Design to the rescue

Part four of five in a series co-written with DiMitri Higginbotham.

When you find something that works well in one context, it’s natural to want to apply it elsewhere. A method, technique, tool, whatever it might be…if it delivered a positive outcome why wouldn’t you want to use it to solve another type of problem?

The scenario above presents challenges when it comes to Design Thinking. Frameworks (vs. processes) are meant to be flexibly applied, but they come with caveats and requirements. When, for example, clear goals haven’t been set, delivering a subjective definition of value is challenging, to say the least. In many cases, a skilled facilitator or team of facilitators can overcome most uneven or adverse initial conditions.

This article will address why Design Thinking shouldn’t be applied to all circumstances and business problems. As practitioners, we are typically the strongest proponents of the framework and its loudest cheerleaders. However, using Design Thinking in areas it is not well-suited for has become an issue. The ongoing collateral damage to the discipline of design needs to stop.

As Design Thinking has significantly increased in its application over the last decade, there have been a few missteps—well-intentioned trials. Many of these mismatches were pilots that involved measured risk, and with the right facilitators, the framework can be applied to all sorts of problems.

Don’t apply Design Thinking to all problems.

It's hard to say no when things are going great, and design thinking had a decade-long run. Empathy became an apex business buzzword. Design Thinking (incorrectly) became a competitor to Agile Methodology and was seen as an essential ingredient for Digital transformation. Today, not so much. What happened?
The Design Thinking methodology was applied too broadly by inexperienced practitioners and facilitators. Salespeople did what they do best and sold a bright, shiny new thing. Look no further than recent efforts involving Generative AI to see that applying a solution before understanding the nature of a problem doesn’t result in the desired outcomes.

Sometimes, design thinking was sold as a participatory approach to solving problems, a correct framing. It was also sold as a new (even though it was decades-old) approach to solving whatever ails you or your organization. Yet individual divergence, group convergence, prototyping, and testing can't solve some challenges. ‘Nothing is working; let’s try design thinking’ is challenging.

Applying the wrong approach to the wrong problem will create more problems.

To be fair, no ‘one tool’ or methodology can address all issues. Methods, tools, and processes are interesting because healthy organizations examine how they can change to embrace growth. Frameworks tend to be the intersection of Kaizen and Intellectual Curiosity, where the dogma of ‘one process’ hasn’t worked out. Addressing inefficiencies isn’t easy, but facing churn and regrettable losses is harder.

Better processes capture efficiency gains, and different methods are applicable. Plus, Design Thinking pairs well with other methods and shares effective principles such as the Voice Of The Customer, Continuous Improvement, and Continuous Delivery, etc.

Organizations and individuals can become blocked in myriad ways that prevent them from identifying the path forward. Change Management, for example, requires a different set of skills that consider culture, organizational design, and expertise. Procurement, supply chains, logistics, and all things legal require a deep domain to be effective. Trusting a new process to address the wrong problem….is a problem.

Stop asking people to trust the process.

A good facilitator must build trust with participants both in the classroom and in a workshop. As we all know, trust is earned, not freely given. Assuming students and clients trust facilitators because of title knowledge, power, or privilege is incorrect.

Building and maintaining trust is a healthy best practice for facilitators, especially when asking attendees to learn and commit to something unfamiliar. The need for trust is exacerbated when a facilitator isn’t an expert in the context and challenges attendees face. This is a humbling experience for facilitators who want to provide answers.

Trust is important in the classroom, as the power dynamic is drastic. Students learn best when they know their instructor cares about them and the content being taught. The ‘sage on the stage’ model, providing instructor knowledge while not encouraging critical thinking, is not universally effective, regardless of context.

In our experience, building trust requires listening. Hearing what participants say and treating people with respect and empathy will cultivate a learning environment that is inclusive, generative, and conducive to a true growth mindset.

No one wants to be told by an expert in a field they have no experience in, “Just trust the process.” There is often no scaffolding or framework to build that trust in the first place. Distrust of something new is multiplied by a hard-to-swallow fact: we cannot assume that everyone wants to be a designer.

Don’t assume that everyone wants to be a designer.

Asking people to do things they are uncomfortable with, embracing being wrong, and working together without ego, all at the same time, is requesting a lot from someone you don’t know. It’s a lot to ask out of someone you already know.Most people in a design thinking workshop aren’t designers, and asking participants to act and think like designers is challenging.

Whereas design thinking isn’t a workshop, shoving a post-it note and Sharpie into the hands of a non-designer and expecting parity of results with designers isn’t realistic.

We should acknowledge that practitioners asking people who didn’t pursue a career in design to do design work isn’t fair. We want people to participate in creative solutions, which comes naturally to designers because it's what we are trained to do in school and practice. But that isn’t how everyone works or what everyone else wants to do.

However, we want to crowd-source solutions and generate many ideas, reducing them to the best possible options. We want to generate ideas together and understand how others approach the same problem or challenge. Peer-to-Peer collaboration results in learning.

Sometimes we lack empathy.

Design thinking has a dark side. We see and hear design as a role/practice complain that we don’t have a seat at the table and are too often relegated to doing production work. Inexperienced practitioners have utilized design thinking as a moment to feel superior, a payback–which is wrong.

The goal of participatory problem-solving is to bring out the best in collaborators. But egos can be fragile on both sides of the equation, and expertise in other domains doesn’t easily translate to something as nuanced as design.

Saying that everyone is a designer is intended to level the playing field and encourage everyone involved to propose solutions. It also allows for performative creativity, and for designers to flex/strut/be a bit extra. Not everyone is a designer, not everyone wants to be a designer, but we are all capable of identifying creative solutions.

It's all semantics

The key might be in the noun ‘design’ versus the verb ‘designs.’ Everyone might be capable of design, but that does not mean everyone is a designer. Nor do they all want to be, and that’s ok. Everyone can sing, but there is only one Josh Groban or Mariah Carey. Design practitioners have to walk a fine line. Gatekeeping the design world would be a grave mistake, yet to call everyone a designer dilutes traditional designers' skills and expertise.

Not every problem can be solved by design, but problem-solving suddenly becomes much easier with a designer's mindset. We can cultivate the designer’s mindset by building trust between facilitators and participants.

We can build that trust by not overselling design thinking's capabilities. Design thinking is a practice, not a solution.

Facilitators should empathize while conducting workshops and classes because we ask a lot from participants when helping them approach, think, and make decisions like a designer. You can’t hold empathy when intent on proving to everyone that design is the answer to all of the problems.