Now Published

Happy Spring Humantific Readers: This is a short post just to let you know that last week we published a new Humantific book: ReThinking Design Thinking: Making Sense of the Future that has Already Arrived. Our long time Humantific and NextD Journal readers will know that it was a long journey since we began publishing on this subject and the various challenges that we saw and still see there around 2005. In this book we are sharing the high notes of what we found on that journey and what we made sense of.

As per the image above, the book is dedicated to all those who are open to, and engaged in, the possibility of reinventing design/design thinking methods beyond their current state. If you are one of those people this book would likely be of interest to you.

Our intended audience is anyone interested in the many challenges facing Design and Design Thinking, not from a philosophical perspective, but rather from a methods and skills one. The acknowledgement of rising challenge complexity - and the embrace of skill-to-scale first pointed out in 2005 remain central to this Rethinking Design and Design Thinking story. It took us 40+ iterations to get there but we made it! Hope others find this book useful.

The book is up on Amazon.

Book Glimpse Below:

Many thanks to those who have written to us expressing interest.

More Details Below:

I was recently asked on one of the Linkedin Design Thinking groups what conversations the book might stimulate. Sharing my reply below:

Hi Steven: Thanks for your interest. Lots of conversation possibilities. There are numerous interlocking themes in the book most related to method gaps, inadequacies and recommendations for repair. In this book we are bridging between theory and practice, philosophy and methodology. The central theme of the book is that rising complexity and shifting scale of challenges necessitates a serious reexamination of the various methods being sold by academic institutions and in the broader marketplace as design and or design thinking. The disconnect between those methods and the challenges now facing our organizations, communities and societies is unpacked and explained in considerable detail.

The book does not pull any punches in terms of articulating our practice-based perspective on how the community got here and what the current state of designerly methods actually is outside the widespread spin seen in the marketplace. In conclusion we suggest 25 ways to fix design thinking and suggest how future educational programs might be reconsidered / conceptualized if we are to equip a new generation of design leaders geared to complex contexts.

The current bumpy state of the emerging community is revealed in the last conversation in the book between Peter Jones and myself, entitled Methodology House on Fire, Urgency in Methods Redesign. Pointing out that philosophy is not methodology, ultimately the book represents as advocacy for a shift away from design as magic thinking (popular in academia for decades) and towards skill-to-scale.

Now that the book has been published we are looking forward to presenting this work at conferences, to interested organizations,etc. There will probably, hopefully be an Emerging Practice Community Conference focused on what has been coined as Design for Complexity. We also have in mind creating an emerging Design for Complexity Practice Community Network. Inside that community we know there to be not one but rather multiple approach renovations in progress beyond the fixation on the product, service and experience paradigm.

Interested in this subject? You can read more on the just launched book site.