Final Reflection: Confessions of a Design Thinking Skeptic

I have a confession to make: this class wasn’t my first exposure to design thinking. In a prior role as a consultant at Accenture, I got a chance to work directly with Fjord, a competitor of IDEO and award-winning design consultancy in its own right. Unfortunately, it was not a good first experience. Although I came into the project with high hopes for the power of human-centered design to make a difference in the lives of workers displaced by automation and AI, the team I worked with seemed more focused on developing pretty (but ultimately useless) artifacts than on creating experiences that would reskill the workforce.

This experience taught me to be skeptical of design thinking as a panacea for business’s age-old inefficiencies and inequities. And it’s through this lens that I initially approached our classwork. Fortunately, I can report that my skepticism has softened somewhat. I’ve come to the conclusion (via readings and project work practice) that good design is quite difficult, and requires a balance of open-ended innovation and careful management of deadlines to make a meaningful impact on intractable problems.

Adam Grant’s Think Again provided a crucial framework, helping me to embrace the iterative nature of design thinking and remain open to revising my prefixed ideas about the discipline. The HBR article on Samsung’s design evolution also helped, in showing how incorporation of design culture into a business model could completely change the fortunes of a profit-motivated company. Learning more about various research methods with articles from Design Kit and podcasts from Design for America, also enriched my understanding of the various options for gathering information in service of building a service or experience that is truly useful.

However, it was putting the techniques and ideas into practice that really moved the needle for me. Prior reflections on Perfect Days (2024) and the Klimt exhibit at the Neue Galerie illuminated the importance of accessibility in design work to create something that’s not fussy or efete, but rather connects with the intended audience on an intuitive level. And our group project on designing a TikTok channel to mitigate culture shock among international students gave me an excuse to have deep conversations with people I normally never would’ve talked to. It challenged me to blend empathy with technology, understanding the nuanced needs of our group’s target audience while leveraging digital platforms for meaningful engagement.

In the end, while I still have a healthy skepticism of design thinking-inflected projects in the corporate world — simply because professionals over-market and under-execute on the method — this class has helped me to see how integral design is to modern life. And how important it is to have design as one lens (among others) to view problems in professional and personal life.