Demystifying Design Thinking and rethinking the Design Process
Here in Brazil, nowadays, a lot is being talked about Design Thinking, more companies are looking more and more for professionals with job titles like innovation consultants or designer thinker consultants. But in my work routine, when people come to look for my opinion, the impression that I have is that right now, there is a lot of fuzz about the term, and sometimes it is all about just a buzzword.
What I have noticed from a few years ago to now, it is the fact that companies, managers, directors, people in high seniority levels are looking for design thinking services like it is the salvation of companies that are or were passing by digital transformation and have failed, or still have an old, long and failure development process of launch and manage products in the market.
They seems to think in Design Thinking like a way to achieve or discover a new brand product, something totally disruptive, something that will automatically change all the organization and clients vision of it, with no efforts at all, just by applying it, whatever that means.
Let´s be honest, we all want to be the next Steve Jobs, but is not the right way thing works out. Innovation can be achieved by several process, ways, methods, tools. In my opinion, when we talk about innovation, it can be something huge or something small, something adaptive or disruptive. Brazilian people are very popular in this context, but we don´t reflect about it. We create new stuff every day with the purpose to sell it as a way to deal with the problem of unemployment, as an informal way to get money, to get a month income.
If you walk in a typical day here in Sao Paulo, the greatest city and Brazil´s economic pole, you will see several individuals selling all sort of stuff, since a new flavor of typical candy or a new technological trend imported who knows how for a symbolic price.
When I start talking about Design Thinking, I always begin from the history of design, specially the core of it: project. Because in Portuguese we don´t have a word that translate the meaning of it, we use the “English term” for the act of designing. So, most part of designers,specially those who do not have a formal education, don´t really know what implies to design, that is a process that involves more than an aesthetic issue, it is to project, to became something viable.
Studying the boundaries of a project design involves to talk about three aspects: viability, desire and logic, or in other terms: how you will do that, for who and how much it will cost. To you, it may seem a little basic, but believe me, most people I have talked to in all this years of profession, including designers, don´t have a small notion of that.
Now, let´s go back to Design Thinking, another “common sense” that I have noticed: it´s that just User Experience Designer, or designer in the innovation field use Design thinking in their daily routine. This is also a notion that we need to demystify.
In the Brazilian design context, the figure of the UX Designer, over the years, in great part because of the fast growth of digital devices and technology, became more popular and more valued to the detriment of the other design titles or specializations. This fact can be related just to the professional who has a well structure process based on Design Thinking, the famous Double Diamond.
It is wrong to relate Design Thinking just with UX. Visual, graphic, web, interface, whatever designers are, they also have a design Thinking process, but they don´t realize it most of the time. And one of the factors, like I said, it is not knowing what really implies the act of designing.
To prove it to you, let´s pick a typical designer: a graphic designer. In their daily routine, this professional have to talk with clients, the stakeholders, sometimes the clients, the graphic bureau, and another designer. So, I ask to you, this is not talking about user centered design, co-creation, empathy, the core of Design Thinking?
But here, in Brazil, a graphic designer is payed sometimes 3 times less than a UX designer. Because there is no documentation process in this and other fields, there´s no discussions about that, and the UX professional, unfortunately sells their work as better and more valuable than the others in the design process.
I came to this conclusions based on the many years I had dealing with this problem of gap of salary and recognition in the area, also by observation of all my colleagues and team members, and the relationship dynamics in the companies that I worked.
So, I was reflecting about how to map the design thinking process in several ways, in different fields, not only design, studying tools and methods. But, first of all, in my vision, the Brazilian design area has the challenge of Demystifying the gap between specializations and titles and focus in work experience and qualification to equalize the salary gap and recognition in all expertise, no matter what it is.
We as designers, talk a lot about empathy, but let´s practice them with our colleges of another expertise, backgrounds, experience, instead of valuing a job title?
