Design Thinking is CRITICAL THINKING

I coach HR professionals in design thinking. I have learned that the most effective way to do so is for me to lead a project and insistently co-create with the project team while encouraging thoughtful discussion and reflection after each activity.

While much can be learned by observing and hands-on practice, it is not possible to “template” everything in the design thinking process. Design thinking is not just a toolkit of methods, but also a bouquet of mindsets.

A key design thinking competency is critical thinking. Some scholars have even called for design thinking to be re-framed into critical design thinking .

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What is critical thinking?

The University of Tennessee coalesces around this definition of critical thinking as offered by Beyer (1995): "Critical thinking... means making reasoned judgments" (p. 8).

They further outline that Wade (1995) identifies eight characteristics of critical thinking. Critical thinking involves asking questions, defining a problem, examining evidence, analyzing assumptions and biases, avoiding emotional reasoning, avoiding oversimplification, considering other interpretations, and tolerating ambiguity.

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Critical thinking along the design thinking process

It is hard to pinpoint specific instances where critical thinking comes into play at discrete stages of the design thinking process. Ideally it should be an integral part of everything you do. But there are a few examples how critical thinking manifests that I want to highlight because they are the ones I frequently get asked about:

Discovery:

• As part of critical thinking during discovery we want to practice what Dewey (1910) calls “protracted inquiry”. We want to take time to thoroughly understand the specific nature of a given problem by re-framing and constantly questioning “What is the real problem we are trying to solve?” and “Which contextual factors might have contributed to this problem?”
• One of the main qualitative research methods we use as HR Designers is the empathy interview. Impactful interview questions are a result of critical thinking. You first draft research questions (what you want to learn) and then “translate” them into interview questions that are non-leading and that elicit a specific story.
• To arrive at well-examined insights, I use critical thinking to integrate qualitative data points (e.g., from empathy interviews) with people analytics, scholarly research (e.g., on motivational science), and benchmark data.

Solutioning:

• Insights are essentially still raw data. We need to use critical thinking to turn them into opportunities (employee pain points, needs, and desires) that can serve as a starting point for ideation.
• I use critical thinking to jump start ideation and inform solution design, e.g., by integrating behavioral economics prompts when solutions might require behavior changes.
• I lead the project team through storyboarding of the new solution in action which requires critical thinking by being able to envision how a solution that might not exist today would work. We also identify assumptions and risks around desirability, inclusivity/equity, usability, feasibility, and viability.

Testing:

• During reflection after a recent project, one of my clients stated that the hardest for her was to design assumption tests. While I created a template that outlines the basic components of an assumption test, it still requires critical thinking to design a low fidelity test that is designed to provide insight into a high-risk assumption.
• Being able to recognize new information gained during assumption testing requires critical thinking.
• Critical thinking becomes front and center when (re)-integrating new solutions into existing ecosystems (e.g., rethinking of a calibration process in performance management might have implications on compensation decisions).

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Honing critical thinking skills

Author Aidan McCullen highlights that critical thinking uses considerably more cognitive energy than a “quick fix”. Many HR professionals are burned out so devoting mental energy to honing critical thinking skills might feel overwhelming, like a waste of time, or even as too risky when it means challenging others’ beliefs.

Start with self-reflection and assess your critical thinking skills and what might get in the way of honing them. You can use the eight critical thinking characteristics outlined at the beginning of this article as a starting point for self-assessment.

Next, build small, step by step habits that help you practice. Maybe you start by observing others who are good at this skill and then start to integrate it into your everyday life, work, and conversations. Just being curious and asking more questions helps to build critical thinking skills. Once you are more confident, you can start to integrate critical thinking more and more into your design thinking practice. And remember, we learn from failure, so extend yourself grace throughout the process.

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A success story

One of my design thinking coaching clients recently shared with me that since she learned alongside me on a project, she has started to ask more “why” questions. For example, she was in a meeting where a group of HR peers discussed how to address the fact that executives don’t cascade information down into the organization. Immediately, the group aligned around a familiar solution: Let’s create a weekly executive newsletter like the one that internal comms sends out to managers. My client chimed in and shared that while conducting research during our project we found that managers don’t read the weekly newsletter and that executives might be even less likely to read it. Her insight spurred a fruitful debate that resulted in the agreement that deeper inquiry might be needed instead of jumping to the most familiar solution.

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I am curious: What questions do you have about critical thinking? How have you applied critical thinking in the design process? What challenges have you faced when trying to hone your critical thinking skills?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Design Thinking for HR is a biweekly LinkedIn newsletter that aims to inspire HR professionals to experiment with the human-centered design framework. The newsletter is curated by?Nicole Dessain who is an employee experience consultant, design thinking workshop facilitator, and Northwestern University instructor. Nicole is currently writing her first book about Design Thinking for HR. Join the Early Readers’ Community here .