On Design Thinking

Design means something even broader now. Sometime around World War II, it came to mean making things that “solve problems.” With the influence of mid-century global social movements and the rise of digital technology, it began to mean making things that are “human-centered.” And as of recently, design doesn’t have to involve making things at all. It can just mean a way of thinking.

Of all these developments, the idea of design as a broadly applicable way of thinking—the idea of “design thinking”—may end up being the most influential
At Stanford’s d.school, as cofounder Robert Sutton has said, “design thinking” is often treated “more like a religion than a set of practices for sparking creativity.”

  1. ​​Was Design Thinking Designed Not to Work?​​
  2. ​​Undoing the Toxic Dogmatism of Digital Design​​
  3. ​​Sermon for WIAD Bristol 2021​​