Design topics — 1x1 Design-modality: how to be not constrained by the current “design thinking” narrative

“I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks”

This is what Herman Melville’s lawyer repeated to himself, surprised by the behaviour of his new scrivener, Bartleby. And that same dismay actually resembles what individual experiences when approaching design modality. Indeed, the act of design often appears like a revolution, a direct attack on our language and minds.

Suppose you take into account the current design practice success. In that case, there is a curious asymmetry (in terms of information and knowledge) between the initial demands about the design disclosure itself, as a practice in several fields, and the current ones of those carrying them forward. Although at first, the study of design was even recognized as “design science” and thus did not fear the comparison with other disciplines, nowadays, that original enthusiastic impulse has become slightly crystallized in what is widely defined as “design thinking” (hereafter, DT). The contemporary debate is animated by insiders and practitioners, all providing a different interpretation of the issue. And their natural (and promising) necessities of cultural production, which permeate that divulgation, seem to have shaped the meaning and the fundamental concepts within it. However, the comparison with the wide range of application contexts should not undermine the years spent improving the knowledge of the subject and the achievements of research, ultimately turning the initial input into a kind of strive for approval or, even worst, in retreat or defeatism. Although experts conceive DT as a thorny issue involving a wide range of open questions, research and studies (so common sense would suggest handling DT with care), for those taking their first steps in the design world, the DT “looks & feels” like a mechanical process. A one to be reproduced for problem-solving. That is currently summarized by the motto: “discover-define-ideate-implement”. So is designing just a problem-solving method? Is it really possible to enclose it in discrete stages? The gap between the different interpretations is broad, and it may need to find a new balance. Otherwise, it undertakes the risk of consolidating misunderstandings about its core concepts and increasing polarisation in practising it — thus betraying design culture and its multifaceted research developments.

Thanks to scientific community studies, we may open our thinking and raise our sights to a more holistic and deep understanding of design modality. Kees Dorst summed up this issue clearly: “this potential success challenges the design research community to provide unambiguous answers to two key questions: What is the core of Design Thinking? And what could it bring to practitioners and organizations in other fields?” And it is precisely in the relationship between industry and academia (two planets moving with different speeds and directions) that the interpretation impasse comes out. From this inevitable intertwinement, the public attention is focused on the designers’ thinking translated into the stages-process but without encompassing the whole designing phenomenon. Birgir Sevaldson thoroughly underpinned how: “attempts to detach the strategic embodied thinking implicit in design and extend it in a simplified manner to strategic management in the form of design thinking have caused the degradation of design”. On the other hand, researcher Lucy Kimbell comprehensively pinpointed the core issues surrounding the current DT discourse. That is, the difficulty (for experts themselves) to find clear accounts of the “dualism that makes a distinction between thinking and doing”; still, the impossibility of making generalizations due to the “diversity of designers’ practices”, and above all, the “contradictory views about the nature of design”. The searching state of the art is inescapable: we cannot talk about DT in standard terms or tasks (such as the mechanical process fixed by stages) because contents still lack precise boundaries, which would advise the establishment of a clear territory in which to operate. In the wake of this heated debate, this piece aims to highlight the rich openness and fragmentation the design-modality enjoys and other vital elements of experiential learning which (arguably, owing to their supposed obviousness) are rarely cited in the now popular lists. Those features reform and expand at the same speed the design is applied. And this is the true and profound force of the so-called DT. From an almost political perspective, the only practicable in these quick reflections, “design-modality”, is the attempt to find the fitting words to describe and recount these central themes for anyone willing to apply and experiment with the mise en place or the attitude in undertaking it. Finally, given such a complex puzzle, you will likely remain disappointed if you expect to find precise answers and absolute stances (similar to the sceptic psychic attitude, often necessary for experiencing the design-modality nature).

Starting from the aforementioned “cultural production”, if we consider today’s tech explosion as an instrument for accessing knowledge, and given the large numbers of DT articles (such as this one), we will see the bonhomie with which its process is explained and translated. Or as a long list of innovator “behaviours” or the “5 designers’ habits” and again the “4 stages of design thinking”. Synthesis is gold, but it may not work for cultural exportation. Especially if the expectation is to expose the design-modality practice. Umberto Eco, one of the most prominent Italian scholars of our time (now sadly departed), explains in this way our human condition: “It is profoundly unfair to subsume on the human attitudes — in whole their variety, in whole their nuances”. This is a practical example of why we should not take the widespread argumentation on DT for granted (in terms of effectiveness). The list style has been transforming designing into a leitmotiv of the cultural industry, just like in the case of the well-known “Bartleby industry”. Hence taking the risk of becoming a commercial good, a simplistic concept, or, at worst, a resistant hegemony. Achieving an efficient and active design modality is not a rapid development. And we should not forget that the significant change within the relationship between mind and body is partially hidden. In this regard, in his piece The Information, James Gleick warned us about the inclination of human beings to make communication easier, faster, and more accessible. Gleick conceived the information age as the correlation between the information consumption approach and consciousness evolution. Looking at our debate, that correlation sheds light on the importance of divulging conduct and setting itself. The dialogue strategy may need to legitimize a new interpretative framework within this communicative context. So before any further consideration, we have to avoid any asymmetry or profound misunderstanding.

How to move within such a broad range of information and interpretations about DT? How can we recount the specificity of design-modality or that holistic human experience in which mind, body and environment intertwine in the DT dynamic exploration? Like all the representations (mother of any prototypes and proper duty of the intrinsic designing will), the complex and delicate depiction is vital and crucial. Ken Friedman recently emphasized (within the context of epistemic studies) the importance of explanation while researching a phenomenon: “It requires explanatory power and demands a narrative account if it is to produce knowledge for all members of a research field, a discipline, or a profession”. The history of DT can be compared to a rope stretched between those two worlds of industry and academia. It results from complex particularistic studies, extensive ecological research, and practical translations. Over the years, we have broadened the scope of our lens, from rigorous and rationalist approaches to the designer’s exploration as an individual owner of a particular cognitive style, until embracing anthropological, social and systemic theories to better explain designing as a whole. All these accountings continue to move and evolve in parallel. And all these disciplines have contributed to the explanation of what design modality constitutes. Thanks to them, we may expect a further and improved understanding of it. This is why we should not only fix (physically or mentally) the stages process but nurture a more open and doubtful attitude while practising design modality. This study’s amplitude returns a complexity of synthesis. Design modality seems to be (as I proposed in the intro) an “undisciplined intersection”. Which is made up of a mindset, tools and tasks; spaces and specific explorations, which, moreover, are combined into the explorer’s subjectivity. In short, we may say that design modality is a peculiar way or attitude (in cultural terms) to advance through the act of designing. Indeed, given all that potential mixture, it is tough to think about a single and definitive predictive characterization or process generalization.

The translation of the DT narrative as a stages-process is not mistaken tout court but somewhat incomplete. It can be seen as a step forward in its representation research, but the “stages” may still be inconclusive and constraining. According to that, it would be good to think of the stages not as the whole design modality but as just a first rung in application intensity. Design modality is a platform where people’s diverse thoughts and actions can meet to evolve and thus produce new content and individual investigation modalities. The integralist idea of the process only sublimates knowledge and skills without addressing the growth experience that refers to the personal capacity of exploration, or as remembered by Gloria Dall’alba, “what we are becoming” through the design-modality practice. Converging our fatigue on the task’s reproduction per each stage does not account for the complex generative and adaptive research at the core of design modality. Which is expansive and critical by nature and is not aligned with conventions. Where is the power of a reflective and cross-disciplinary practice gone? The lists do not give any meaning to design basics, such as the challenging balance between uncertainty and control, flexibility and rigour of tasks.

Finally, the closing on stages may increase the idea of design-modality as the home of the management’s specious and strategical interests that control innovation processes. Thus missing the opportunity of achieving deeper acculturation for design practitioners. This may lead to the formation of those ill-famed constraints (preventing any possible movement), which make us think and act in a unidirectional way. And it is well known that this does not benefit at all to design, especially when we talk about innovation. Do you remember Melville’s lawyer? Whenever we put into play our cognitive values and attributes, as well as our physical and relational ones, we launch a profound attack on our cultural background and habits. As we enter this system of knowledge, in addition to nitty-gritty codes, we should understand how not to avoid that “stretched rope” to enjoy the true spirit of designing and discover each one’s own nuance. To neglect it would be like looking at photography and catching only the objects that populate it without seeing the structures that connect and support them. Design modality is not something to rule dogmatically but rather an open and not-complete challenge in which there is the opportunity to raise and renew the ability to sense the world. It is so difficult to think that the current DT mechanical consumption, whatever its shape is (intellectual or practical), could help practitioners to nurture and integrate a thoughtful and systemic view of things. The choice to go against the current simplified cultural production, ready for immediate consumption, means looking at the design-modality genuineness and spontaneity. Within the DT field, we learned the importance of achieving a peculiar perception, which is not the only uniqueness, and -as they say- when we are in contact with something we do not know, “we must feel it” but also “make it ours”. Hence, we may make as democratic as possible participation to that resilience growth and formation, which nowadays are vital for any organization. Design modality (like other human activities) privileges thorough representations and frameworks rather than nesting definitions or dogma that do not belong to us (especially for dissemination and/or acculturation). There is no magic formula to increase such modality: it is a challenging experience compared to an extraneous body plunged into our certainties. And failure is just a natural part of it. Better is the best feedback we can have.