The strongest opinion I came away with (having never heard of design thinking previously) is that this author is sunk so far in his own soup of smugness that he

The strongest opinion I came away with (having never heard of design thinking previously) is that this author is sunk so far in his own soup of smugness that he is largely unqualified to judge whether or not Design Thinking is a worthwhile idea/technique/movement. Examples of points the author makes: * Popularity is bad, because Jim Jones was popular and poisoned a bunch of people with Koolaid. * d.school is a dumb name because it's not capitalized or punctuated the way the author would prefer * Design Thinking is dumb because it uses terms like "empathy" when we already know we should be listening to our clients, so it's dumb to use words like "empathy" * Design Thinking is dumb because there are some designers who don't like it * Design Thinking is dumb because the author of the blog post found a cheesey image of post-it notes on Google Image search when he googled "Design Thinking" * Design Thinking is dumb because when the author asked his friends if they use the term "Design Thinking" - most of them don't. * Design Thinking is dumb because it's too aspirational. * Design Thinking is dumb because someone used the technique to design an impractical water pump. * Design Thinking is dumb because sometimes things that are designed well sell well, and that's marketing, not design. After very confidently condemning Design Thinking for pages and pages worth of text on the above grounds, the author admits that he has no standing to do so, because: > "Here’s my one caveat: it could be true that the DTs are a good way to teach design or business. I wouldn’t know. I am not a designer (or business school professor)." Oh you don't say. The author then goes on for another (approximately) 400 paragraphs to continue to criticize Design Thinking and its use in education. The odd bit is that I actually broadly agree with the author. There's plenty of bullshit in design and architecture and business education, and silly nebulous concepts that get treated like world-changing ideas. There are plenty of people making money selling overpriced classes based on this bullshit. There are too many buzzwords. People heavily invested in them lose sight of the bigger picture, and think that if we only followed their creative framework, we'd solve world hunger, end poverty and usher in a brave new utopia. I recently watched an effusive hour-long documentary on Bauhaus, and couldn't confidently at the end of it define: "what is Bauahus," and it was full of people making similar claims about a the world changing power of an architectural movement that originated in early 20th century Germany. To some degree, all creative frameworks are bullshit. And to some degree, they can all be useful. The author seems to have spent a lot of time and effort ranting against one particular framework. I hope they're OK.