Many designers have in recent weeks been contributing to an emerging debate on how far design professionals need to ‘codify’ or ‘define’ their ‘design thinking’ and the potential ramifications this has on how non-designers understand or interpret our work. This debate has fascinated me as it is something that has always been at the heart of my major passions and professional expertise – that is ‘making things easier for people’. For me this has largely centred on improving and better enabling my client’s experience of skiing, design or (as currently) ergonomics and human factors. I refer to this work as engagement, coaching, instruction or design variously, simultaneously and depending on who I am talking to. If I’m asked to explain my research, I say that I’m studying how to motivate people by better designing products, systems and services, but mostly I like to keep it to specific examples or analogies about what I’m doing.

The same is true in my ski teaching: Example, which do you more clearly understand: “Ok, try to herringbone up the hill please” or “Ok, try to walk like a penguin up the hill please”. Obviously if you are a cross-country ski expert the former will make sense, but if you aren’t chances are you’ll be more successful at completing the task based on the latter description.

Penguin - Thanks to Lord Biro [Flickr

My current view on this debate about the role of ‘expert terminology’ and the extent to which we have to succinctly clarify what we as designers do – “just get on with it, actions and deliverables speak louder than words”. I can’t help but feel that design and ‘design thinking’ as discussed recently are in danger of the infamous paralysis by analysis.

This discussion for me goes back to earlier blog posts from Nick Marsh and Jeff Howard on the extent to which it is important to define service design. These thoughts were prompted by the first issue of Touchpoint, the new service design journal which explored the same question. This debate has (perhaps tangentially) been elaborated in recent weeks by features and posts on Fast Company by Tim Brown of Ideo and most recently by Fred Collopy again on Fast Company,  an article that has been reiterated by many prominent service design thinkers and doers such as Arne van Oosterom and Lauren Currie amongst others – demonstrating the pertinence of this issue amongst service designers at present.

The main problem as I see it: If you want to sell something, you have to define it. This is definitely what Nick appears to be wrestling with in his post. Services as the emerging paradigm or growth area of ‘design thinking’ are difficult to define, but if you can’t define what it is you do or even what it is that you work on it’s unlikely you’ll be able to persuade anyone of the added value that you as a designer can bring. The paradox – the minute you do define it, particularly in the case of Service or Experience Design, you are arguably selling short the maximum potential value which you as a creative professional can contribute.

However, once you have sold something you also have to be able to deliver it. It is this point that I’m really trying to emphasise in this post. I’m positioning myself here fairly firmly as Robert Brunner did in his article, again for Fast Company, titled “Design Is Too Important to Be Left to the Thinkers” . What I’d also like to add from my own research and experience is that it is largely by doing and dealing in physical entities that help people ‘speak the same language’ or understand the potential of your design approach. A further case for this point can be found in The UK Design Council’s success in recent years by running competitions such as Design Bugs Out and The Mobile Phone Security Challenge that aim to result in a series of case studies highlighting the benefits of design collaboration and ‘design thinking’ to businesses.

Fast Company’s Fred Collopy and Live ¦ Work’s  Jaimes Nel appear to reach the same conclusion, saying that the more we codify or ruminate over the process the more ‘expert’ it becomes and the less accessible we are making design and so called ‘design thinking’. The conclusion thus far then: intellectualising about design, ‘design thinking’ and ‘the design process’ – is not a good thing for either our own creativity, the public’s comprehension and acceptance of our work or for business leaders’ comprehension and adoption of our toolkits, models, products and services.

Drawing the system boundary is a fundamental part of any design process, often informed by time or cost constraints. This is undoubtedly a compromise in the potential of the design, but it is this boundary or focusing of the problem that actually leads to innovation and creativity.

Ok you say, but why is this the case? Well from a lot of my recent work on motivation and motivating people I’ll volunteer a thought: It is only at the point that you constrain a problem either intellectually or physically – by for example trying to make, model or manufacture something, that it becomes an intrinsic ‘goal-centred’ process as opposed to an extrinsic ‘philosphical’ one. An intrinsic process (i.e. one that the stakeholders have some ownership of and direction over) and one that is working towards a specific goal or solution is far more motivating than an abstract, codified, model of how design might make things better or make you more money.

Put simply, in order for ‘design thinking’ to be effective (i.e. make the transition from abstract theory or philosophy to a meaningful process of adding value) it has to applied or limited to a specific relevant context. This might sound incredibly obvious, but my own experience and some of the intellectual discussions recently in the blogosphere indicate that a lot of designers are reluctant to pragmatically constrain the scope or ambition of their thinking. It is this reluctance and the spiralling intellectual gymnastics that follow that leads to ‘design thinking’ becoming esoteric or sounding overly ‘expert’ to novices or non-designers.

Design comes from the latin word ‘designato’ – “to mark out”, thus marking out the boundary or scope of a design problem to focus creativity has always been a fundamental part of ‘design thinking’ or the design process, perhaps even the fundamental part.

Continued reflection and discussion on the design process and it’s terminology is particularly important in a new discipline such as service design, however, when it comes to engaging others we also have to contextualise how our ‘design thinking’ is actually going to make things better for people.

For more on this perspective check out this from Tim Brown, one of the original proponents of Design Thinking.