‘Designerly Ways Of Speaking’: The Dangers of Design Thinking

In the upcoming Septembers’ Engage with Ideas talk, Aysar Ghassan will discuss findings from his research which critically explored how Design Thinking has been articulated by scholars in the leading design journals (Ghassan 2022). Aysar summarised his research in the 2022 article titled Designerly ways of speaking Unpacking the discourse of Design Thinking which was published by the Design Journal. Aysar work builds on Hassi and Laakso (2011a, 2011b) prior work which examined relationship between two differing discourses on design thinking, as well as their focus and direction (Hassi & Laakso 2011a., p. 1).  They proposed a framework how the management discussion on design thinking may be categorised.

Globally, for around 30 years, Design Thinking has been hailed as an effective way to solve large-scale, complex problems in both the public and private sectors (Brown 2008). Accompanying this interest is a plethora of material that provide guidance on tools and processes associated with Design Thinking, such as can you give few examples of these tools and processes please?… The popularity of Design Thinking and the investment that organisations including universities have placed in it leave little room for critique. Indeed, besides few articles (e.g. Vinsel 2017), very little criticism of Design Thinking exists. This is extremely worrying as Design Thinking informs decision-making at a host of powerful institutions and therefore affects the lives of countless people around the world.

In his PhD (Ghassan 2019), he conducted an in-depth analysis of claims made by Design Thinking researchers. He found that the claims are highly flawed. One reason for this is that researchers use inappropriate methodologies when justifying their claims. Flawed claims help researchers to build the intellectual territory associated with Design Thinking, making it appear concrete and legitimate, when in reality it is anything but that.Aysar also found that researchers use a specific set of terms (a lexicon) to obscure the fact that claims are flawed. Again can you provide examples to illustrate how they obscure the claims? In his conclusion is that Design Thinking is likely not to be a process or a set of tools as the literature claims it to be. Instead, Design Thinking is a web of terms and phrases (a discourse) that researchers use to construct a “house” that lacks secure foundations. I call this web, ‘Designely Ways of Speaking’.

Aysar’s research indicates that rather solving complex problems, Designerly Ways of Speaking may help to perpetuate them.

Event recording in ENGLISH: