Design Sojourn

Design Thinking is Killing Creativity

You might have probably heard everyone’s jaw drop after I mentioned this on Twitter over the weekend.

A fellow designer and I were discussing this in detail and jointly came to this disappointing conclusion. It was quite a significant conclusion and likely to be correct, as both of us were in positions to manage design processes and teams, and also shape and influence design centric business strategies.

I do not think that this epiphany happened as a result of this discussion. This was something that has been cooking at the back of my mind since design thinking started gaining traction in the competitive corporate environment. My thoughts include design thinking’s impact, its fallout, and its side effects.

This was really not an easy post to write, there were lots of information for me to manage and reorganize. As with any story, lets start from the beginning by looking at why design thinking was even needed in the first place?

This Huge Humanitarian Design Debate is a Moot Point

I have been reading, with a lot of amusement, the huge humanitarian debate that is raging across the internet. You would have probably heard or read about it but here is a quick summary if you have not.

Bruce Nussbaum starts the opening volley with a strong body shove with “Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism?“.

He writes:

The last time I saw Emily was in Singapore in the fall at the ICSID World Design Congress where she was receiving a roaring applause from the European and American designers on stage after giving a speech about Project H. I loved that speech because it linked the power of design to the obligation to do good. In a world awash in consumption, with many designers complicit in designing that consumption, Emily’s message was right on.

But not to the mostly Asian designer audience. Of course there was polite applause but, to my surprise, there was also a lot of loud grumbling against Emily along the lines of “What makes her think she can just come in and solve our problems?

(snip…)

Are designers the new anthropologists or missionaries, come to poke into village life, “understand” it and make it better–their “modern” way?

(snip…)

…a 20-something woman from the Acumen Fund rushed to the front and said in the proudest, most optimistic, breathless way that Acumen was teaming up with IDEO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to design better ways of delivering safe drinking water to Indian villagers. She said this to the Indian businessman Kishoreji Biyani, who is the key investor in IDIOM, and to my stunned surprise–and hers–he groused that there was a better, Indian way of solving the problem.

Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

(snip…)

Is the new humanitarian design coming out of the U.S. and Europe being perceived through post-colonial eyes as colonialism? Are the American and European designers presuming too much in their attempt to do good?