What Design Thinking is Not

Often as you move around in the product design circles, you get to hear this expression a lot - Design Thinking. I think the forefathers of this design methodology - for some unknown reason - chose a very confusing name for it. It is probably one of the main reasons it is so widely misunderstood. I have been one of the victims of this confusion for a long time. It is a matter of concern that so many people misunderstand Design Thinking - just like I did. And I do not blame them entirely. Because, to be very honest, the way Design Thinking is described by the people who invented it is somewhat confusing. Initially, I wanted to write this article as an attempt to describe what Design Thinking IS. But I realized that the problem of people not knowing Design Thinking is probably less concerning than the problem of people knowing it incorrectly. If this methodology is not understood in its true sense, it can be pretty counter-productive when name-dropped casually. I have experienced that people in design review meetings are increasingly using this term out of context - as a tactic to sound superior in a confronted point.??

Given this situation where not knowing something is less of a problem than knowing it incorrectly, in this article, I decided to focus on what, according to my analysis, Design Thinking is NOT. This article, of course, is only my individual point of view. Hopefully, this will usher in a discussion that may bring further clarity on this otherwise very esoteric topic. There are so many interpretations of Design Thinking out there that I feel that some of the most inaccurate ones need to be debunked urgently.?

As a design leader who is in charge of improving the quality of Design within the organization, I often get concerns raised by people in management that the designers do not possess Design Thinking. As if Design Thinking is something that is supposed to happen in the head of an individual designer, working in isolation in a POD. The expectation is that this individual designer should be able to make pathbreaking designs at lightning speed through Design Thinking all on their own. It is often a challenge for me to explain that this approach is actually quite the opposite of how Design Thinking as a methodology works. A designer may facilitate Design Thinking, but a designer cannot DO Design Thinking. Design Thinking is NOT thinking about Design at the individual level.??

Interestingly, the same people who are very keen to have designers work with Design Thinking methodology push back when it comes to taking the steps required to follow Design Thinking as a methodology in its true sense.?

Once again, I do not blame anyone for such a misunderstanding. Because, to be honest, the whole topic is a little obscure. And there are many reasons why it is so.?

One big reason is that Design Thinking on the surface does not look very different from a standard design process - a process that has been around for probably the same time as Design itself. If one studies the?IDEO?website - who happen to be the inventors and the biggest proponents of Design Thinking methodology - it starts the discourse with two things.?

First, the website talks about a doctrine that Design Thinking lives at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability. Simply put, what this means is that any design needs to be a balance of what the users would want (Desirability), what will be technically possible in a reasonable manner (Feasibility) and what would make business sense (Viability). If you think about it, there is nothing special about this. This approach of finding a balance between desirability, feasibility, and viability has always been the case for any design that has ever been done - all the good designs anyways. People have always designed with this thought in mind. They want their products to be desired by the users, they want to make them feasibly within their resources, and they want to make money by selling those products to the users - therefore viable.?

Therefore, I do not see how Design Thinking, as described on the IDEO website as something living at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability, is any different from how Design has always been. Without this design process, no product in history would have been a success. And there are plenty of examples of products that have been highly successful and were not necessarily created with Design Thinking methodology as-is. So this doctrine of a good design being at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability is not exclusive to Design Thinking and therefore cannot be attributed as its exclusive quality. Making products with this intention in mind is NOT Design Thinking (although it may be a significant sub-set of it).?

The second thing that the website talks about is that Design is a five-step process. Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Iterate. Again, I can not distinguish between a standard design process and Design Thinking in this regard. Since the very beginning, designers have always worked with these five steps (although in various forms). I remember that even in my Architecture course, back in 1997, we followed broadly the same process. And we had no clue about Design Thinking methodology at that time. But we followed the same steps. For every project in my Architecture course, one is supposed to start with research (Empathize) and present their findings in the form of a case study.?

If I may take the liberty of digressing a little bit with an anecdote, I remember that for my thesis project in Architecture, I did pretty long research myself. My thesis topic was about probing the scientific principles behind the practice of the ancient Indian doctrine of Vastushastra. I traveled to multiple states in India. I attended a conference in Madhya Pradesh, where I lived among Sadhus for a few days. Then, I traveled to Pune to meet one of the best-selling authors of Vastushastra - N.H.Sahasrabudhe. I had read his book as part of my research and had many questions. So I went to his place and spent time with him for an in-depth understanding of the topic. Since we were poor students at that time, he graciously offered me to sleep in his office on a sofa, and that's what I did. By the way, this was also the trip where I tasted the best Maharashtrian thali of my life. Anyways, that should be the extent of my digression, and I should return to the point.?

The case study we prepared after the research also had a problem statement at the end of it (Define). Then, we created many explorations based on multiple hypotheses (Ideate). Next, we made rough models of our designs for various rounds of reviews (Prototype). And finally, we repeated this cycle many times over to develop the final form of our design proposal (Iterate).?

Therefore, I do not see how Design Thinking as described on the IDEO site is different from how Design has always been. Just this process of Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Iterate is NOT what makes Design Thinking unique by itself. Although, again, this process could be a very significant subset of it.?

This lack of distinction between Design Thinking as a methodology and how the design process has always been, in my analysis, could be the leading cause of many of us getting confused about it. Because of this confusion, it isn't easy to appreciate what is unique about Design Thinking and its most valuable quality. Frankly, the description about design thinking on IDEO's own site, as described above, does not help in this regard either. It does not clearly talk about the critical differentiator of Design Thinking from a standard design process. Even if it does, since the discourse starts from the definition(re-definition) of a standard design process, the focus is naturally shifted away from this crucial differentiator. Yet, this somewhat "hidden" quality of Design Thinking methodology is, in fact, the most powerful aspect of it. It is this significant differentiation that makes design thinking - Design Thinking.?

If I was to speculate as to why the creators of Design Thinking kept its description in that manner, then maybe it is because one of the chief goals of formalizing this methodology was to sell it to the people and organizations that are not necessarily belonging to the world of product design and development. Because, as it is claimed - and I agree with it - this methodology can be used to solve any problem and not just design problems. There are examples where this methodology was used to solve seemingly non-design issues like the ones listed under the?New Applications?section of the IDEO website. That could be one reason they had to explain the whole thing as a package. However, for the people who already are into Design and have been familiar with the standard design process, this could be confusing as it is hard to tell what exactly is different in Design Thinking from the process they are so used to.?

And this differentiator is not so much about HOW you design. Like I have described above, the HOW of Design (Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Iterate), more or less, has always been the same. Therefore, under Design Thinking, the WHO of the design process is the key differentiator. Under the design thinking methodology, the WHO of design process shifts from individuals and subject-matter experts to a wider audience, and the design process is democratized. For me, Design Thinking is about managing the how of this shift in WHO. THAT is what makes Design thinking - Design Thinking. Design thinking gives designers a set of tools that help them run this process of research > Define problem > Ideate > Prototype > Iterate with multiple stakeholders - especially the users. Instead of the individual designers and subject matter experts taking design decisions in isolation, based on their personal best judgment (and good intentions), under the Design Thinking methodology, all key decisions are made by a group of people, including the users. Using methods and tools that help designers facilitate the design process through wider participation (especially that of the users themselves) is the main differentiator of the Design Thinking methodology.

If you are interested in knowing more about the historical evolution of this shift from an individuals-driven design process to a more people-driven approach, you may be interested in reading another article I wrote about my own journey of once being a hero designer and striving to become a more people-oriented facilitator -?As a Design Ninja Steps Out of The Shadow.?I would not elaborate on this significant shift in the approach towards Design in the history of product design methodology because the said article has covered this aspect in detail. In any case, without this core aspect of Design Thinking being a very people-driven design process, I feel design thinking is just another buzzword to re-package the process of Design that has not changed for very long and how it intrinsically works. If the organizations do not leverage this unique people-driven aspect of the Design Thinking methodology, they are really not applying Design Thinking. Unfortunately, this aspect of Design Thinking as a methodology, which actually makes it Design Thinking, is mostly ignored by people who desire it to be part of their organization.?

Design Thinking works because it enables a rapid generation of multiple diversified ideas for the problems one might be trying to solve. The Design Thinking approach short-circuits the otherwise very sequential stakeholder alignment process and integrates the user's voice into your product design process. I am sure we all have heard of the tech team raising hell in a design Handover Meeting. Or some senior manager going berserk in a Demo Meeting may give some hot-headed scathing comments on what the team has built. I have been part of so many Handover and Demo meetings where the shit hits the fan on a very regular basis. Under Design Thinking, this alignment with Tech, Product, Design, Users, and the Management can be done in a much pro-active manner right at the time of ideation. So when the designs are detailed, and the solution is finalized, most stakeholders are already aligned. As a result, the Handover and Demo Meetings become way more peaceful and productive, and the solutions so produced are automatically at the intersection of Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability. Since all stakeholders are not just aligned but are part of solution building, it is the most efficient way of working together as a team.??

So, this effort of involving users at every step of the design process and taking the ideas and opinions of a larger group within the organization to form a solution is what Design Thinking is. To generate broad, diversified ideas and then converge those ideas of the group into a solution is the key skill that a Design Thinking practitioner has to have.?

So any methodology that proceeds to make solutions without this aspect of the involvement of the key stakeholders and the users in the ideation process is NOT Design Thinking - not in its unique sense anyways.??

I am on a mission to change this perception at Airtel. It is not easy to do so because of this confusion about what Design Thinking means. This shift from an individual-driven design process to a group-driven one demands things to be done differently. And as it goes, change is never easy. Working independently and making designs on our convictions appears to be an easier and less demanding way of working. One does not need to get people together; Design Thinking workshops are not required, an effort for the divergence and convergence of ideas is circumvented. However, if an organization truly wants to leverage the value of Design Thinking, all of these things are indispensable. So, it is perceptively more effort, but the benefits far exceed the inconvenience of going through a shift in the way of working. I say "perceptively" more effort because if you sum up the overall effort that would go in a project without this participatory method, the effort is actually much more. It is just that the team needs to change their perspective as to where and how they want to invest their efforts.

One of the biggest challenges that I face in the advocacy of Design Thinking methodology is to transform people's perception that going by the steps and tools involved in making Design Thinking happen will slow the deliverables down. They are so used to the system of individual designers and PMs working in a POD doing Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Iterate by themselves that changing that paradigm appears to be intimidating. They are used to working in their comfort zone, pretty much cut-off from the rest of the organization and users when it comes to building solutions. And the result is Handover and Demo Meetings that stop just short of punches being thrown around and solutions that hardly ever solve anything for the users. Making a group-level solutions effort appears quite intimidating to people who are too engrossed in the POD (popularly known as Squads) culture. As much as I love agile, this culture of a PM, and a Designer working among themselves to create solutions within a POD, is probably a significant deterrent towards making a group-level effort and adopting the Design Thinking methodology.??

Therefore, I always tell my fellow leaders and peers that if we genuinely want to improve the quality of Design in our organization through the adoption of Design Thinking methodology, we must make an effort to work as a group to ideate on the most critical problems that we want to solve for our customers and users. Without this, we can only talk about Design Thinking but will never leverage the most beneficial and the most potent quality of it.?