Design Thinking, moving from a ‘survival’ to ‘reflective’ approach

‘Design Thinking’ popularised by IDEO as a process and a methodology of design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing is finding its way into today’s Educational and Corporate institutions as a creative process/tool to solve a specific issues.

In Tim Brown's words, “In order to survive in today’s complex world, organizations need to generate, embrace, and execute on new ideas. That takes creativity and a creatively capable workforce. It’s the secret sauce, or in evolutionary terms, it’s what keeps you fit. Organizations without it can’t compete.”

By reducing Design Thinking to mere survival act, a weapon, a tool of survival, we may be reducing our ‘act of creation’ restricted to a framework of hunter’s model of Modern Business. In many occasions ‘Design Thinking’ incorporates “Empathy” as an underlying factor that binds all its key steps — Define, ideate, prototype, test. In spite of this, the linear view of Design thinking is restricting process for even “Non Designers” for idea generation for the following reasons.

1. Ideas for today are not silo “Definable” situations. Ideas today get inserted into complex “Ecosystems” causing its own ripple effects due to delicate interconnectivity
2. “Empathy” cannot be a taught or learnt in a couple of days of workshop engagement. It is a value that gets cultivated with long association of our creative involvement with a living community. Like say a Buddhist monastery system.
3. Design Thinking is a collaborative process, hence interpretations of definitions may result in overlapping of activity, ideation and interpretations of Problem statements leading to superficial solutions
4. Broad statements like “Designing the future of our urban communities” are grand hopes but we may miss on ‘realities of contexts’ as it is not made part of the creative process.
5. From our trials, it is not easy for “Non Designers” to learn the skills of “Re-defining, prototyping, testing” in a small timespan of a workshop. The outputs are interesting but insufficient to take actionable decisions.
6. You cannot sit inside a room(box) and think outside the box!

However Design Thinking is an engaging process in corporations to expose “Non Design” stakeholders to participate in a minor design process and get a buy in or gather requirements. ‘West’ believes in Leadership abilities to foster and drive creative culture. In Tim's words “Creative leadership isn’t about leaders simply becoming more creative. It’s about individuals leading for creativity. That means you, as a leader, must unlock the creative potential of your organization, no matter the industry. It’s your job to set the conditions for your organization to generate, embrace, and execute on new ideas. It’s a competitive imperative that will keep you ahead in the marketplace.” This reminds me of a popular story of Alexander the great crosses the Indus to meet a Yogi who sits quietly waiting for nothing. Alexander asks him “What is the point of sitting like this with no goal or aim in life?” and Yogi answers in return with the same question with a smile! Design thinking in ‘East’ ought to be different :-).

Eastern ideas of “Act of creation” largely revolve around the idea of “Self Realisation”, an approach towards ‘Self discovery’ and “Flowering of oneself” compared to the external Ideas of “Survival”, “Compete”, “Invent”, “Disrupt” etc.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” ~ Confucius

Design Thinking in East may sound something like this !

1. Slow not Fast
2. Internalizing process not an external process
3. Cyclic not Linear
4. Systemic thinking where all organisms are interconnected, not based on individual process
5. Integral affection with nature not elimination or a separation of nature in process
6. Defining with improvements over time as part of creating process, not adjusting to a defined idea with support systems to it
7. Reference to cultural symbols that are deeply integrated into local human capacities
8. Expression of multiple meanings simultaneously rather than single interpretation of symbols
9. Not to reside on the appearance but the value the act of creation contains while it gets manifested
10. Invest in sensorial, symbolics of a creation than looking for a single solution or experience to a problem

East vs West : Design Thinking Process