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What are the flaws of Design Thinking?
To fully unleash the potentials of Design Thinking, we need to acknowledge both edges of the knife.
Earlier last week, I was talking about Design Thinking as a guest speaker in a university course. Of course, it was always pleasant to be the first one to introduce this powerful way of thinking to people. And I am particularly delighted to provoke students’ thinking on building a human-centric product, rather than charming by the cutting-edge technology by itself. At the end of the session, one student asked a question that got me thinking —
“What are the flaws of Design Thinking”?
Ever since I became a Design Thinking coach, I advocate the importance of bringing human sentiment into our thinking and doing. All my readings, studies, and project experiences always point me to the bright side of the approach and prove that it is the right way to go. Naive as it may sound, I seldom encounter people who disagree with putting the user at the core of the design, not to mention its disadvantage.
Thanks to the student’s question, I had a great reflection on the topic. I spent time researching online, brainstorming with other Design Thinkers, and pondering my own project experience. And one of the featured talks by Natasha Jen: Design Thinking Is Bullshit has challenged my belief in the approach, particularly on whether we really need Design Thinking in order to be human-centric to solve a problem.
“Design thinking started out really as a very important methodology for industrial design, but in recent years, it has become this kind of thing where other adjacent design fields have begun to opportunistically latch onto it in order to fulfil their own needs.”
— Natasha Jen
