Design thinking and interdisciplinary thinking

Another strand in design speaks of design as the integration of individual and team goals, and of subjective and the objective ways of knowing. These point towards a new representation and use of design ability.

In human-centred design, there has been a move towards conceptualising the social of interaction (McCarthy & Wright, 2004b; Wright et al., 2006; Wright et al., 2003). With the rising interest in human experience in interaction (Desmet & Hekkert, 2007; Kuniavsky, 2007; Norman, 2004*;

Schifferstein & Hekkert, 2011), there have been efforts to extend the theorising of the human-technology interface towards context and the wider social environment of interaction (Kuutti, 2009;

Kuutti & Bannon, 2014). “Experience” is conceptualized to be produced by the user’s body in interaction with the product, such as a “mountain bike”, amid its material environment, such as “the mud, rocks, sticks and yes, the water” (Buxton, 2007, pp. 98-100).

“Not the physical entity or what is in the box (the material product) […] is the true outcome of the design. Rather, it is the behavioural, experiential, and emotional responses that come about as a result of its existence and its use in the real world”

(Buxton, 2007, p. 10).

Personal experience is seen as the subjective responses, which result from the interaction with the real and objective material. The world is seen as an objective set of conditions, while humans are

conceptualized as subjective. Hassenzahl (2010) outlines the “objective condition” to be elements such as the buttons on a device, or time, whilst the “subjective experience” relates to concepts such as

beauty, or satisfaction (pp. 9-11). Amongst scholars there is a theoretical interest in solving the dynamic of the unfolding of interaction which involves these supposedly objective materials and subjective experiences. For example, there is an attempt to sketch experience as the grade of fulfilment of “psychological needs,” such as “autonomy,” “competence,” and “relatedness”

(Hassenzahl, Diefenbach, & Göritz, 2010, p. 354). However, despite these detailed accounts of describing the role of experience in human-technology interaction, human-centred design theorists admit that there is much to unearth about the “transformation rules” that turn objective conditions into a subjective experience (Hassenzahl, 2010, p. 11).

Despite the focus on social context in the production of user experience, relationships such as between the user and the designer are hardly touched on. A lot of the attention rests on the agency and ability of the individual designer in creating these user experiences. The personal attribute of creativity is seen as an important ingredient of innovation (Dorst & Cross, 2001), and being able to transforming ideas into possible solutions (Hargadon, 1996). A designer’s ability to design is

described as particular “designerly ways of knowing” (Cross, 1982, 2011) as “forms of knowledge special to the awareness and ability of a designer” (Cross, 2001, p. 54). As designerly knowing was taken up by business innovation in Design Thinking, the concept of the ability to design was merely extended from the individual capacity towards collaborative action (Dorst, 2011). Design ability has so been exported from design practice to the mainstream of running organisations (Stewart, 2011).

Due to the individual conceptualisation of design ability, the translation of design into fields outside of design has come with theoretical issues. Because designerly knowing has been described as “tacit”

and as difficult to “externalize” (Cross, 1982), there are continuous attempts to find better ways of access. For example, there have been attempts of externalising design knowledge through getting designers to work in groups and to analyse the conversation protocol, or to get designers to think aloud (Cramer-Petersen, Christensen, & Ahmed-Kristensen, 2019; Cross, Christiaans, & Dorst, 1996; Cross & Clayburn Cross, 1995; Lloyd & Scott, 1994). Design knowledge is here seen as a cognitive skill (Lawson & Dorst, 2009), which takes place “in the head” of the designer (Kolko, 2010a, p. 15). Drawing has sometimes been described as the expression of the designerly mental cache (Buxton, 2007; Lawson & Dorst, 2009).

Designerly knowing has often been conceptualised as the designer’s individual sense-making through abductive reasoning (Cross, 2011; Dorst, 2015; Kolko, 2010a; Martin, 2009). The subjective

experience is understood to be critical in creative sense-making, whereby this is based on

conceptualisations of experience as an individual capacity (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Kolko (2010a) describes designerly sense-making as the synthesizing of the designer’s objective knowledge, such as empirical observations, with the designer’s subjective knowledge, such as personal experiences. Lloyd and Snelders (2003) conducted an analysis of designer Philippe Starck’s work, illustrating how subjective experiences impact design situations. When exploring the designer’s conceiving of the futuristic alien-squid-like lemon squeezer, Juicy Salif, the authors trace the familiar elements which may have served Starck as a source in his design, such as his father’s work in aeronautic design, Starck’s teenage interest in science fiction cartoons and space flight, each tied to a particular visual language, as well as the significance of the locality where he did his first sketches – a fish restaurant serving baby squid. Designerly knowing is so described as a designer’s personal capacity.

Designerly knowing is understood as internal to the designer, and subjective knowing is part of the concept. The concept of designerly knowing relies on the designer to be the medium of this internal process which is hidden from view. As this tacit process, design ability is represented as available to the designer only. This narrative plays on the old notion of the designer genius (Fisher, 1997). It is consistent with romantic explanations of design understood to be reliant on the designer’s

subjectivity. Designers report being “dependent on ‘inspiration’: An idea about [X] 'popped' into my head”, keeping the creative process “shrouded in mystery” (Coyne, Snodgrass, & Martin, 1994, pp.

116-117). On the one hand, there are attempts of making the design process “appear a little less mysterious” (Design Council, 2015b), while on the other, it is made mysterious by representing it as hidden from view (Coyne & Snodgrass, 1991).

In the meantime, Design Thinking continues its efforts to make design ability more transparent and visible. It conceptualises design as capable of mediating different kinds of expertise, and to reconcile different types of reasoning. “The creative process […] relies on synthesis, the collective act of putting the pieces together to create whole ideas” (Brown, 2009, p. 69). The “two modes of thought [ , …] analytical thinking [, and] intuitive thinking, the art of knowing without reasoning” (Martin, 2009) are reconciled in an embracing of the creative and the logical (Brown, 2009).

Design Thinking may be a taking-the-bull-by-the-horns response to the criticism of design as a process of designer genius, whilst at the same time not giving in to the alternative conception that anyone could design. “Design by committee” is the horror phrase of design practice, as the results would be bland and anything other than “great” (Norman, 2004, p. 98)*. Design Thinking, instead, is represented as the perfect mix of individual greatness with collective inclusion. Brown (2009) describes the extraordinary “design thinker” as someone who possesses a “depth of skill” in at least one field, who at the same time is able to span across several disciplines.

“In the end, this ability is what distinguishes the merely multidisciplinary team from a truly interdisciplinary one. In a multidisciplinary team each individual becomes an advocate for his or her own technical specialty and the project becomes a protracted negotiation among them, likely resulting in a grey compromise. In an interdisciplinary team there is collective ownership of ideas and everybody takes responsibility for them.”

Brown (2009, p. 27)

This “truly interdisciplinary” capacity is visualized by the design innovation diagram by IDEO (Brown, 2008; IDEO U, 2019). Here, technical “feasibility” is intersected with economic “viability”, and “desirability” from a “human point of view” (IDEO U, 2019) – a triad of technology-business-human.

Figure 13: Design innovation, by IDEO U, retraced

“Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which IDEO calls design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is

technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren't trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.” (IDEO U, 2019)

Also in the book About face (Cooper et al., 2007)*, the triad of capability, viability, and desirability, which is attributed to Larry Keeley (p. 11)*, is described to constitute the different domains in the production process. The capability of the design process is here described as a process of

accountability, providing a “clear rationale for design decisions, [that] makes collaboration with developers, business people easier, and ensures that the design in question isn’t guesswork, the whim of a creative mind, or just a reflection of the team members’ personal preferences” (p. 25)*. Design is here understood as a “powerful tool” to bring together different interests, providing the outcome of a

“clear rationale for design decisions” which is not guesswork, not a whim, and not a personal preference (p. 25)*.

Also the book A project guide to UX design (Unger & Chandler, 2009)* speaks about “tech

possibilities”, “user needs” and “business needs” that should be ideally equally balanced in product the development process and invites to readers “picture this as a three-way tug-of-war” (pp. 154-155)*. This balance being disturbed can lead to “a costly or buggy solution that meets business requirements but misses user needs,” “a costly or buggy solution that meets user needs but does not generate revenue for the company,” or “an inexpensive or high-quality solution that may work well but does not meet business or user needs” (p. 155)*. Design Thinking is represented as the particular ability to be a “hub” (Brown, 2009, p. 5) in which different knowledge domains (technology,

business, human values) and different ways of knowing (logical and intuitive) can be integrated and mediated. As a hub, design is the centre of all parts.

Through this integration and mediation, design is said to not only produce solutions to problems but even to reframe problems for the production of answers to previously unknown problems. Dorst (2015) describes how problems can be framed in different ways through which designers can achieve new visibility on the desired outcomes. He describes how designers create frames between aspired

values and possible working principles. He uses as an example, the brewing of coffee in the morning (working principle) as delivering a rush of energy (value).

Figure 14: Framing problems, by Dorst, retraced

He redefines the “value” as “being able to concentrate,” in which case a possible working principle may not be “brewing coffee, but meditating to get a clear mind” (Dorst, 2015, p. 49). In contrast to the methods derived from the 1960s’ design methodology, design thinking does not restrict itself to a careful moving from problem-space to solution-space, but claims for itself a flexibility to jump flexibly between both, and to even be in both places at the same time.

In this strand of design, design is proposing itself as the centre and as the hub of innovative thinking and able to overcome individual and team interests, as well as subjective and objective ways of knowing. Design is here represented as able to integrate different types of knowing and different interests. The IDEO design innovation diagram shows this integration as an overlapping area where spheres of interests come together. This coming together, this integration, is what is promised to make the special capability of design, required in human-centred innovation.