Architecture and Design Thinking

The trend these days is to write, post, and publish something (anything) with a provocative title that garners attention above the growing noise of sameness. Recent articles have proclaimed that “Design Thinking is Dead", “Architecture is a Dying Profession,” and “AI will replace Most Designers.”?These articles and many of posts focused on Design Thinking and its intersection with architecture seem to never really get to the point - at least the points I hold as important. Without being critical of the content, one prominent and recent example is here.

With a background and education in design, behavioral science, and with direct business experience in the application of design thinking with a wide range of global clients, I feel the need to weigh in on an important theme. And as a recovering architect, who deeply respects the profession, industry, and business of architecture, a number of close friends and advisors have encouraged me to offer my perspective on this popular and controversial topic.

Having worked for a number of leading architecture firms over my career and having had a leadership role in one of the world’s most respected innovation consultancies, none of this is intended to be critical or judgmental. It is meant to be helpful and it is my hope that the perspectives offered here might serve to help gain new insights and raise some important questions.

Above and beyond everything else that I may know, think, or believe, my overarching reaction to a trend that seems to increasingly position and promote architects as design thinkers, is that architects have a long way to go. And, that that journey is worth taking.

The Big Myths in Design Thinking

In a thoughtful article on Design Thinking written by Mehmet Baytas in “Design Disciplin” in 2021 (https://www.designdisciplin.com/the-story-of-design-thinking/) the author satirically presents Design Thinking as a “religion with two core beliefs.” He characterizes those two beliefs as #1 – “Design can solve all problems. It doesn't matter what your problem is – sales, education, science, global pandemic... Design will give you a solution.” And #2 – “Design can be done by all people. Skills, training, experience, talent –?none of it matters. You just have to believe in Design Thinking, and you can become a design thinker today.” The author immediately states that, “Of course, these are not true. But they are dangerously close to the truth of how Design Thinking is perceived.” I’d go one step beyond his mythical declarations and suggest that the greater harm is in their misappropriation and abuse.

Tragically, there is a wide range of misperceptions, misconceptions, and misunderstandings around “Design Thinking” that persist. I’d like to add to Mehmet Baytas’ sarcastic criticism of how Design Thinking gets misconstrued with two more of my own widely-held myths and false impressions of Design Thinking.

The Value of Opportunities Over Problems

#3 is the belief that Design Thinking is not merely the focus on problem solving but that somehow Design Thinking is solely about problem solving. While there are many problems that need solving and Design Thinking can certainly help approach problems in unique ways, the history of disruptive and transformative innovation seems to definitively prove that, while the “new-new-next-next” thing may, in fact, solve some known problems, these innovations almost always address an entirely new opportunity and almost always create an entirely new market. Yes, products like the iPod, iPad, and iPhone, services like Uber, and platforms like AirBnB solved some problems. But, more importantly they disrupted their respective industries by addressing the unmet needs of consumers and communities in new and radically advantageous ways. At the time, CD’s, flip phones, taxis, and a plethora of very nice hotels did not represent a problem to increasingly mobile consumers. And, Design Thinking was a critical component in their conception and in how they delivered novel user experiences in fundamentally compelling ways.

In the built environment, new forms of social interaction, new mechanisms of commerce, and behavioral changes amplified by a global pandemic, have redefined retail, challenged shopping malls, given rise to the phenomenon of “district architecture,” and fundamentally redefined work. This is a case in point in how a new understanding of consumer needs and the challenges that amplify them, can lead to compelling new forms of urban development, building design, interior design, and experiences that consumers crave. At a deeper level, it is a prime example of how understanding the deeply entrenched values and behaviors in human interaction and the importance of community can lead to entirely new design outcomes that allow consumers to thrive.

More Ideas Leads to Better Ideas

#4 of the fallacies around Design Thinking is the belief that great ideas start with a lot of ideas and all that’s required is some selection process to weed out the bad ideas and expose the best ones. While there’s no downside to an abundance of ideas, the very essence of Design Thinking and “Human-Centered Design” is that innovative ideas have their roots in a deep understanding of, and even the surprising exposure of, deeply rooted human behaviors. Yes, the iPod solved the “problem” of music density and the challenge of carrying around dozens of CD’s in a wide variety of wallets, carriers, and players. But, its true disruptive power was in allowing people to buy one song at a time, organize their music in a highly personalized way, and provide access through an elegant and intuitive interface.?

Understanding consumers’ needs can lead to compelling new forms of urban planning, new approaches to building design, new responses to workplaces, and the delivery of entirely new and sustainable experiences that consumers crave and could never express that they needed. At a deeper level, it is a prime example of how understanding the deeply entrenched values and behaviors around human interaction and community can lead to entirely new design outcomes.?

While technology can be an enabler, it is rarely a driver. As electric vehicles and transportation systems evolve, Design Thinking can be used to understand how the built environment adapts?to and transforms this new world. The true power of Design Thinking is in its ability to use a deeper understanding of human behavior(s) to inform and inspire products, services, experiences, and environments that empower behaviors, make them easier, more satisfying, and more efficient. The economic viabilities and efficiencies involved can be constraints AND enablers.

Designers often present a wide range of alternatives to clients hoping that one resonates over others, but this most often leads to only an incremental version of “better” and is rarely if ever a path to true innovation. Larry Keeley once stated that less than 10% of all innovation efforts are successful. He went on to suggest that the reason that over 90% of all entrepreneurial efforts fail has less to do with time, money, talent, market conditions, etc. and more to do with the fact that the idea was simply not a “good” one – they were disconnected from the human condition, human behavior, human need and experience. The world has produced lots of solutions looking for problems that don’t exist.

What Follows Why

Without question, one of the mainstream criticisms of architecture is the seemingly random and often trendy application of form and style to the built environment. Designers are often brilliant post-rationalizers who re-engineer and fabricate the reasoning, data, and insights behind their designs. Over a few decades, I’ve had the privilege to speak 1:1 with a number of generally considered famous architects. I’ve asked all them one simple question – when you saw the final building and experienced it from inside and out, did your experience match your intent? With only one exception, every architect reported that they were surprised (in some very fundamental ways) by the reality of the outcome vs what they expected and designed..

While clearly not always the case, in the absence of any deeper inspiration, designers of all kinds, often resort to familiar and likely comforting semiotic references to create significance and meaning. Arches, cantilevers, and the use of more historic materials have a predictable effect on people.

When seen through the lens of Design Thinking, the fabled design principle of “form follows function,”?takes on new meaning. Associated with late 19th and early 20th century?architecture, this design principle posited that the form of a building should be derived from and relate to its function. Interpreted through the lens of Design Thinking, this design meme could be recast as “form follows behavior.” Design Thinkers uniquely value the “why” over the “what.” While visual signs and symbols have their functions (stately columns may broadcast trust, arches may communicate confidence, overhangs may signify lightness, brick may proclaim stability. etc.) Design Thinking favors the satisfaction of human needs over the communication of values or the establishment of ideologies. But clearly the communication of values, principles, and ideologies has function.

Given the increasingly competitive, commoditized, and undifferentiated business that the challenging practice of architecture has become, firms of every type and scale, proudly assert to have the “best people,” the “most offices,” proprietary methodologies, and industry leading research. While these claims are rarely if ever quantifiable or provable, unassuming and inexperienced clients are often perplexed, with few real differentiators upon which to select a firm. And, as marketing research increasingly focuses on market trends and forecasting based on survey-based data quantifying user sentiment (expressed likes, dislikes, wants, etc.), the more challenging and existential questions about the future of any given subject area often go unasked. More importantly, end-users, consumers, and customers rarely know what they don’t know and rarely express what’s next. In an environment struggling to imagine what’s next, it is difficult to avoid referencing Henry Ford who once said, “if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse,” or Steve Jobs famously asking, “why would I ask consumers what they want?”

In the absence of new insights and inspiration gained through a more empathic approach to research, more easily identified constraints and problem solving often serve as the foundation or fodder for “design solutions.” Architects are somewhat famous for solving problems of their own creation and declaring their profound prowess in their “unique solutions.” A Design Thinker would grieve over not asking a better question or missing a bigger opportunity over celebrating the solution to a known problem.?Rather than ask “what is the future of workplace?” perhaps it would better to ask, “what is the future of work?” With the challenges of designing hospitals, life science labs, and other healthcare facilities, perhaps it might be helpful to ask, “what is the future of health?” Given the radical changes implied by electric and autonomous vehicles, perhaps designers should be exploring the “future of human mobility.” Now, considering the critical importance of environmental consequence, energy consumption, social relevance, community impact, and the future of humanity itself, perhaps Design Thinking is at its best when it can seize new opportunities, establish new synergies, and solve problems we may not really know we have.

Exemplars of Design Thinking

Purely to illustrate great examples of Design Thinking, I offer a few design manifestations that used Design Thinking to achieve remarkable outcomes and transformative experiences:

The sensitive and perceptive heating in Winter and cooling in Summer of the heavy bronze panels inscribed with the names of all who died in the World Trade Center 9/11 attack, means that no one touching that surface to ease their heartache will be shocked, hurt, or uncomfortable in their moment of grief.

An insightful and imaginative twist in the structural form of Shanghai Towers led to a significant increase in the building’s wind resistance and a corresponding reduction in the required steel.

While many thought it a profit-eating extravagance, significantly oversizing the basement storage lockers in a new assisted living facility, gave seniors the time and dignity to dispose of their life-long belongings.

Paving over the historic cow paths organically carved into the Boston Commons makes this public space far more human and accessible.

These “designs” are the outcome of designers thinking more deeply about the needs of users, the behaviors of humans, and the demands of the day. This is Design Thinking.

A colleague of mine once observed that, “architects think and architects design, so they all believe themselves to be design thinkers.” The truth is that some architects are Design Thinkers and some Design Thinkers are architects. But, given that the term Design Thinking and its related methodologies are now easily over 70 years old, the architecture profession and industry seems woefully behind in adopting and adapting its principles. John E. Arnold, a professor of engineering at MIT and later Stanford, wrote about ?"design thinking"?as he explored a science of creativity to advance engineering and business innovation. David Kelley, one of three founders of IDEO, one of the world’s most successful and well-known innovation consultancies, was one of the first graduates of Stanford's?Joint Program in Design which integrated curricula from the engineering and art schools – a program initiated by John E. Arnold. Cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate?Herbert A.?Simon?first mentioned “design as a way of thinking” in his book, “The Sciences of the Artificial”, published in 1969. Tim Brown, became the CEO of IDEO in 2000 and rightly earned a reputation as an evangelist, if not apostle, of Design Thinking.

Given their extremely open-source perspective on Design Thinking and willingness to openly share all of the associated methods and approaches, a number of IDEO leaders have published excellent books on the topic including, “The Art of Innovation,” “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” and “Creative Confidence.”

Peter Rowe, formerly the director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard, published “Design Thinking” in 1991. In this book he explores how architects approach their work. Rowe defines “design” as the fundamental method of inquiry by which designers shape the ideas of buildings and public spaces. The “Design Thinking” Rowe represents in this book, while well-intentioned, still feels a lot like an intellectualization of discovery. It still feels like an effort to focus exclusively a client’s expressed needs and more traditional problem solving. This all seems to reinforce an evaluative, answer-based, and validation-centered form of inquiry and not a generative and divergent approach which would place paramount importance on better questions rather than idealized answers.

In my work in a number of large and well-respected architectural firms, I’ve witnessed a range of approaches. Cleary there are enlightened, human-centered approaches to design. But the more traditional design methodologies tend to dominate as designers focus on satisfying a client’s expressed needs and often post-rationalizing and justifying the forms and styles they produce.

Based on my experiences inside and outside of the industry, I’ve developed a strong point of view in how architecture firms can and should embrace change and how they might define and assume a new leadership position as designers of the future. The following six things represent a somewhat over-simplified set of observations, realizations, and Design Thinking inspired recommendations:

How Might Architecture Evolve?

1/The business of architecture is hindered by organizational complexity, a bewildering range of job titles, low fees, low margins, and operational delivery challenges. I believe that there are alternative business models that could be adapted to address these challenges. Organizational complexity, largely proliferated as the currency of credentials and self-worth, should be simplified into clear, client and project-centered, operational roles, Radical collaboration models, performance and value-based fees, and adapting efficiencies through AI and other technologies, all seem promising roads to explore.

2/The architecture profession is highly competitive, labor intensive, commoditized, and increasingly disintermediated. This environment demands a more agile use of data, the client and project-centered application and ?integration of new technologies, the adoption of new resource, partnership and coordination models, and the recognition of new value propositions.

3/As clients increasingly demand design strategy and strategic design, architecture firms need to understand that strategy is not merely a matter of re-labeling conventional approaches, marketing proprietary methodologies, or merely thinking strategically. Alternative ways of surveying, assessing, and “programming” a client’s needs are not by themselves strategic and are not necessarily aligned with the principles of Design Thinking or human-centered design. More data is not always better data. More points of inquiry rarely validate new thinking, provide better answers, or raise better questions. Real strategic thinking requires new processes, new ways of thinking, new skills, and different aptitudes that are often resident in non-architects, non-designers, and contributors with backgrounds in behavioral science, anthropology, economics, change management, material science, writers, and a whole range of disciplines that are often foreign to the world of architectural education and peripheral to the hiring practices of most firms.

4/The ultimate goals of great design is to deliver compelling experiences that fulfill on largely unknown, latent, and unexpressed needs. Architects need to embrace the reality that experience design is not a hybrid form or simply an offshoot or evolution of building and space design, but a discipline unto itself. While physical space, virtual space, and digital space are the currencies of experience, UX/UI designers, interaction designers, and experience designers understand the interfaces, exchanges, and complex ecosystem of experiences that can and need to be designed.

5/Many industries are only now embracing the challenges of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their businesses and their work. It goes without saying that design of all forms requires a diversity of perspective and that we need to redefine fairness and equity in engaging the passions, talent, and commitments of everyone. But rather than diversity for diversity’s sake and leveling the playing field du jour, the true power of diversity is its ability to fuel a far broader range of insight, understanding, and interpretation and to leverage unique perspectives to inspire and inform new design. Architects would be well served to hire people exactly not like themselves, exactly not with the same education, and exactly not with the same traditional skills. Harnessing the powers of diverse thinking outside of any one immediate field of vision is at the core of Design Thinking.

6/At the very origin of Design Thinking is a very different mindset around curiosity and inquiry. More qualitative than quantitative, more inductive than deductive, more observational than assumptive, more ethnographic than demographic, and more behavioral than declarative, design research is a challenging but elemental part of Design Thinking. Research in the architectural profession is often an evaluative, deductive process focused on proving and validating a known hypothesis or known idea based on surveying enough people to determine the results to be statistically significant. But, in the world of Design Thinking, research is a deeply inductive and generative process meant to expose new questions, drive new understanding, and fuel new hypotheses. True to its fundamentals, Design Thinking favors an understanding of extreme users, gaining insights through analogous situations, and seeing the world through the lens of an anthropologist not always a designer.

In his book, “The Whole New Mind,” Daniel Pink defined and heralded in a new era he called “The Conceptual Age” an age of astounding design thinkers, compelling designers, and highly creative ideas and innovations derived from "unfamiliar areas or things" that inspire high engagement, high desire and high demand from prospective end-users, consumers and audiences. Architects can and should be leaders in this new “Conceptual Age.” And, as Bob Johansen so perfectly states in his book by the same name, “Leaders Make the Future.”

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