Design Thinking. Who owns it?

I read a comment on another blog recently from an engineer who objected to designers wanting to “own” design thinking as if were a special skill only they (designers) posses.

I feel the commentator was justified in feeling that design thinking is being attempted to be owned, but from reading and participating in many debates on design thinking, I don’t think it is designers trying to hog the limelight.

True Many designers have commented that to be a true design thinker you need to be a designer, but I disagree. Even as children we design and everything we see, touch and experience has been designed. The question is, “is it good design?”

I am a mechanical engineer turned industrial designer. I don’t think designers are trying to own some esoteric process. In fact much has been debated that corporate, business and finance types are trying to own design and use it as the next breakthrough competitive edge.

The debate goes further into the differences between finance oriented thinking, where shareholder value is most important, and design oriented thinking is as the article suggests more people, solution, emotion oriented thinking.

Having the world witness the successes of design oriented companies (or design oriented at least at face value) seen a surge in profits in recent years, some are heralding design thinking as being the saviour of business.

Many designers protest that those would prostitute the art, dilute the very essence of design and devalue it.

It is however folly to think that design oriented thinking or finance oriented thinking alone can make any company successful. Any successful business is a combination of finely balanced and optimised parameters, (perhaps it’s the engineers thinking that will rule then?) working in harmony.

For some time the design industry has levied complaint at education saying that graduates have little or no commercial understanding. Now there is complaint that business doesn’t have enough design understanding.

In truth everything is designed and engineered and of course financed. Be that a business process, a service, a product of some advertising graphic. Where those designs embody the four behaviours of a designer

Inquisitive; where question after question is asked, (often very stupid ones but nonetheless effective by process of iteration and elimination).

Empathic; where designers go beyond simple user centred design study or focus groups and actually submerge themselves in the world of the consumer; much like a method actor would when preparing for a role in a play or film.

Lateral thinking; where designers often meld ideas not just from one sector but often make the most obscure connections between materials, mechanisms, functions and most importantly, people.

Passion; designers are sickeningly passionately to an idea and give up their whole sense of self to move an idea forward into realisation.

Merged with sound business reasoning (the fifth behavior of design thinking then) there will be success if that design is good. However we all know there are good design, good engineering, and good business and there is also the bad... sometime even the downright ugly.

***'Design orientation' and its derivitives is a phrase/s coined by Raymond Pirouz

What Women Want

Do you remember the 2000 box office hit film What Women Want ?


Mel Gibson play an Advertising Executive, who by freakish accident is able to hear the thoughts of women and uses his new found talent for unscrupulous means and to further his career in the advertising agency world.

Now you're probably thinking 'this supposed to be a blog about design? Not some sort of film review'


Well in the film Mel has to design an ad campaign for a shoe manufacture... see, it is about design, oh ye of little faith.


Mel's accident happens in the bathroom when he's electrocuted whilst holding a hair dryer and trying on some women's' products in order to help him understand his target market. The morning after he is able to hear what women are thinking.


Now over the years I have heard many a fellow complain 'what do women want?' Some claim that even women themselves don't know what they want. Now before rushing to comment that I'm some sort of neanderthal misogynist, please read on, because believe me or not, I'm going somewhere with this.


Empathy... said to be one of the key personality traits of a designer. If a man was truly empathic towards a woman's needs, wouldn't he know, What Women Want?


I've bee told that "sometimes" I'm in touch with my feminine side. Whether or not that is true, I do make an effort to try and 'walk a mile in someone else's shoes' be that a woman, a teenager a child , whoever.


The thing is with empathy you can't really be truly empathic until you are able to draw parallels with others feelings about a situation with your own feelings towards situations in which you have found yourself in the past that are at least similar enough for you to understand their emotional frame of mind.


My partner Anj and I met via the Internet. We got together because we have such deep empathy for each other. This is because whilst living more than 300 miles apart, we have led similar lives and have remarkably similar motivations and thinking. Sometimes its almost ethereal and scary how we just know what the other is thinking... we even think the same things at the same time... even when we are apart (which is rare). Once we even had the very same dream on the very same night... how cool is that?


Now, although I can be empathic, I must confess that I am not naturally an empathic person. I have to think about my feelings and those of other in an analytical way. I am after all of the INTJ Jung, Briggs, Myers personality type.


In 2005 I took part in a worldwide study (run by the BBC in the UK) to determine differences in the ways in which men an women think. This was shown on BBC1 in July 2005 and can be found on Youtube in 6 parts.


The study for me was an emotional journey of self discover. I learned that my awareness that I lack natural empathy does not prevent me form learning to emulate it, but for sure I learned many years earlier when I worked in marketing that you certainly can't fake it.


The BBC, concerned about my reaction to the 'nappy test' part of the study (2m 40s in on this video), they very kindly paid for some counseling with a psychologist, to help me better understand my reaction. I had held my father to blame for my feelings of underachievement but through the conversations with the psychologist I leaned a hidden truth about myself. My relentless push for Utopian perfection in all that I do, was producing some negative emotional reactions to any for of critique and in particular from my father whom I hold in high esteem for his own achievements.. I felt in fact somewhat in my fathers shadow. When I later discussed this with my father I learned from him that he made his critical observations as he felt I had more to give.. he even declared that he felt he was living in MY shadow. I was shocked I can tell you. Of course now when I see someone who is something of a perfectionist, I can empathise with their emotional turmoil of never being able to reach their goal. I can tell of my experiences and hopefully help such a person to come to terms wit the fact as a perfectionist, you will never be satisfied, but to take encouragement that everyday, you take a step further to the impossible dream.



The rising trend for 'Design Thinking' is an attempt mostly by the business community and by some design companies to cash in on the personality traits of designers, attempting to emulate such values as empathy. I do believe that these 'design thinkers' could emulate such a personality but I do have one or two reservations.

Some of those who are expressing interest in 'design thinking' seem to have missed the point somewhat and give the impression that they are not attempting to use 'design thinking' for the purpose of creatively solving problems that effect the quality of life for the users of product and service, but are trying to manipulate 'design thinking' to make more profit.

True 'design thinkers' are not so self serving in my opinion. Of course there are those who are designers and whose apparent primary aim is to make as much money as possible, using design as a means to an end, just as there are those who are not designers, whose primary course of action is to bring benefit to mankind, with profit as a by-product of their transactional processes.

Coming full circle, I wonder what an average 'design thinker' would make of some observations I've made about what women want. Could it be....

• Flowers?
• A pretty designer dress?
• Expensive perfume?
• Jimmy Choo shoes?

before considering those, ask yourself these questions: -

• When a woman is hassled for erm.... 'intimacy' with her partner, Why does she often dress dowdily and eat lots of chocolate and sulk rather a lot?
• Why does a woman, whose homestead is fraught with aggression, indifference, patronising speech etc. Why does she feel the need to dress up, buy flowers, wear perfume and jewelry when she is with her friends?

Conversely

• Why is it, when that same woman feels special because she is loved for whom she is. Is appreciated for the human being she wants to be. Is encouraged with affection to do the things she has her heart set upon. Why is it such a woman feels no need to prune and beautify herself to excess when with those very same friends?

What Do Woman want?

Perhaps if you need to ask the question, then it may already be too late

I would like to give special thanks to Becky Blackwell, Raymond Pirouz and an extra special thankyou to my Anj x for helping me put together my thoughts for this blog post