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Why I hate Design Thinking
- Design Thinking, despite its emphasis on empathy, iteration, and collaboration, is critiqued for oversimplifying design into a process that overlooks the challenging aspects of design work.
- Professional designers often view Design Thinking as a diluted version of their field that marginalizes their skills and expertise.
- While Design Thinking can facilitate stakeholder engagement and idea generation, it falls short in delivering tangible solutions, focusing more on mindset shifts than concrete results.
- The approach is criticized for neglecting critical components of design such as research, technical feasibility, and implementation, thereby leading to lower-quality outcomes.
- Design Thinking is highlighted for its heavy emphasis on ideation at the expense of execution, leaving the actual implementation to others or disregarding it entirely.
- Experienced designers stress that design is not merely about generating ideas but about crafting real solutions through problem framing, responsibility, solution shaping, and actualization.
- Design Thinking workshops often create a sense of momentum and enthusiasm but may result in shallow solutions that lack the depth required for successful implementation.
- The disconnect between design thinking workshops and actual design practice can lead to watered-down solutions that fail to address technical feasibility, policy constraints, and operational realities.
- Design Thinking's simplistic portrayal as a quick fix to complex problems in enterprise settings can hinder the development of true design capability and maturity within organizations.
- The critique underscores the need for a shift from Design Thinking to 'design doing,' emphasizing the importance of genuine design practice over superficial methodologies for innovation.
- The author calls for a focus on the hard work of research, design, and delivery rather than relying solely on frameworks like Design Thinking for achieving real outcomes in design.
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