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Design Thinking is Killing Creativity, A Presentation Redux

Design Articles
Oct 19, 2010
5 Comments


I’m always open to new experiences!

Last Saturday was the first time I presented a blog article to an actual physical audience! I was invited by the Design and Technology Educators Society (DTES) to present my controversial post: “Design Thinking is Killing Creativity”.


Design Thinking is Killing Creativity


This presentation’s content was based on these two original posts: “Design Thinking is Killing Creativity” and its follow up post “How Can We Fix the Problems of Design Thinking“. Do have a look as the originals if you would like some more background information. For the purposes of this presentation, I took the opportunity to clean up the content and add a few new details.

It was a really good and enjoyable morning, with the Design and Technology Educators asking a lot of engaging and challenging questions. We discussed many topics that went beyond Design Thinking and into design processes, education, and technical skills and even designing for the soul. As a side note, if any of my new DTES friends are reading this, I have reorganized this presentation slightly, so that clearly reflects some of our discussion points.

Many of you will no doubt recognize the content of this presentation, and I’m sure many of you will continue disagree (or agree!) with it. However, I still decided to share this presentation here to see if things have become better more than 6 months after the original post was published. I think it has. What about you? Regardless I hope you enjoy the presentation as much as I did creating it.




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    • Comments

    Ahmet Emre Acar
    Oct 22, 10 – 3:21 am

    Hey, great post and great presentation. I just wish you would post your slide notes or the actual speech along with the slides. I think your conclusion is correct, but I would not call for “design” doing as I think that this is the same kind of misnomer as design thinking. After all, the problem solving does not end with the concept but follows into development and production as well. If you ask engineers or businesspeople who got deep into the topic, you get a different view than from a designer.

    Creativity is saved! Long life to Design Thinking! « Intuinovare
    Oct 24, 10 – 2:44 am

    [...] Brian a Design Strategist at Design Sojourn wrote: “Design Thinking Is Killing Creativity“, on March and later in October The Presentation Redux! [...]

    Process? Method? Theory? | Prove Design
    Nov 16, 10 – 7:42 am

    [...] Design Sojourn’s presentation on Design Thinking Is Killing Creativity, he quotes Kevin McCullough’s refections on Roberto Verganti [...]

    Design Translator
    Nov 18, 10 – 2:25 pm

    @Ahmet: Thanks for your comment. That is an interesting viewpoint. Design Doing has it own problems, but at least it is a little clearer.

    M Shastri
    Aug 19, 11 – 9:42 am

    Great stuff, well done. You have articulated your thoughts very well. Few years ago, when I joined an university to teach product design, I was amazed to see the design process the school was asking us to impose on the students with great emphasis on the process and limited focus on the end result. It was even more interesting to see the students were asked to write essay’s on the design process to gain credits for their papers.

    I have been designing products for years now and make a living out of it. I believe the thinking process should be based around the needs of the challenge. The quality of the solution will depend on the quality of the designer and the effort put into problem solving.


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