On Dogma and Dogfood
One of five in a series co-written with DiMitri Higginbotham, aka the introduction.
For the last decade, as its utilization has grown at a high velocity, the practice itself hasn’t meaningfully changed. DT has been applied to business problems and branched into Service Design and Customer Experience Design with practitioners using DT to solve “wicked problems” in nonprofits, governments, and NGOs. Yet, DTs evolution has been slow and unfocused, becoming a copy of a copy.
Instead of continuing to grow and evolve, Design Thinking has become more of a marketed cookie-cutter process than a framework. It makes sense, in a way, to deliver value at scale, driving for repeatable outcomes with a process. Removing the elements that made DT agile in nature was a mistake. If DT is a process it competes with other product development methods, and that was never its purpose.
Smart, creative people did what they do best–they refined and focused on optimizing the framework. Design Thinking artifacts became works of art; almost too precious to be changed. The activities were well-orchestrated, sometimes clear in intent, but also stereotypical in nature (post-it notes, sharpies, and improv activities, etc.).
Don’t get me wrong, we think ideation and research synthesis via post-its is a perfectly fine method of work. The issue comes when we continue to refine, and refine, and never truly iterate on the entire process. With Design Thinking, too much refinement and a lack of meaningful iteration becomes dogma instead of design.
As design thinking drove demonstrable business impact and a measurable amount of disruption at scale, it gained attention. No longer limited to Fast Company and Wired, Design Thinking became a problem-solving methodology written about in Harvard Business Review and The Economist. Design Thinking became THE way. However, this led to heightened expectations and a framework seen as a panacea.
We challenge practitioners to look at Design Thinking through a new lens. We need to “eat our own dog food” and use our methods and mindsets to iterate the framework. In order to do so we should re-examine provocations and statements that have become problematic in how the DT framework is applied. We seek to isolate each and focus on the intent behind the statement, proposing solutions and substitutions in voice, tone, and substance.
The series will include four articles, each focusing on areas where we could improve as practitioners to this well-loved framework for problem-solving:
Bias Toward Action is the Enemy of Intention
On Performative Empathy
Not All Solutions Need to be Disruptive
Design To the Rescue
We hope you all enjoy this brief series, and join in on the greater discussion of evolving the methods and mindsets of design thinking into a true tool for understanding and change-making.