Design Thinking Is About Embracing Uncertainty in Favor of the Distant Goal
When companies want to improve existing products or services or develop new ones, and they make use of design thinking techniques, they often focus very much on the tools and templates they are going to use. Precisely that is what undermines the credibility of design thinking as an excellent approach to innovate and improve.
Design thinking is creative thinking
The more design thinking becomes mainstream, the more people are making use of the techniques; the more it is going to be used by people who are not grounded in the principles. Without wanting to blame and shame people that make use of these techniques, as it is the apparent result of something becoming mainstream.
Why we focus on tools and templates
There are two reasons why we focus too much on tools and templates:
- We can communicate crystal clear what we are going to do;
- We use tools and templates as guidance that give us a ‘false’ feeling of security.
Both reasons are legitimate; we need to communicate with everyone involved in what we are going to do or research, and we need guidance during that research to avoid missing steps and information.
