MAD statement
This annual leading article is making a difference (MAD) through providing an overview of what is design and designerly thinking, and how these constructs may be of interest to ...organizational change management and leadership theory and practice. In doing so, we are setting out to support a transdisciplinary application of design thinking principles, methods and tools in the continuous development of organizational change and management capabilities, as well as leadership mindsets fit to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.
This study explores design practice across two domains: haute couture (fashion), and haute cuisine (food). A case study approach was taken using the voice of practitioners as the focus through ...in-depth qualitative interviews. The cross-domain approach revealed similarities in design practice through four design themes: visualization, ‘conversations’ with materials, co-creation and ‘pushing boundaries’. The data also revealed innovations within the four themes that could apply to other design domains, for example visualization (haute couture) and co-creation (haute cuisine). The practitioners also provided valuable and nuanced insights into their design practice – ‘You have to live something to do it’. These insights from practitioners and their practice reveal how the two domains hold similarities in design practice and provide a deeper understanding of design processes, and designerly thinking, from which creativity and innovation can emerge.
This paper contributes by clearly identifying the shortcoming of design thinking as well as pinpointing where to begin in terms of achieving a more solid conceptualization of the concept. To identify ...its potential shortcomings, this study examines the theoretical structure of design thinking and compares it to the theoretical structure of designerly thinking. This comparison suggests that the current conceptualization of design thinking lacks methodological approaches, that is, guidelines concerning how best to approach a given problem and how to competently select, configure, apply and evaluate the tools and techniques needed to tackle that problem. In its present form, design thinking facilitates the general, non-situated application of tools and techniques, which is neither linked to nor anchored in a design paradigm.
The job of designers and business consultants features undeniable commonalities: focus on complex organizational problems, nearly constant exposure to ambiguity, difficulty in measuring performance ...and need to leverage knowledge and other intangible assets. Synergies between the disciplines of design and business consulting have increased in the last couple of decades. Design Thinking has emerged as an approach to solve business problems by thinking like a designer to leverage creativity and innovation. Despite its success, this has also raised some criticism: a diffused skepticism toward a public relation term that entails expensive invoices to simply apply old-fashioned creative thinking. What do the real protagonists think of Design Thinking and its application in the business world? We explored the perceptions of designers and business consultants on the theory and practice of Design Thinking. We interviewed 11 such professionals and our findings identified significant differences in perceptions around the essence, practicality and value of Design Thinking. Our research supports calls in the literature for establishing stronger connections between the principles of designerly thinking and the practice of Design Thinking in business.
Over the past decade, geospatial technologies have emerged as a tool for developing spatial reasoning and cognitive processes. While the foundational Learning to Think Spatially report from the ...National Research Center (2006) launched research into the use of geospatial technologies in isolation, more recently, cloud-based simulation software have begun to partner with geographic information system (GIS) databases to aid instructional designers in creating simulations in fields such as geology and geography. Both of these use cases - traditional geography instruction and immersive simulations - undervalue the potential of GIS to address larger issues within the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) field. This conceptual paper seeks to present the potential of GIS systems as a designerly tool which can be used to reduce the cognitive load of communicating with very complex data sets and effectively show how information dynamically changes over time. Provisioning contextual analysis as a central skill of the designer may lead to more inclusive designs than a focus on adding steps to process-based models or focusing only on tools.
Learning about design and learning through design have emerged in the literature and important works show heuristics and matrices for design cognition and design processes. However, few studies have ...been directed to the early development of design. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a study that investigated the genesis of design, by following 13 children (3.0–5.8 yrs) as they became oriented to design thinking in contexts of design and technology education in a play-based setting. Different to previous studies that examine children’s drawing of designs for the under five year olds, this study investigated both the motivating conditions and the motive orientation of the children as a process of engagement in design. Theorised from a cultural-historical perspective, the results show how play acts as both a psychological function and as a source of design cognition. The findings are shown through this psychological lens and thereby make visible how imagination in play created the conditions for the psychological development of children as design was meaningfully embodied, visualised, and resourced through expert designers and the storytelling of teachers. Rather than conceptualising design as the cognitive competence of an individual, it is argued that by studying the living actions of play that designerly thinking which is always in a process of change, can be better understood. In line with the existing literature, the study specifically reports on the dialectic between design and designerly thinking for the under fives, thus contributing to filling a gap in understandings about the beginning of the continuum of design cognition.
In the last decade, design thinking has been discussed as a new paradigm for dealing with complex business problems. The implementation of design thinking is linked with substantial changes in the ...organizational culture, and becomes visible in new approaches to designing office and learning spaces. To analyze proponents’ perspectives on the implementation process, we adapted Schein’s (1990, 2017) approach of different layers of an organizational culture. In general, two layers in an organization are addressed, namely visible artifacts and behaviors, as well as basic principles to think about approaches to deal with business problems (mindset). In total, eight semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with proponents to learn more about the implementation of design thinking and the architecture of related office spaces. The findings suggest that design thinking addresses both aspects—the provision and inner design of physical space as well as a change of mindset.
In this paper, I outline key principles for how I envisage design providing creative input to social innovation programs, where its effectiveness depends both on how design is understood and ...actioned, and how the program is organized and managed. Key clients, funders and decision makers for such programs - the true power brokers - will likely base their thinking on management and organization concepts. As such, I first consider how the terms 'design' and 'social innovation' are broadly understood and interpreted in these business domains. Then, I address multifaceted interpretations of 'design' across other fields. However, my key concern is for the end user of the social innovation program. Seeking a focus on true social innovation, where value is created for these users, I discuss one interpretation of design, through what I term a mindset of 'designerly thinking', and a process defined as 'collaborative realisation' as the model for its implementation.
In this article, we posit designerly thinking as a family of design approaches that some believe are able to effectively respond to wicked problems. We will scrutinize this premise by revisiting ...Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber’s 1973 article in which the notion of wicked problems was originally introduced. In it, Rittel and Webber note the emergence of a general sense of distrust in professionals in the 1960s and interpret it as a loss of confidence in the then leading approach to addressing societal problems: systems-based planning. Rittel and Webber formulated three dilemmas that societal problems pose, of which the second is their wickedness, and argued that planning does not resolve these dilemmas. In the 2010s, an emerging distrust in professionals has arisen once more, raising the question of whether designerly thinking is equipped to address societal issues. Our review and discussion of Rittel and Webber’s three dilemmas reveals that designerly thinking currently does not resolve any of them, as there can always be groups that will oppose certain solutions. We argue that designerly thinking cannot overcome societal pluralism, but that designers can and should interpret social distrust as an invitation to discuss the consequences and their societal equity.
•Rittel and Webber characterize wicked problems as presenting three dilemmas that stand in the way of their resolution.•Designerly thinking approaches cannot currently effectively deal with wicked problems.•Societal distrust in design propositions that address wicked problems are invitations to discuss the equity of consequences implied by those propositions.
This short paper provides a comparative analysis of community operational research (COR) and design thinking (DT) in the health and social services, from the perspective of cogenerative learning ...between citizens, theory, and practice domains. Although COR and DT developed out of 'hard' operational research/management science (OR/MS), they are fundamentally different in their purpose, grounding, and historical-conceptual trajectories. COR needs a framework to challenge its pluralism, while DT's value as pedagogical concept, than methodology, is well worth revisiting in the spirit of the engineers who introduced OR/MS and systems science principles into contexts since displaced. There is potential alignment of COR and DT through a framework of analysis for meaning construction.
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