Valérie Chanal, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management and Olivier Irrmann, Yncréa
While design thinking is establishing itself as a tool for fostering creativity and is becoming widespread in many higher education programs, design professionals point out the simplistic nature of the method—or even the fallacy of “design without designers.”
By sharing several years of educational experimentation at theUniversité Grenoble Alpes, atENSCI-Les Ateliers, and at Yncréa Hauts-de-France, we aim to take stock of the variety of design practices and explore how they can broaden the scope of innovation training programs.
What is design thinking?
Drawing inspiration from the work and ways of thinking of designers, design thinking has helped popularize design in business and education. With an emphasis on the design process, this method begins with a deep understanding of the user and encourages the prototyping of solutions, going beyond the stylistic considerations traditionally associated with design.
Design thinking aims to achieve two things:
- Develop a unique interpretation of a situation based on an understanding of users and their practices, through observations or field surveys,
- Develop a feasible short-term solution, generally setting aside its aesthetic aspects. The goal is to generate and test the most concrete and best-suited solutions as quickly as possible.
Let’s take the example of a group of students who have to develop a proposal to “rethink the street.” On a project like this, one can imagine that through observation and interviews, they might identify a “problem” for a user: a parent who has trouble maneuvering a stroller in spaces crowded with scooters.
The challenge of this project, therefore, is to formulate a user perspective: How can we help parents navigate safely with their strollers without being hindered by obstacles on the sidewalk? Through an ideation process—such as brainstorming sessions—students are guided to develop a service concept, also known as a “user experience”: an app that shows parents the clearest route from one point to another in real time.
Mapping "Design" Approaches
“Well, here we do real design, not some cheap ‘design thinking’!” This comment, made during a meeting of designers, is typical of the irritation that design thinking often provokes in professional circles. Some go so far as to liken it to a contagious disease, replacing critical thinking with grandstanding and empty rhetoric.
In its most common sense, design thinking is essentially a simplified version of a small part of design. But design practices are much broader than that. To fully grasp their richness, let’s revisit two key aspects of design activities that we’ve already discussed: formulating and formalizing.
To frame a problem, one can—as in design thinking—conduct surveys and field observations (this is the “field” approach), but one can also propose a new vision or perspective, based on an intention to take action in the world, on values, or even on a political stance (this is the “intention” approach).
To formalize a solution—that is, to give tangible form to the solutions and mechanisms we have devised—we can do so, as in design thinking, by developing a solution that can be implemented in the short term (the “user experience” approach), but also by formalizing the various dimensions of a complex situation in order to understand and analyze it (this is the “systems” approach).
This gives rise to three other typical situations:
Meaningful Design
The “intent × user experience” quadrant is the primary domain of design in its traditional sense. It is a field in which we will find conceptual ideas translated into specific solutions.
According to this approach, in the “Rethinking the Street” project, students are asked to conduct research on the cultural environment of the street in the neighborhood under study. They then focus on an element that catches their attention—the market, for example, which occupies the street for part of the week and serves as a venue for cultural exchange as well as economic exchange.
Drawing on research into market interactions in various cities around the world at different times in history, the students then propose a unique concept: a modular street furniture system that allows people on the street to shop, meet their neighbors and local merchants, and even sell their own homemade products. This user-centered proposal redefines the meaning of the market in the city.
Projective Design
The “intention x systems” quadrant is the realm of a more visionary form of design, one that focuses more on conceptual objects. This is where practices known as “design fiction” can be found, among others.
The “Rethinking the Street” project aims to encourage students to envision the future and to question its meaning and “desirability.”
Using tools that help them take a stance on values, utopian or dystopian visions, based on readings from a variety of fields, students are invited to articulate their aspirations for the street in the future—for example, in a manifesto.
They develop scenarios that raise questions about the future—desirable or otherwise—of the street. This work can lead, for example, to the design of a “metabolic” street, capable of adapting its configuration to the street’s various uses over time.
Design Research
This “field x systems” quadrant is the realm of modeling and conceptualization for the purpose of exploration. The idea is to develop unique frameworks for interpretation, with a commitment to objectivity, based on field observations and scientific data.
For the “Rethinking the Street” project, students are invited to conduct research (interviews, literature reviews, stakeholder mapping) to formulate a research question that highlights the tensions between stakeholders and their concerns. They have identified a major issue that has received little attention to date: the management of noise levels at different times of the day.
Drawing on observations and scientific research on sound, they propose a “prototype”—that is, an object designed to spark discussion and reflection. This could take the form of a serious game that encourages neighborhood residents to reflect on their individual concerns regarding noise and on the strategies for controlling overall noise levels from a systemic perspective.
Time constraints
Neither better nor worse, design thinking is thus one possible way to harness design for innovation, but it is not the only one. Other approaches are possible, provided we keep in mind what gives design its value—and thus involve professional designers in these efforts—to avoid the paradox of design without designers.
From a practical standpoint, it’s important to realize that not everything can be accomplished in a short amount of time. While a four-year program at a design school might cover the four different approaches to design (design thinking, project-based design, meaning-based design, and design-research), an eight-week project—let alone a challenge lasting just a few days—can only cover a limited scope.
We therefore invite teaching teams to explore this rich field of design to determine what they can expect from their students.
This article was written in collaboration with Apolline Le Gall, co-founder of the design agency Où sont les dragons and a research associate at the Center for Design Research, ENSCI-ENS Saclay.
Valérie Chanal, Professor, Innovation and Creativity Management, Grenoble IAE Graduate School of Management and Olivier Irrmann, Professor of Innovation Management and Co-design, Yncréa
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.