DESIGN THINKER PODCAST

Ep#29: Design Thinking is Dead...Or Is It?

• Dr. Dani Chesson and Designer Peter Allan • Episode 29

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Over the past several years, the relevance of design thinking has come under scrutiny. Is it a fad that has run its course? Is design thinking still useful? In this episode, Dr Dani and Designer Peter dive into these questions.

In this episode, you will

• explore how design thinking has evolved over the years

• learn about what is working and what is not

• discover what needs to happen next

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text!

Dr Dani:

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

Designer Peter:

Peter.

Dr Dani:

Hey Pete.

Designer Peter:

Hi Dani, how are you?

Dr Dani:

I'm all right. What are we talking about today?

Designer Peter:

Today, dani we're going to talk about, is design thinking dead?

Dr Dani:

Oh, I feel like we need a special sound.

Designer Peter:

We'll reserve the sound maybe for the end of the conversation. Yes, I feel like you know. Maybe beethoven's funeral march will come out if we decide it is dead, or something more triumphant fanfare for the common man. Love it, aaron copeland. If design thinking is, um is well and truly alive. Let's not jump to conclusions so what are your thoughts?

Dr Dani:

is design thinking dead?

Designer Peter:

he. Part of me wants to state my current perspective right now and part of me wants to ask a question back at your question.

Dr Dani:

Are you trying to pull a Donnie?

Designer Peter:

Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a couple of episodes, depending on how we release these. Maybe I'll start with my point of view and statement that, well, certainly, the way that I uh interpret, believe, maybe even practice design thinking doesn't seem dead to me, but I know that, uh, there's there's conversations happening all around the place that that perhaps it is dead. I'll start with no, but then ask the question of you what? Why do you ask the question?

Dr Dani:

so I feel, feel like every I don't know couple of months, a couple of years, there's an article or something that pops up around. Design thinking is dead, and I saw one not too long ago. And every time I see it I start to don't want to be put my head in the ground or be an ostrich, I guess is that word. So every time I see it I start to reflect, like, is design thinking dead or is design thinking dying? So I thought it would be something good for us to explore on this podcast. Yeah, nice.

Designer Peter:

Okay, yeah, I think it's always healthy to. I think I read this about the people that created the American eyeglasses spectacles glasses company, warby Parker, and I will might not clearly remember the story of it, but I think that that company came about from.

Designer Peter:

It was like a class project, maybe in an innovation class, I'm not sure and the two or three people that set up the Warby Parker you. It started off as one of these ideas, from an innovation workshop, I think and they kept pursuing it. But the message that I got from reading their story that they wanted everyone to understand was never doubt yourself, but almost continuously doubt your ideas, which is, I think, a really probably quite a healthy perspective. We should all always have some sort of self-belief. But yeah, just like you, I do like to take a step back and go. Is this, whether it's a kind of in the moment thing or a long-term thing? Occasionally step back, oh, is this the right thing to do? Are we doing the right thing here?

Designer Peter:

And this thing that you and I do. We call it, and lots of other people call it, design thinking. It might have other names elsewhere, so, yeah, I think it's healthy to take a step back. Well, I guess the good news for our listener right now and whether it's them or their children or grandchildren in the future, if this conversation happens quite often, then we're creating a timeless episode here, danny. It's like a timeless discussion. Let's not, uh, put a date on it. Yeah, so it is healthy to take a step back and, and you know, I too, uh, occasionally see the see articles and even have conversations, uh, with people saying, oh, this, that design, that's design thinking, that's, that's not the thing anymore.

Designer Peter:

Um or um, you know the article maybe it was the same article that we saw, danny, from somebody saying more or less, design thinking, it's dead. And when I prompted my curiosity, of course, and when I read it, their perspective of this article I'm thinking about was it's kind of like design thinking as a um, let's call it a service provided by consultancies has been proven to be ineffective. I think that was one of the arguments in this article. Was that this, was that a similar thing? That well, yeah, what do you think of that? Um idea?

Dr Dani:

well, that's what I've been saying for the past seven years, right? I've always believed that and it's also what inspired my doctoral research is that when design thinking was introduced in organizations, it took a very process approach. This is the design thinking process. It was generally. You know, we want to become a design thinking organization, so we're going to go get a consultancy. They're going to come in, run some workshops with us and help us understand how to do design thinking.

Dr Dani:

In the early days that worked because there was very little knowledge and understanding of what design thinking is. We've now moved beyond that. We've reached saturation in terms of understanding what design thinking is. Most people, even though they might not know how to do design thinking or the intricacies of design thinking, I think as a concept it's generally understood and if it's not, it's now popular enough that it won't take a lot of effort for somebody to Google it and learn what it is quite quickly.

Dr Dani:

When I was looking at design thinking and where is this going? Seven years ago, what I started to think about is actually we have to start moving design thinking out of the workshop and how do we operationalize it so that it's happening in organizations more organically? And that's where I started looking at well, what are the capabilities that drive design thinking. Now we're at a point where we need to move from focusing on workshops and or the workshops is always going to be part of design thinking, but I think we need to stop making that our only focus and also thinking about how do we build capabilities so that design thinking is something that we're all doing. So I do agree with the article in that sense.

Designer Peter:

In that sense, yeah, yeah. But another argument in this particular article I read was that design thinking only takes you to, you know, a prototyped solution, and I suppose what went through my mind was, yes, I suppose it can do, but again, the way I think it's that I've intended it and put it into practice in organizations is that that's just the start. Like you know, you mentioned, the workshops are discrete kind of gathering of people for a defined period of time to you know, to work on something.

Designer Peter:

A workshop will get you from a to b but, um, the final you know the ultimate destination might be cd or a and, and in my opinion it's still possible and actually required or really important or a really good thing to do is to continue to use a design thinking approach to. You know, take your initial prototype idea or solution and continue working on it. Be used to solve any problem, whether it's a brand new, novel problem, or whether it's, let's say, an operational efficiency problem. Everything can be solved from a human-centered point of view, taking a design thinking approach.

Dr Dani:

The criticism of design thinking, I think, even in the early days, was that it doesn't offer. It doesn't go as far as implementing the solution. Right, you end up with a prototype. The reason for that is there are already very well proven methods for implementing something. There's a whole field called change management, organizational development, that are meant to help project management, that are meant to help take solutions and bring them to life. Where we've gotten into is that we've expected design thinking to be the savior of all, and we tend to do this right, like we tend to put all our hopes and wishes into one, and this is how we end up with fads right. The power of design thinking is marrying it up with other things. We know that work. I have a human-centered design and an organizational development and behavioral science background and I don't think I could do my job if I just had knowledge of human-centered design or design thinking. Right, I have to marry it with other things so that I'm bringing things to life.

Designer Peter:

I think that's a nice kind of build on. Yes, you look at through a particular lens, then discovered these things about it that, oh yeah, it needs to be combined with other approaches that exist already to really make the most of it or to frame it a different way, maybe by adding design thinking. Those other approaches, like you know, change or organizational development, or agile building or DevOps delivery, or Lean Six Sigma by adding onto it and design thinking, those things become even more powerful and even more helpful in organizations to solve problems, continually solve problems, activate and enable people's creativity, help people collaborate, shift power dynamics within an organization. These are all things that I believe design thinking can help us do. Of course, all those things start to happen. Add in design thinking as an approach. And you're right, it's something that just caught my attention. You were talking about there a long time ago.

Designer Peter:

I went through a lean six sigma black belt program and I remember you know, as a similar there's probably you can of the moment uh, so there's probably not medium uh articles for those of you listening in 10 years time. Medium was this um internet thing where people got to write articles. Before there was uh, holograms and brain implants and ai um, so there was you know they're probably not medium articles about lean six sigma being dead. But oh, if we got chat gbt to do an analysis of articles, uh, written in medium, I bet there'd be lots about design thinking, lots about Agile, but very few about Lean Six Sigma. But if we're able to, you know, point it at print media from 10 years ago, then probably the opposite would be true and there are probably articles telling us that Lean Six Sigma was dead and all hail design thinking.

Designer Peter:

I guess I'm elaborating on your point, or agreeing with your point, that we tend to, as people, I think as humans, gravitate to the novel and see something new and believe that it can solve all of our problems. You know, even reflecting on my individual personal experience, you know you've got a bad habit or a problem you want to solve and you find something that seems to solve anything. It's going to solve all your problems. That's not always the case. I'm going to ask you a question. Um, I wonder if it's something to do with, either literally or maybe metaphorically, from an organization point of view, dopamine versus serotonin. Oh, that was a good face. I made danny actually think there.

Dr Dani:

Uh, it's unusual are you saying I don't think?

Designer Peter:

you always think, but something I, something I say, uh, has provoked some thought in you. That's unusual, yeah. So, in other words, I guess where I'm going with this kind of metaphor is you get a dopamine rush as an individual person when you see something new or something that grabs your attention and you kind of get a reward for, let's say, it's a Facebook article or something you know, something on LinkedIn or Instagram, and it's something that grabs your attention, it seems to appeal to you and, yes, I believe that you know you get a little dope rush from gaining that new information.

Designer Peter:

In organisational terms, maybe the same thing happens when we come across something like design thinking or, you know, insert favourite framework or framework of the day here versus um. So it's like a short-term good feeling, if you like, versus serotonin, and I hope I'm not making a fool of myself and getting things mixed up here, but I believe serotonin is more like a long-term, less of a spike, more of a kind of long-term feel-good um hormone. Uh, that we'll get from having maybe not quite as exciting single events, but more contentment or contentful situations in our life. And maybe what happens with these models is that they start off as like a doping hit for organizations and people who practice them, and then they settle down to become, I guess, more organizational serotonin inducing if they are kept alive rather than killed off so my reaction to that?

Dr Dani:

yeah, so I definitely agree with the our human brain, human brains are programmed to like we love instant gratification, yeah, and, and our love for instant gratification, I think, has amplified in the 21st century just because we our world now is designed for us to crave instant gratification even more. So I can see that, you know, when something new comes along, it has this new shiny object effect, right, and I think you're right in that. We see the new thing and we go, oh, this is going to be the thing that fixes everything. What happens is, you know, we're we are facing much more complex and complicated challenges in our world and they're all looking for the magic bullet and there isn't one. So I think when something comes along, you're like, ah, this is going to be the thing that saves it all. But it's not. It's probably the thing that's going to help make some impact or give you some, get you going on solving the problem.

Dr Dani:

But solving problems is hard work and our brains are also really wired to look for the easy answers and the shortcuts. Right, like our brains, in that way, are quite lazy, which I know. It's not fair to call our brains lazy, because it's responsible for millions of actions that keep us safe. So it likes to be efficient and reserve energy. So we have a natural inclination to avoid doing hard work, especially mentally hard work. So I think that's what drives this allure of oh. That looks new and interesting and I think it's going to solve my, and we can even see that in.

Dr Dani:

You know all these diet fads that come up right. We know that scientifically. We know that if you're looking to get fit, lose weight, what works is making sure that you're active, making sure that you're. You know portion control, quality of calories matter, and of course you know making sure you're not eating too much. And if you do those things in the right sequence and assuming you have no underlying health issues, that's kind of the recipe for getting fit. But we're always looking for that thing that's gonna get us there without. We all want to have six pack abs, but never do a sit up.

Designer Peter:

Bringing it back to our original question, maybe design thinking has perhaps been promoted as something that will give us not universally promoted, but certainly promoted in some places or being misinterpreted as something that can give us the equivalent of six packs without doing sit ups. Do you think that's something that's happened, or the equivalent of six packs without doing sit-ups? Do you think that's something that's happened or even happening right now?

Dr Dani:

Yes and no. There's a lot of practitioners out there that are presenting design thinking in the right way and explaining what it can do can't do Equally. I'm sure there's people that are out there talking about it like it's the best thing since sliced bread. More so it's how people perceive it and the things that people attach to it.

Designer Peter:

Tell me more about that. So what were some specific perceptions?

Dr Dani:

A lot of companies believe that, ok, I'm going to send all my people to a design thinking workshop and they're going to come back and be super innovative and that's going to be the thing that you know, this one workshop is going to transform everybody to come back and be super innovative, and that's what's going to take our business forward.

Designer Peter:

Maybe part of that is how those design thinking trainings are being promoted and but I also think, or, and I also think part of that is um organizations looking for quick fixes yeah, that, uh, that seems to make sense and, yeah, maybe it fits in with my in my mind at least the kind of that dopamine, uh, serotonin kind of metaphor analogy I was.

Designer Peter:

I was using, let's say, that particular approach to design thinking dead or dying, and actually, to me, that that's. That's probably a good thing, because what it's saying, if we take that perspective and assume that it's based on, you know, reasonable evidence, then what it's saying is that we are, or organizations are, learning that it's not what you just described. It's not going to suddenly, you know, inject the whole organization with, uh, an innovation habit that's gonna, you know, permeate and perpetuate everything, just because, you know, a small group of people have got, or even a big group of people have gone off on a one-day workshop. So maybe in a way yeah, maybe it is that that version of design thinking is dying, uh, or and and will be dead because that learning cycle is starting to be completed. It's not just a short term intervention that might have that is guaranteed long term, deep and deep changes.

Dr Dani:

So this is a twist of our normal roles, pete, because I think you're being really optimistic there, so I'm going to present a more pessimistic view which is very unusual for us. Yeah, risk is.

Designer Peter:

My brain's catching up going. Hey, wait, wait, wait a minute, go on, go on, keep going.

Dr Dani:

The risk is that organizations are going to go well, we've done the design thinking thing. It didn't work, so now let's go look for the next shiny thing. Yeah, okay, rather than saying okay, the way we're doing this needs to change. So I think that's the risk yeah and I I like to.

Dr Dani:

I'm gonna bring it back to exercise. You know, I equate this to like, say, you give everybody a gym membership and it's this fabulous gym with all the amenities and all of that, but then if you're not supporting people to go, okay, what time are you going to go to the gym? Or, you know, do you have the right attire and the sneak, you know, exercise shoes to go to the gym? So it's not just about giving people the training, it's about making sure that you have the environment that people can go do the things that they've learned in the training yeah, okay, uh, normal service.

Designer Peter:

Uh, you, you resumed normal service at the end, uh, there're down from kind of taking a pessimistic uh perspective that supposedly I do more often to giving us a nice, concrete, um kind of model to to build on. Uh, yeah, I love that. Uh, that gym analogy. Yeah, so, extending that further from the gym to, well, you know why, what? Why are you doing that particular training? You know what's the functional reason that you're doing?

Designer Peter:

Well, you know, maybe you are uh running on the treadmill, um, as part of you know, your triathlon training. So you're actually going to take what you've trained and your body to do and take it and apply it to something, um, outside of the gym. So, in order to, yeah, and or yeah, what you're saying is that don't just buy people a gym membership, give them, help them, take that thing that they've trained their body to do and apply it to out in the real world, but also make that easy to do, make that path great on ramps to doing that beyond the gym where I was going with the gym analogy is really that having a gym membership doesn't get you fit.

Dr Dani:

You have to create the space in your life to dedicate to go exercise. You have to make sure you know yeah so, and if you take that to what I'm saying about sending people off to a design thinking training isn't going to make your organization innovative. You have to do you. You know you send, you, get your people the training they need, but then you've got to create the environment that innovation can happen got it what I'll do, that I'll go back to your slightly pessimistic response to my optimistic uh suggestion or offer.

Designer Peter:

And I always try to avoid absolutes. Sometimes I quite like that on myself and I occasionally avoid absolute statements. So, let's, let's, maybe, uh, because you know absolutes are rarely true. Almost everything is is some mixture or balance, or. But let's imagine that.

Designer Peter:

So, yeah, some organizations are are in the situation on their kind of design thinking journey that you just described. They've kind of tried it. It hasn't worked for some reason, and you know they are discarding it as not effective, but they're not really examining the reason it hasn't been effective. And, by the way, listener, we're kind of scattered throughout this conversation and our podcasts are reasons that you can't help it be more effective. But so there's a group of organizations that are in that state. Maybe they are massive organizations where they've hired, they've spent lots and lots of money hiring an external consultant and you know, just hasn't worked for some reason. So, yes, there is a risk of that.

Designer Peter:

Um, I guess that situation or those lessons not being learned by that organization and the stories spreading uh to other organizations who don't try and learn themselves but take shortcuts at the other end of the journey. There's organizations who haven't even started yet and, yeah, maybe I've just kind of described that there's that risk that they even started yet. And, yeah, maybe I've just kind of described that there's that risk that they don't start because they've heard this, that it's not effective. Somewhere in the middle, though, there's, uh, organizations who have started. It hasn't been effective, but they do have, I guess, the organizational awareness to an environment, to, to use your words, to step back and ask the right questions, to figure out how come this thing hasn't worked. And if they're doing that, then they might be helpful to take a design thinking approach to solving that particular problem.

Dr Dani:

This is where this shiny object disease comes in right, Because, rather than going okay, let's take a step back and see why something we're trying isn't working. What many organizations do is they go out and go okay. What's the next shiny object?

Designer Peter:

yeah, I'll try this. It's like uh, you've paid for a gym membership, you never go to the gym and you're wondering why you're not getting fitter. So you go and uh, either join another gym or maybe hire a personal trainer, but you still don't go to the gym.

Dr Dani:

Or you don't. You know now you're paying a personal trainer but you don't show up for the sessions. We seem to be on a gym analogy today. Now I feel like I need to go exercise.

Designer Peter:

Okay.

Dr Dani:

Sometimes when I think about this idea of, is design thinking dead? I almost find that statement a little bit silly. And the reason why is so. When I was looking for my master's and doctoral work, when I started thinking about what are design thinking capabilities, part of what I did is I went back and did a pretty extensive literature review everything that's ever been published on design thinking from a research perspective and that literature went back. I mean, I only went back to the 1960s because I had to kind of cut it off at some point.

Dr Dani:

But this idea of teaching designer the way of designers to other professions, has existed since the 1960s, and that's only as far back as I went. There were scholar practitioners calling for business schools to adapt courses so that business students were being taught some of the design principles that design students were being taught. That went back to the 1970s. And then when I started looking at and uncovering what are the capabilities of design thinkers, what I found is that so there's six core capabilities and those core capabilities are things that are very innate in humans. So if you think about you know, empathy, collaborating, ideating these are all things that humans naturally have, do and are one of what makes us uniquely human is our ability to empathize visual communications. We, you know, we've done an episode on that two-year-olds start drawing if you put a crayon on their hand in their hand, um. So the reason that I find it silly is that if you look at design thinking from a capability lens, the idea that it's dead or dying is it just feels silly because it's.

Designer Peter:

It's so much of who we are yeah, that's one of um my reactions to I. I yeah, it's more. My reaction is more like well, this seems you know to your point about the capabilities that you've your researchers uncovered here. They, they're, they're innate Maybe, rather than going well, this is silly, it's like the argument seems to be about something else, and because those capabilities where my mind goes to as well, okay, well, let's call it something else, let's call it, you know, I don't know, I don't know what we'd call it, but those, those six things are innate and and fundamental to working better together as groups of people in order to solve the problems that we really have to solve yeah I I get, I'm totally agreeing with you.

Designer Peter:

That just doesn't make sense, I think. But what it tells me, I guess you know, if message I'm hearing is design thinking is dead, and then you know there's a more of an elaboration, focuses on that person's experience, and it's usually not the kind of fundamental level of capability building. It's more somewhere further towards the surface of our design thinking being used as a tool, a kind of once and done tool, the sort of thing we've just talked about. Used as a tool, a kind of once and done tool, the sort of thing we've just talked about. Yeah, so I think you know fundamentally right in its foundations.

Designer Peter:

I'll be really bold and say it can. It will never die because it's about the capabilities and they're innate. But, yeah, agreed, at the surface level, certain approaches, some of it should be dead, should be pruned from the tree of design or the tree of human experience and lessons learned and moved on yeah, I think.

Dr Dani:

In my view, design thinking isn't dead. How we practice design thinking needs to evolve okay, I'll I'll again.

Designer Peter:

Uh, I'll be the optimist here. I'll say it is evolving. I think it's evolving because if you go again, go to the same sources, wherever we saw this article probably linked LinkedIn or Medium and search for articles on design thinking, then we'll see maybe not kind of bold statements like design thinking instead, or design thinking is evolving design or humanity-centered design and conversations about co-design or inclusive design, all these things that are now becoming part of our wider collective conversations that we can have again do a search and they weren't happening five years ago. To me, they're indications of not design thinking dying, but actually design thinking evolving.

Dr Dani:

So I do agree with that and one thing that I wanted to mention. So back in the 1970s, scholar practitioners were calling for including design classes in business schools, and today that exists.

Designer Peter:

So I think there's reasons to be optimistic that, yeah, I'm just hoping that the things that we're talking about now doesn't take 70 years to come to fruition great, let's uh, maybe seven, seven months, so maybe let's, let's let's move our conversation on a little bit then what would let's put ourselves in the shoes of those people in the 70s saying, hey, this should be part of business school education. And it now is. And we've talked about and I think we agree on, design thinking, or a version of design thinking is dying, is dead, and perhaps it's helpful for it to be dead. What do we call for?

Dr Dani:

I'm taking that question as to mean that how do we evolve design thinking as it's predominantly being practiced today to what it needs to be? That's how I'm taking it. One organizations need to think about are we creating the right environment for people that have been trained in design thinking to actually practice the things they've been taught? Yeah, and the same vein I think there needs to be some shift in. If the commitment is that we're going to embrace design thinking, then have we prepared our leaders to be able to lead design thinkers?

Designer Peter:

so those are my yeah, like and uh, yeah, I. I think there's a great rallying prize, um, and in my experience, that's where that is where we need to go next, where I was going to go was let's start with capabilities and then taking your uh, your, your rallying crime, combining the two then. So a question back to you is like taking the six design capabilities and helping leaders, yeah, there's no reason to modify, I'm just looking at them. At the moment, there's no visual communication, curious, experimentation, situation, optimizing, idea generation, collective collaboration, empathetic, exploring. My perspective is there's no need to miss any of those. I modify them in any way in terms of building those capabilities in senior leaders and organization Is there?

Dr Dani:

No. The other thing I'll add is I think organizations also need to think about what else do we link up with design thinking, right? So, like, I think we need to move away from this one solution for everything or throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Like, how do we bring design thinking together with agile practices? How do we bring design thinking together with change management practices, project management practices? Because I think that's when we really will start to see benefits of design thinking come to life, because that's where we're going to go from actually coming up with the solution to a problem and then seeing it through to implementation. I also think, in doing that, companies are going to develop their own unique competitive advantage right, because different organizations are going to combine things in different ways and then they can lean into their strengths, and then they can lean into their strengths.

Designer Peter:

If they start doing that, then they can start developing a competitive advantage using design that's uniquely their own. Yeah, I love that the raw ingredients are available to almost every organization. It's how the organization chooses to and manages to combine them is going to give them that unique competitive advantage. And here you're not. You're not necessarily. You're not talking about directly, anyway, the product or service that they might provide and sell to customers. You're talking about the way that the organization creates and delivers that experience or to or product to a customer.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, absolutely yeah, so really good.

Designer Peter:

To me, that's a kind of inspiring, compelling reason to to believe in that design thinking is, in one form, isn't dead, but is evolving. I I think the word that comes to mind for me is is integrating. It's like is it then, then, the way that a design think or organizations can use design thinking to best effect is to integrate it into the way that they do things. So, you know, I just think of. I think a pitfall to avoid is creating a design island or design thinking island that people have to, you know, travel to, to visit and, you know, maybe have fun on the amusement park rides and then get the boat home and get back to normal life for the rest of the week. Yeah, that's to to be avoided, whereas, yeah, integrating it into normal, uh, day-to-day work life in organizations, design thinking has been relegated to specific job functions yeah it's not meant to operate that way no, it's not.

Designer Peter:

My mind was going looking for, I mean, is there another? Is there an existing, I guess, set of capabilities or approach that like design thinking that is already integrated into some or all organizations?

Dr Dani:

that issue is unique to design thinking. I think that issue is unique to design thinking. I think that issue is unique, um is you know we see that in in many other aspects. Organizations do like to box things into or segment things or isolate things. What comes to mind for me is like I remember having conversations about a couple years ago. I was working with an organization and we were doing some organizational design work and the question came up well, where do we put the change management practice? The comment was made. Well, obviously it needs to sit in strategy and transformation, which I found interesting. Right, because as a capability that should exist, every part of the organization should have the capability to change.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, yeah.

Dr Dani:

That's just an example of another arena where organizations isolate. And we do the same thing with design thinking. We do the same thing with heaps of other things.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, yeah, true, yeah, good point, okay, so, and to clarify that doesn't mean that everybody is an expert in it but, everybody should have some capability in it. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

Or awareness, at the very least some awareness of it.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, you know, in finance, in HR, anywhere in the organization, everyone should be aware of the set of capabilities and way of even temporarily approaching things from in their job. Okay, nice, so is design thinking dead. What do we think?

Dr Dani:

It needs to evolve. If we keep doing what we're doing with design thinking, we're going to run into a dead end with it. So I don't believe that design thinking is dead, but I believe it needs to evolve.

Designer Peter:

My perspective is a version of design thinking is dead, but I believe it needs to evolve. My perspective is a version of design thinking is dead and that's maybe because design thinking is evolving an evolutionary kind of family tree. There's always kind of dead ends, and I think a particular version of design thinking that we've talked about is dead or or is dying, and maybe that's um, that's a helpful thing, um, but I agree with you that, uh, design thinking needs to evolve and its evolution requires effort from design thinking practitioners and leaders, and so it's, you know, down to the likes of you and I and everyone else. Maybe our listener take ownership of that and have the conversation, do you agree?

Dr Dani:

I do, I don't disagree.

Designer Peter:

You just had your thinking face on there, that was all. Do you have a takeaway or two?

Dr Dani:

What I'm taking away from today and actually has nothing to do with the topic that we talked about, but I realized something I did today was I'm generally the optimist.

Designer Peter:

Oh, yeah, okay.

Dr Dani:

And I tried on a different hat today and it was a little bit uncomfortable but I leaned into it, and so I think the thing I'm taking away is remembering to try out different perspectives.

Designer Peter:

Oh nice, that's an interesting perspective. Sitting in front of me on my desk I have a copy of classic edward de bono, six thinking hats yeah um.

Designer Peter:

So yeah, there you go. That's what I'm part way through reading that. I'm not sure if I tried on a different hat um today or not. Maybe, maybe I did, but my takeaway is is your really helpful gym analogy? Yeah, yeah, I do like that that being a gym member doesn't get you fit. It's everything else that comes with it, and actually you're turning up to the gym and training. So organizations metaphorically need to not just pay for gym membership and do gym training once, but provide the environment for people to go to the gym over and over.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, show up and do the hard work.

Designer Peter:

Show up and do the hard work. Nice, nice, that's nice, nice, that's a great way to finish. So maybe we could say design thinking is dead. Long live design thinking.

Dr Dani:

I like that.

Designer Peter:

I like the juxtaposition of that. Let's play out to.

Dr Dani:

Fanfare for the Common man, shall I Sure?

Designer Peter:

There you go, listeners. Pete's available for um birthday parties, weddings, uh funerals. I try not to get them mixed up. Thanks for listening everyone thanks, if you're still here, bye.