Why Design Thinking will Fail Again (Part 3)
Design Thinking is deceptively simple. Which is why it can be dangerous and expensive.
(Concluding a 3-part post that looks at the current state of Design Thinking, its promises and pitfalls, and the road ahead.)
<<<All the way back to Part 1 | <<Back Part 2
Isn’t it absolutely amazing how people go through a Design Thinking workshop and— after just two days — think they can start using it right away without any supervision? It never ceases to amaze me how these smart and experienced people keep trivialising the value of mindsets in favour of tools.
In his brilliant post, Design Thinking Is Not a Silver Bullet. Sorry, Gustavo Razzetti lays it all out for those who really want to go through the arduous task of understanding how to use the power of Design Thinking in their own work and lives.
And what to expect.
He urges us to “learn a new mindset, not just a process”. That, I think, is the single most valuable lesson to learn in the Design Thinking journey.
Four avoidable mistakes
Digital Transformation is the flavour of the season. Little wonder then, that the call for Design Thinking has become loud enough to make itself heard above the din of all other business catcalls. What’s the connection between Digital Transformation (DT) and Design Thinking (DT)? For one, this is the digital economy. Meaning that digital touch-points are becoming more the default for interacting with the world. The irony is that even the businesses that are actually driving the digital revolution, are finding it difficult to transform internally. Second, customer expectations are growing faster than ever before. Third, brand communication has lost its sheen maybe because credibility is the new currency. Lastly, the only way for organisations to stay relevant to their stakeholders and the society is by continuous radical innovation.
Design Thinking, owing to its human centric orientation has structure and tools for turning businesses around, even in the most literal sense. It gives a framework for seeding and growing a new culture, a culture that fuels innovation across the organisation. However, most people — both providers and clients — haven’t really given a serious thought to ‘why’ they should use Design Thinking (sic.) or ‘how’ to measure the value of adopting this designerly culture.
My take on ‘why’ -
…unless businesses can be *relevant* to the user in what they offer, when they offer and where they offer their product or service, they will soon cease to exist.
The operative word is relevant.
Relevance is not what we think it is, and it can’t be imposed.
Relevance is what the human being at the receiving end perceives.
Relevance is the key driver of engagement.
And relevance doesn’t happen by creating a prettier User Interface.
Design Thinking’s promise goes way beyond human-centricity and the comfort of a structured approach. It is about mindsets. A big mistake companies make in employing the methodology is expecting the tools to work automatically without people having to change the way they think.
Mistake #1: Empathy means thinking FOR the user, not AS the user.
This is perhaps the most important and most difficult mistake to avoid. Bad enough that users’ shoes are all of different sizes, sometimes you can even get into them because you belong to the opposite gender. Just kidding! But then, that’s just one way to understand how many dimensions there are to “walking in someone else’s shoes”. One size doesn’t fit all.
Matter of fact, One Size Fits None!
The customer has never been in as much control as she is today. Good for her that she’s in a strong position and is finally calling the shots. For the first time in history, the power to shape the market lies in the hands of individuals, not businesses, not governments. Accelerating technologies are democratizing the creation of new kinds of markets which in turn put tremendous survival pressure on existing businesses.
Customers got empowered while businesses were making other plans.
Design Thinking, especially the mindset part, gives businesses the wherewithal to align their value propositions to customer expectations through empathy. Despite being the hardest part of the Design Thinking journey, empathy is clearly the best way to gain customer insights that can lead to reframing the problem.
Without getting into a treatise on what to do or not to do, I’ll leave you with a test: If your team comes to a consensus on what customers really need, watch out for the Expertise trap, that can keep you in your old-thinking mode.
“an interesting paradox: expertise, considered by many companies to be the most valuable innovation asset they have, is also the biggest obstacle to sustained innovation over time in any organization.”
As experience gathers momentum, we collect assumptions which slowly harden into ‘facts’. And then these assumptions take the shape of stereotypes that delude you — I-know-best-because-I’ve-done-this-a-million-times-before. Expertise coming from this space is anathema to empathy because it leads to reinforcing your own idea instead of seeing things from the position of a user.
Experts are afflicted by “Believing is seeing!”
Mistake #2: Using the methods and tools of Design Thinking without learning to think like a Designer.
It is not only unwise but also fairly dangerous to start applying the methods you learn in a Design Thinking workshop, without allowing for a change in mindset.
Unlike business thinkers and technologists, designers are never in a hurry to commit to the first solution that comes to their minds.
Since Design Thinking is about non-designers learning the designerly way of exploring alternatives, you must make the time to find alternatives and create prototypes. And that means a lot of time and (as you’ll see in the next section), a ton of practice. Design Thinking is the gym where you train your mind in divergence.
From Toby Bottorf — How to think like a Designer …
There is no converging on strong conclusions without first starting broadly. This is not only non-linear, it is often divergent. To think like a designer is to be broadly curious about the potential for insight and connection. We speculate and explore because it builds stronger critical thinking. All great ideas start out as impossible ideas. But so do all terrible ideas. It takes practice to tell them apart.
Mistake #3: Implementing Design Thinking in the organisation without drawing a baseline
Ken Gordon highlights this aspect beautifully in My Daughter and Design Thinking and goes on to suggest a 4-point to-do list that can help Design Thinking slide down the maturity curve.
- We can encourage those firms that have expressed an interest in design thinking to explore the concept more deeply.
- We [can] teach the notion that design thinking requires sincere cultural commitment to work. It isn’t just that one’s CEO cares about design: the entire org must do so. Design-centricity isn’t just about hiring designers or attending workshops: it’s about adopting a certain mindset and approach for all business issues.
- We must demonstrate that design thinking takes time and patience.
Design thinking is a long-term process that involves much prototyping, testing, refining, tinkering to a serious degree.
This takes time (it can’t be rushed) and won’t necessarily provide instant returns. Your org has to understand that design thinking unfolds in time, and might have to learn to develop a strong will to wait.
- We [should] insist that design thinking must drive business results, which means an emphasis on implementation.
The point being that it’s a serious business strategy tool that can prop up the culture of an organisation in a world that’s gotten weary of business-speak.
Design Thinking is that lens which lets you focus on the user and helps you work backwards to technology.
“Unfortunately, organizations still struggle with getting the internal support from both employees and management. Design Thinking focuses too much on finding the solution but provides limited tools to dealing with the internal culture or scaling an idea”, emphasises Gustavo Razzetti.
Design Thinking mantra:
Never use a power hammer without checking if the wall is strong enough.
Mistake #4: Implementing Design Thinking in the organisation eliminates the need to hire designers.
This is by far the most dangerous road to tread on. Remember the sharp line between right and left brain thinking. Artists think with the right brain — no puns intended — while astrologers use the left. One dreams, the other does. One diverges, the other converges. And the list goes on. In an ideal world, designers are supposed to be the folks on the fence — people who go back and forth from Business to Technology to Environment to whatnot, keeping the human being in the centre — who have the thinking and skills required to create solutions for the world.
Here’s what Carl Bass, formerly CEO of Autodesk, has to say —
“…a basketball player without talent will never be a Michael Jordan, “you can’t train everybody to be good at everything. Sometimes we make the mistake of trying to take people who don’t have the necessary talent. They can improve marginally, but our ability to change people’s potential is relatively small.”
And here are Olof Schybergson, CEO and Shelley Evenson, Head Of Organizational Evolution At Fjord —
“The truth is, design thinking has become broken in today’s digital age. The current interpretation of design thinking is often shallow and, as widely understood, not the answer. Simply put, design thinking is not enough. True success comes from building a complete design system, and no organization can build such a system on design thinking alone.”
It goes without saying that design is serious business and takes serious practice. And Design Thinking at its best potential can help reorient non-designers to become human centric — instead of going the conventional business case route to fund technology initiatives, get into understanding deeply the real needs of real people.
Conclusion —
A successful Design Thinking program starts like this –
You’ve get the kit — swimsuit, goggles, floats, … and you enter the pool. You paddle along the sides in the safety of the shallow end. Splash all you want, have fun. But remember, you’re still a long, long way from being able to swim on your own. By all means get practice, build stamina, learn new tricks … but don’t be stupid and jump off the deep end just because you learnt a new bag of tricks. At least, not out of reach of a lifeguard.
You’re all set. Stay safe.
(This concludes this 3-part series on Why Design Thinking will fail again)
I’m @sunilmalhotra on Twitter.
