Design Thinking All The Way to 2020
Consulting and Technology companies have gobbled up design firms in the hope of adding design thinking to their offerings. But things have not been hunky dory.
Where Did the Promise Go?
Design thinking, owing to its human-centric orientation has structure and tools for turning businesses around, even in the most literal sense. It gives a framework for seeding and growing a new culture, a culture that fuels innovation across the organisation. However, most people — both providers and clients — haven’t really given a serious thought to ‘why’ they should use design thinking (sic.) or ‘how’ to measure the value of adopting this designerly culture.
My take on ‘WHY’ -
…unless businesses can stay *relevant* to the user in what they offer, when they offer and where they offer their product or service, they will soon cease to exist.
The operative word is relevant.
Relevance is not what we think it is, and it can’t be imposed.
Relevance is about the user in her context.
Relevance is the key driver of engagement.
And relevance doesn’t happen by creating a prettier User Interface.
“The need to innovate in relation to individual customer needs requires empathy,” explains John Maeda while highlighting the role of design thinking in business. This is where you start, but there’s more than empathy that goes into “designing” for individual customers. And that’s where the lines between design thinking and design start blurring.
Design thinking isn’t all that sexy any longer. Businesses have figured out that the “experts” haven’t figured it out! Customer-centricity alone isn’t going to cut it any more than innovation did just a few years ago. Emotion can’t be codified and also, according to John Maeda, “Scaling design at the speed of Moore’s Law is not possible.” (DesignInTech Report 2019)
Design Thinking is an Oxymoron
Eddie Obeng tells us, in his entertaining TED Talk, that the pace of change has long overtaken the pace of learning. He reminds us:
That said, old mindsets and habits anchor us to old ways, thereby keeping the best of us from exploiting design thinking—being visual, showing unfinished work, prototyping our ideas to test with real customers, and collaborating radically—to its fullest potential.
It’s less about risk appetite and more about trusting our past experience, euphemistically called the comfort zone.
Secondly, customers are now more informed and equipped to make choices. They are more sophisticated and expect faster and better solutions, especially from digital tech. With the level of technology and tools that exist today, you can create alternatives speedily at low cost. Design thinking is a great way to build and think.
My Slice of History
My 2016 series “Why Design Thinking Will Fail Again” (in 3 parts), highlights common pitfalls to watch out for.
The d.school at Stanford, which brought design thinking mainstream (thanks also to the Internet), somehow had people taking it as a templatized recipe (they’re only partly to blame for what has come to pass). Actually it might be more about business folks always being in a hurry and wanting formulae that guarantee success, than any confusion around the value of Design thinking.
I recall from back in the early 1980s, the entrance test we took had one question with a list of occupations — engineering, finance, commerce, milkman, cobbler, sportsman, etc. etc… maybe 30 such—and you had to tick off only those ones that were related to design. Only some lucky few who ticked all, yes ALL, passed the test. That should tell you something! More than anything else, it should tell us that the warm comfort that specialists enjoy, is missing from a designer’s life.
Design is chaotic.
Design is rigour.
Design is being able to thrive in unpredictability.
Which brings us to the key deliverable of Design Thinking, viz. value concepts.
What now matters is the design and delivery of value. That needs design thinking. That needs creative thinking. Judgment thinking alone is not going to be enough. Most people, in business and elsewhere, have done very well on judgment thinking. Such people are rarely aware of the need for ‘design thinking’. They find it difficult to conceive that there is a whole other aspect of thinking that is different from judgment thinking. It is not that such people are complacent. It is simply that they do not know that there is another aspect to thinking.
— Edward de Bono, Why So Stupid? How the Human Race has Never Really Learned to Think, 2003
…design is one of those elusive, multi-dimensional subjects that attracts only a few. And while it is a lot of fun, it is more pain than gain for most part.
When they start, designers have no answers. They only have questions.
They have this bad habit of seeing anything and immediately believing it can be improved. Products, monuments, roads, systems, communication, services, … whatever. And their minds start looking for solutions. Most believe they can change the world and they jump straight into doing so. Remember Apple’s iconic misfits video?
Besides the 3 Problems of Design Thinking viz. the way it is being pitched to businesses as a magic potion that their inmates can drink and become Asterix—leading to those high expectations that they finally have a way to get ahead of competition—the “designer” is becoming a fuzzy customer. Web designers, #UI folks, #UX designers are scurrying around masquerading as Design Thinking experts (experts? gimme a break!), and the client is none the wiser.
Demand is palpable to the extent that even businesses that have no business in the business of design are filling ‘sweat shops’ to create Design Thinking faculty. The formula is simple. Pick up the Stanford d.school curriculum (smart of them to have open-sourced the curriculum). Get a graphic designer to team up with a management consultant to rejig it a bit (customize is the word we use these days). Hire a bunch of smart communicators — helps if they have been doing graphics — give them a short personality makeover and you’re all set. All you have to talk about is customer-centric, empathy, prototyping and learn to look smug. There you have it. Design Thinking at speed!
Design thinking’s promise goes way beyond human-centricity and the comfort of a structured approach. It is about mindsets. A big mistake companies make in employing the methodology is expecting the tools to work automatically without people having to change the way they think.
Four avoidable mistakes
Digital Transformation is the flavour of the season. Little wonder then, that the call for design thinking has become loud enough to make itself heard above the din of all other business catcalls. What’s the connection between Digital Transformation (DT) and Design Thinking (DT)? For one, this is the digital economy. Meaning that digital touch-points are becoming more the default for interacting with the world. The irony is that even the businesses that are actually driving the digital revolution, are finding it difficult to transform internally. Second, customer expectations are growing faster than ever before. Third, brand communication has lost its sheen maybe because credibility is the new currency. Lastly, the only way for organisations to stay relevant to their stakeholders and the society is by continuous radical innovation.
And here are Olof Schybergson, CEO and Shelley Evenson, Head Of Organizational Evolution at Fjord
“The truth is, design thinking has become broken in today’s digital age. The current interpretation of design thinking is often shallow and, as widely understood, not the answer. Simply put, design thinking is not enough. True success comes from building a complete design system, and no organization can build such a system on design thinking alone.”
Yogi Berra famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That’s exactly where today’s business leaders are standing. And whichever way they go is a path of uncertainty. At the business end, everything of value is quantified. But things like #Empathy, #Creativity, #Aesthetics, #Experience…everything #Design, defy conventional metrics. For now, it’s anybody’s guess which fork to take.
