Design Methods and Design Thinking
Design methods and design thinking study how designers reason and work, and codify approaches to framing problems and generating, developing, and evaluating solutions.
Definition
Design methods and design thinking is the study and codification of how designers frame problems and generate solutions, including the cognitive processes of designing and prescriptive methodologies for design and innovation.
Scope
This area covers the methods movement that sought to systematise design, theories of design cognition and 'designerly' knowing, the notion of design problems as ill-defined or wicked, reflective practice, and the popularised practice of design thinking as a human-centred, iterative approach to innovation. It examines both how designers actually think and the prescriptive methods proposed to guide them.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How do designers actually reason, and how does this differ from scientific or analytic problem-solving?
- Why are design problems often ill-defined or 'wicked', and what follows for method?
- What is the value and the limitation of prescriptive design methods?
- How did design thinking move from design research into general management and innovation?
Key theories
- Designerly ways of knowing
- Cross argues that design constitutes a distinct way of knowing, characterised by solution-focused, constructive, and abductive reasoning, different from the analytic methods of the sciences and the interpretive methods of the humanities.
- Wicked problems
- Buchanan, drawing on Rittel and Webber, characterises design problems as wicked: they have no definitive formulation or stopping rule, so designers must frame the problem and solution together rather than solve a fixed brief.
- Reflective practice
- Schön describes professional designing as reflection-in-action, a conversation with the materials of a situation in which framing, moving, and re-evaluating proceed together rather than by applying fixed technical rules.
History
The design methods movement of the 1960s sought to make design a rational, science-like process, prompting reactions including Rittel's wicked-problems critique and Schön's account of reflective practice. Research on design cognition matured into the field of 'designerly' knowing, and from the 1990s consultancies and business schools popularised 'design thinking' as a transferable innovation method.
Debates
- Design as science versus design as practice
- Whether designing can be reduced to a rational, generalisable method, as the early methods movement and Simon's 'sciences of the artificial' suggested, or is an irreducibly situated, reflective practice as Schön and Cross argue.
Key figures
- Nigel Cross
- Richard Buchanan
- Herbert A. Simon
- Donald Schön
- Horst Rittel
Related topics
Seminal works
- cross2001
- buchanan1992
- schon1983
- simon1996
Frequently asked questions
- Is design thinking the same as design methods?
- They are related but distinct. 'Design methods' refers to the broader scholarly study and codification of how designers work, dating to the 1960s; 'design thinking' is a more recent, popularised packaging of human-centred, iterative practices for innovation aimed at non-designers.
- What is a wicked problem?
- A wicked problem, in design and planning theory, is one with no definitive formulation, no clear stopping rule, and no single correct solution, so the way the problem is framed already shapes its possible solutions. Most design problems are wicked in this sense.