Didn’t we solve this one? The function of practice routines in design thinking

Abstract

While design thinking has become a buzz word both inside and outside the communication design studio, the practice of design – or the social act of designing – remains relatively unstudied. Current design-thinking models used to generalize and market design work veil the daily processes and practices of designers behind an ideology of inspiration and spontaneity, while rendering invisible the audit and logic structures in which designers labour. As a result, designers report that these models, though popular, fail to describe the foundational ‘steps’ through which they generate creative solutions to client problems on a daily basis. This article examines findings from an ethnographic study of design practice, and proposes the addition of recurrent routines of production to an understanding of the larger practice of communication design. Based on an exercise conducted with 22 digital communication designers where ‘design-thinking’ models were used as frameworks for self-reflection, this article discusses the surprising role of overlooked and under-represented practices of affinity sorting and repertoire use. It proposes that both are generators of creativity which act as a short circuit within communication design work. Findings from this study suggest that repositioning aspects of design practice identified in this study as a critical foundation for creative work, rather than as overlooked aspects of daily practice that ‘don’t count’ as designing, could allow for a reconceptualization of design practice as a process of imposing limitations instead of the more commonly described ‘thinking outside the box’.

Keywords:

• Communication design
• studio culture
• design community
• design thinking
• practice
• creative work

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the designers, strategists and other team members who so generously shared the thoughts behind their thoughts, and who welcomed the research team into their place of work. This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship Program under Grant 767-2014-1133.

Notes

1. Kimbell, “Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 1.”

2. Monterio, “Air Breathing. Water Swimming.”

3. Heleo Editors, “Jessica Helfand on the Intersecting Ethics of Business.”

4. Lahey “How Design Thinking Became a Buzz Word.”

5. Brown. Change by Design. Dunne and Martin. “Design Thinking.”

6. Simonsen et al. Situated Design Methods.

7. Murphy, Swedish Design.

8. Thornton and Ocasio, “Institutional Logics.”

9. Ibid.

10. Winters, “The Practitioner-Researcher.

11. Thornton, Ocasio, Lounsbury, 2012.

12. Wenger, Communities of Practice.

13. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, “A Brief Overview of the Concept and its Uses.”

14. Brown and Duguid, “Knowledge and Organization. Weick and Roberts, “Collective Mind in Organizations.”

15. Hardcastle, Powers and Wenocur, Community Practice.

16. Lave and Wenger, Situated Learning.

17. Wenger. Communities of Practice.

18. Chaiklin and Lave, Understanding Practice. Nicolini, Practice Theory.

19. Wenger, Communities of Practice.

20. Bauer and Eagan, “Design Thinking.” Hassi and Laasko, “Conceptions of Design Thinking.”

21. Papanek, Design for the Real World; Simon. The Sciences of the Artificial.

22. Cross, Design Thinking.

23. Buchanan, “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.”

24. Brown, Change by Design.

25. Kelley, Creative Confidence.

26. Kimbell, “Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 1,” p. 301.

27. Cross, “Designerly Ways of Knowing,” 22.

28. Ligon and Wong Kung Fong, “Transforming Design Thinking.” Brenner and Uebernickel, Design Thinking for Innovation.

29. Ryan and Peterson, “The Product Image.”

30. Negus, “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries.”

31. Ettema, “The Organizational Context.”

32. Negus, “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries,” 510.

33. Bourdieu, Distinction.

34. Thornton and Ocasio, “Institutional Logics.”

35. Wenger, Communities of Practice.

36. Ettema, “The Organizational Context of Creativity”; Negus, “The Work of Cultural Intermediaries,” 510; Ryan and Peterson, “The Product Image.”

37. To ensure the privacy of its clients, the communications design studio that hosted this research study requested anonymity for itself and for its employees. The pseudonym of StudioX was selected by the organization.

38. Statistics Canada, “Education and Labour.”

39. Ibid.

40. Bürdek, Design: History, Theory and Practice.

41. Bielefeld, Architectural Design.

42. The design teams that participated in this particular study spent the majority of their working time developing digitally focused communications for a large automotive client and a telecommunications client. This particular group of design practitioners included 14 male and eight female participants, with between five and 21 years of professional practice history. The majority of participants were Canadian, with the exception of one French Intermediate Designer and one Brazilian Creative Director. None of the participants self-identified as First Nations Canadians (which reflects the reported employment figures collected by Statistics Canada in 2011).

43. Hsieh and Shannon, “Three Approaches.”

44. Sparker, “Narrative Analysis.”

45. Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis.”

46. Reckwitz, “Toward a Theory of Social Practices.”

47. Hasso-Plattner Institute, D.School Bootcamp Bootleg.

48. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial.

49. IDEO, “Design Thinking.”

50. Baeck and Gremett, “Design Thinking,” 17.

51. Lawson and Dorst. Design Expertise.

52. Johnson, “The Genius of the Tinkerer.”

53. Dubberly, “How Do You Design.”

54. Kimbell, “Rethinking Design Thinking: Part 2.”

55. Kelley, Creative Confidence.

56. Cross, “Designerly Ways of Knowing.”