brief history of design thinking
Since the beginning of time humans have invented new ways to fasten their processes. They have learnt and unlearnt and built on it.
The human brain has been able to so far adapt all of these changes. Similarly, Humans have also evolved the way they interact with products and services. If things go awry they immediately jump into deciphering what needs to be fixed. But Human brain does not like complexity. It likes to blend in with the way they interact with something. It needs to be almost intuitive. And when that doesn't happen, disasters happen. We blame the product and the engineers blame the users.
However, the way people have started evolving these very interactions has been changing as early as the 1960's.
A quick search on IDEO's website mentions that:
IDEO is often credited with inventing the term “design thinking” and its practice. In fact, design thinking has deep roots in a global conversation that has been unfolding for decades. At IDEO, we’ve been practicing human-centered design since our beginning in 1978, and took up the phrase “design thinking” to describe the elements of the practice we found most learnable and teachable—empathy, optimism, iteration, creative confidence, experimentation, and an embrace of ambiguity and failure.
As I mentioned The introduction to Design Thinking happened as early as the ’60s It has iteratively been developed over the decades since then.
Ergonomics and Design Science determined design decisions, and designers had a very specific and specialised way of designing things back then. Buckminster Fuller was an expert in Design Science. Fuller was an architect, systems theorist, designer, philosopher, inventor futurist and author. In his mid-fifties, while he was at MIT he created design teams comprised of experts from across disciplines to tackle systemic failures. This was termed as Design Science. This is how collaborative work started - which essentially in the backbone of design thinking.
"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist" - Buckminster Fuller
Another example of cross functional collaborative design is called Coorperative design. This concept was born in the Scandinavia and is also termed as Scandinavian Cooperative design. They focussed on co-design where everyone from workers to users as well as experts had a decision making power. This is also currently used widely and feeds into the service design concept. While popular in the early 60's this made its entry into to US only as early as 1980's.
By 1970, Victor Papanek, another an Austrian-American designer and educator became a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures. He also integrated anthropology in design.
"The only important thing about design is how it relates to people." - Victor Papanek
Then two years later a new term was coined. It was called 'Wicked Problems'. Though coined by Horst Rittel and his counterpart Melvin M Webber, it was later adapted to design thinking by Richard Buchanan! “Wicked problems” were defined as problems that are complex, open-ended, and ambiguous.
These are problems that do not lend themselves to easy judgments of “right” or “wrong.” In fact, this was the time where processes in design and design methods were concentrated on, in a way laying the foundation for the modern processes. This is also the time when phenomenology was introduced into design.
Phenomenology is a way of thinking about ourselves. Instead of asking about what we really are, it focuses on phenomena. These are experiences that we get from the senses - what we see, taste, smell, touch, hear, and feel.
There are a few more people who have introduced a lot of subjects to be understood in order for the design to be wholesome. Nigel Cross, a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, influenced the construction of design thinking processes.
Donald Schon had a background in psychology and urban planning, and those things influenced his design.
Let us fast forward a little to 1991. This was when the IDEO merger happened. Till date, it remains one of the most celebrated design firms in the world. In my opinion, IDEO did popularise design thinking widely across the globe. IDEO started off with designing consumer products but later shifted to designing more consumer experiences. They are credited with designing a lot of worlds firsts including the first Apple mouse to the Steelcase leap chair.
Tom and David Kelley are the founders at IDEO and have also coauthored 'Creative confidence' for people who are struggling to understand their creative potential.
“The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing – building empathy for the people that you’re entrusted to help. – David Kelley, Founder of IDEO
From what we have seen so far that to that what has evolved into a design thinking process has taken years of expertise from various fields to make the design more 'human' Right from Design Science, Ergonomics & Human Factors, Cognitive Psychology, Industrial and organisational psychology, Computer Science, Participatory Design, Anthropology, Ethnography, Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Architecture, Human Centered Design, Business Strategy, Economics, Service Design, Design Thinking, Phenomenology
Today Design Thinking has been taught on a variety of platforms. As well as great universities are harnessing its potential to train people into learning this skill If one understands psychology, behavioural sciences, economies then they can design for any solution.
Universities like Parsons School of Design, Berkley Haus Innovation Lab, Designmatters at ArtCenter College of Design, MIT D-Lab, Northwestern's Segal Design Institute as well as Stanford D School which was founded by IDEO
I would highly recommend reading two articles on the internet, one by HBR titled Design Thinking comes of age and another one by Forbes titled Empathy, Design Thinking, And An Obsession With Customer-Centric Innovation. You will understand how the market has matured currently and how more than ever it makes sense to learn this very important skill.
Today you will see a lot of new organisations and studios who have developed their own niche in various design fields and they are using design thinking to question the status quo and build ideas which are sustainable yet impactful.
References
Cooperative Design Knowledge
Buckminster Fuller anticipated the problems we're facing today, says exhibition curator
Design thinking origin story plus some of the people who made it all happen
Victor Papanek
History
Buckminster Fuller
Wicked Problems
10 quotes that will spark your design thinking - UNHCR Innovation
Victor Papanek - Design for the Real World
Three Features of Wicked Problems