you have to do more than teach a process. You have to understand what the capabilities are and actively work to build those capabilities.

Speaker 1 44:29

Yeah, and the third reason, and so this kind of my, my Research findings are a bit circular in this way that when I did this research, what I learned is that all of us. So I identified six capabilities of design thinkers and and then I used, and then I designed an assessment to assess that and what I learned is that all of us have some degree of design thinking capabilities. Some of us have more of it, some of us have less of it, some of us have some capabilities that are really high and some that need a bit of work. And what I and I haven't, what I hypothesize, is that comes down to your education and the opportunities that you were given or presented to develop those Capabilities.

Speaker 2 45:16

So I think you're saying there they're essentially what you've identified these six capabilities are innate. Is that, is that too strong? Or you know? Innate they are, and and our what sort? Our activation or display of those capabilities is dependent on Education and opportunity.

Speaker 1 45:36

I kind of translate this to, and I think I might have written this somewhere in my dissertation as well.

Speaker 1 45:41

Like I think about, like you think about, abdominal muscles. Every human has abdominal muscle. What they look like depends on how, how much you exercise what you're putting in your body in terms of food, like how much effort are you putting into building those Abdominals. So I think, design thinking capabilities. So design thinking capabilities are exactly the same. Okay, there, we all have them. There are innate capabilities we all have, but the strengths of those capabilities depends on how much are we using them. It's a great analogy.

Speaker 2 46:14

So got me thinking lots. Okay, so you also almost felt like standing up and playing some Rousing background music, for the work of design will always continue. Danny, you're like, yes, yes, and I completely agree. I think, yeah, for me, the design and design thinking. Yeah, like you say, until we reach utopia and where there are no problems to solve, then we will always need this, and Right now we have lots of problems to Get together on and solve. I'm talking about not just you and me, but human beings. Lots of big problems, so it's needed to know. Maybe this is a separate episode, but what about the few? The evolution of design thinking as a practice yeah, this is a separate episode. The evolution design thinking is a practice and, in particular, where my mind is at is how may we use AI to help us and and not be fooled into thinking that AI can replace Design thinking in Entirely Design or design thinking?

Speaker 1 47:24

I think that does need to be a separate episode, but I think in terms of like, so for me, as practitioners of design thinking, we do need to be thinking about what is the future of design thinking? Yeah, and I think AI is going to be a part of design thinking. We've actually done an episode on the integration of AI and design, so I think it's absolutely something that we need to be thinking about, and also thinking about like how do we and if for listeners, if you haven't listened to it our episode on AI and design thinking what we talk about there is this you know, how might we use design AI to enhance our practice of design thinking, because it's not going away.

Speaker 2 48:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1 48:13

At the same, I don't think it's going away. It's not going away. At the same time, I don't think that the emergence of AI means that the practice of design thinking is going away. I think it. I think what it means is that how we practice design thinking has to evolve. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 48:32

Yeah, it's. Maybe. I'm looking at the SX capabilities at the moment and thinking about in what way can AI actually to use your abdominal muscles analogy? It's like either going to a gym with enhanced equipment or, potentially, you know one of those exoskeletons that you can put on that help you do more work in a shorter period of time or better work. But then does that actually, because I does that. In the end, this is a definitely different episode, because if you're using an exoskeleton, does it actually strengthen your muscles or does it allow your muscles to weaken because you're relying on the machine instead? That's definitely a definitely. That's the starting point for a whole new episode.

Speaker 1 49:13

Yeah, that's a whole new episode, but I like that you're. I like that as we're thinking about what is the future of design, thinking that this is where your brain is going. What else, what else do you think the future of design?

Speaker 2 49:27

Well, I think my prediction is that, well, I almost feel like we're in it at the moment, I mean, and I do not experience it directly, but I understand. You know, just to kind of take this episode, there's you know the American particulars in a bit of an economic downturn and companies appear to have laid off designers, amongst other, you know professions and that's off the back of you know this kind of mainstream and kind of rise and growth and the size of design teams. So we're maybe in a little bit of a trough, but after a trough comes, you know, the upwards climb, back up to a peak. What will the next peak of design and design thinking be? I think it's going to be evolved. I think we'll have learned some of the things we've talked about we did.

Speaker 2 50:17

The next emergence of design, design thinking, as really an organisational strength will be by those organisations that have paid attention and learned that it's not just you know, out the box and apply as it is.

Speaker 2 50:28

It does need to be embedded as capabilities rather than an activity.

Speaker 2 50:33

You do, you know, on a Wednesday afternoon and expect results by the next Wednesday. It will become more integrated in the same way that I imagine if you go to manufacturing organisations these days. I mean, it's, I know, 15, 20 years since I did my Lean Six Sigma Black Belt but if you went to manufacturing organisation now, you'd probably find that they are practising things that would, in the past, have been straight out of a consultant's playbook, but they don't even talk about it. You know, it's just, that's just the way that they manufacture things, and I would expect that service organisations don't have that. They haven't applied or try to apply Lean Six Sigma straight from a factory into a service organisation, because there's different problems. I think in the future what we'll see is design and design thinking is just being a way that organisations do things, because they've got people who are, you know, have these capabilities activated and they're all across the organisation, not just in the special function that looks after either customer experience or design, or, you know, there's everybody's full of design thinking capability.

Speaker 1 51:37

Absolutely agree. I know that I'm I know I'm biased, because I'm a proponent for building design thinking capabilities, but that is that is the vision that I see in the future that design thinking capabilities are things that we talk about. It's just things that people just know how to do and be. So design thinking just happens, even outside of the formal process, because it's just how we operate.

Speaker 2 52:04

Yeah, and it's and to be clear, that's stuck. So you'd almost, yes, the capabilities that are integrated and prevalent, and you know people happen to use tools that we recognise now as design thinking tools but it's not as the capabilities, then the, then the method, then the tools.

Speaker 1 52:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2 52:24

Yeah, that's the level of maturity.

Speaker 1 52:25

Wow, this has been a. We started in the 1960s and we've lived doubly back to 2024.

Speaker 2 52:33

Yeah, and the future. I feel like if this was that, because this was like a visual podcast TV program maybe we could have been, you know, changing outfits from, you know, starting in the 60s, kind of late 60s, early 70s, to that would have been cool. That would have been cool.

Speaker 1 52:48

But we are audio only, so our listeners are just going to have to use their imagination to have to imagine. Yeah, get that imagining muscle going, yeah. So what is your takeaway?

Speaker 2 53:03

My takeaway. Charles Owen, I'm going to check well, actually I'm going to check out a couple of people I haven't heard of, actually totally hadn't heard of at all. So, charles Owen and and Heather Fraser, I'm going to have a look at their work and see what I can pick up from from them. So thanks for pointing me in their direction. I'll enjoy a little bit more background reading. How about you?

Speaker 1 53:28

I think my takeaway so you reminded me of something very important when you said most of the people that I mentioned in my literature reviews are male and something I was very passionate about when I was finishing up my PhD work is the idea of more females publishing, more female researchers publishing their work, thinking more about what can I do in that space to my takeaway.

Speaker 2 53:50

Nice Tani. Well, yeah, this has been a. Really I really enjoyed this conversation. I've really enjoyed learning the timeline, I've really enjoyed being reminded of some of the history and some of the current state and I think that adds up to inspiration and kind of doubling down on the future for design and design thinking and what is needed. So thanks for the boost this morning.

Speaker 1 54:18

Been a great chat. Thanks, pete. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks everyone.

Speaker 2 54:22

I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time. See ya, bye, bye.