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Design Thinking doesn't "work" it works for those who sell it sure. But for everyone else its all based on whether the people who have the power in the organiza

Design Thinking doesn't "work" it works for those who sell it sure. But for everyone else its all based on whether the people who have the power in the organizations understands the value and is able to formulate that into useful tasks. One of the biggest differences between a person like Jack Dorsey who really do understand the value of design and is able to formulate at the C Level and then someone like McKinzey who might just claim they are (or parts of them are) design led but don't really mean it because they don't really understand it is the ability to use sesign as a strategic parameter. Design Thinking doesn't solve the fundamental issue which is transcendence between analysis and outcome. Someone have to be able to take the insights and turn them into something of value. The analysis is not the value in itself. Or put another way what Design Thinking doesn't solve is transcendence between idea and execution. So don't buy the BS and I say that as someone who consult companies on how to use design and design thinking strategically.

uxcolumbo 8y ago
Can you dive in a bit deeper... what do you mean with 'Don't buy the BS?' Design Thinking to me essentially is user centered design, I don't think you're saying UCD is BS. What I'm reading is that without getting buy-in from execs, engineering etc - 'design thinking' is useless. What did you do, so the 'design thinking' piece transcended into execution / desired outcome. Or did you only work on projects where the value of 'design thinking' was already understood, i.e. design was seen as an executive priority. EDIT: typos
- ThomPete 8y ago
  User Centered Design doesn't have to be BS but mostly is because it's used mostly as a get out of jail card more than as an actual tool. Here is a critique I made of UCD back in 2010, https://medium.com/@hello_world/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything-you-think-about-user-centred-design-is-wrong-1c3845092575 https://medium.com/@hello_world/getting-to-the-customer-why-... UCD still have the same issue which is that it requires transcendence between insights and solution which is much less solid than what people suggest. So what I mean with don't buy the BS is don't think that design thinking as a process is going to improve anything for you if you don't have the right people at the right places implementing it and even then it's not actually clear how much value it provides.

uxcolumbo 8y ago

Can you dive in a bit deeper... what do you mean with 'Don't buy the BS?' Design Thinking to me essentially is user centered design, I don't think you're saying UCD is BS. What I'm reading is that without getting buy-in from execs, engineering etc - 'design thinking' is useless. What did you do, so the 'design thinking' piece transcended into execution / desired outcome. Or did you only work on projects where the value of 'design thinking' was already understood, i.e. design was seen as an executive priority. EDIT: typos

ThomPete 8y ago
User Centered Design doesn't have to be BS but mostly is because it's used mostly as a get out of jail card more than as an actual tool. Here is a critique I made of UCD back in 2010, https://medium.com/@hello_world/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything-you-think-about-user-centred-design-is-wrong-1c3845092575 https://medium.com/@hello_world/getting-to-the-customer-why-... UCD still have the same issue which is that it requires transcendence between insights and solution which is much less solid than what people suggest. So what I mean with don't buy the BS is don't think that design thinking as a process is going to improve anything for you if you don't have the right people at the right places implementing it and even then it's not actually clear how much value it provides.