21ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING DESIGN, ICED17 21-25 AUGUST 2017, THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER, CANADA DESIGN THINKING - A PARADIGM Laursen, Linda Nhu; Tollestrup, Christian Aalborg University, Denmark Abstract Design thinking has received an increasing amount of attention in both practice and academia. Previous research has successfully pointed out design thinking is vaguely and diversely defined, presenting eight different discourses. Although design thinking has been viewed from different perspectives with diverse results, much current research use the terms of design thinking without clarification of the relation to one another; this creates confusion. With this paper we clarify design thinking. Through a review of key literature and a conceptual synthesis, we show design thinking is not merely a process or either of eight suggested discourses – but all of them. Thinking like a designer is a paradigm, which may materialize in various forms. It is a way of seeing and interacting with the world. It is a world-view. By categorising central themes from key literature, we add to the current discussion with a coherent conceptual framework of design thinking. A taxonomy of the design thinking paradigm, which provide clarity of levels, since there in current literature are no clear distinction between the fundamental paradigm, methods and practical tools and techniques of design thinking. Keywords: Design theory, Design methodology, Design methods Contact: Linda Nhu Laursen Aalborg University Department of Business and Management Denmark [email protected] Please cite this paper as: Surnames, Initials: Title of paper. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED17), Vol. 2: Design Processes | Design Organisation and Management, Vancouver, Canada, 21.-25.08.2017. 229 1 INTRODUCTION The concept of design thinking has received an increasing amount of attention in both practice and academia, particularly outside the design field itself. Evidence of the growing attention can be seen in the rise and popularity of d.schools (Korn and Silverman 2012), the broad application in business practice (Martin 2009) and the growing number of studies in adjacent fields, such as Carlgren (2013) studies on how design thinking can be used to build innovation capabilities. However, what also emerges from the body of evidence on design thinking is that the concept has not yet been clearly and consistently defined. Recent research has identified a total of eight different discourses (Johansson-Sköldberg et al. 2013): • The creation of artifacts (Simon 1969) • A reflexive practice (Schön 1983) • A problem-solving activity (Buchanan 1992, Rittel and Webber 1973) • A way of reasoning and sense making (Lawson 2006, Cross 2006, 2011) • The creation of meaning (Krippendorff 2006) • A way of working (Kelley 2001, 2005, Brown 2008, 2009) • An approach and skill for managers (Dunne & Martin 2006; Martin 2009) • A management theory (Boland & Collopy, 2004) Since different researchers have different understandings of design thinking, heterogeneous semantics occur. When people read different meanings into the concept, it creates ineffective communication and becomes a barrier in research and operationalization of the concept. According to Parsons and Shils (1962), the theoretical foundation of a field can often be placed within a hierarchy ranging from: Ad hoc classification systems (labels that categorise and summarise empirical observations), taxonomies (describe relationship between categories), conceptual taxonomies (offer explanation or predictions) and theoretical systems (laws or formal theories). As much of the current research still merely summarises empirical observations, the theoretical explicitness of design thinking is still ill-defined (Dorst 2010). Design thinking is overused and vaguely defined outside the design field, and taken for granted within the design field itself (Johansson-Sköldberg et al., 2013). To enhance the usage of the term, a precise and clear taxonomy of design thinking is needed. 2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to bring clarity to the concept of design thinking. By identifying and categorising core themes from key design thinking literature, a clear taxonomy is proposed. When conducting research, a better understanding of the different levels of design thinking will allow us to specify and clarify which aspect of design thinking is actually being studied, and to be able to conclude, compare and synthesize findings from different studies. With this research objective in mind, the following research question is stated: What are the core themes of design thinking and how may they be organized in taxonomy? 3 RESEARCH DESIGN The research process was divided in two basic steps. Firstly, key contributions of the design thinking field were identified, and secondly, a taxonomy that explains the relation of central themes were developed. In order to identify key contributions of the design thinking field, a literature search was conducted. Searches were made in Web of Science and EBSCO Host (Academic Search Premier and Business Source Complete) for the literature published before 15th of March 2014 with the words ‘design thinking’ OR ‘designerly thinking’ in the title. This resulted in a vast number papers of which the majority concerned experimenting or implementing design thinking in other contexts. Since the objective was not to review all literature to collect every little detail of the designing thinking field and understand how it is utilized in other fields, this search did not contribute with any conceptual elements to the design thinking field. It did, on the other hand, identify the central themes in the core literature that are commonly used as key stances for argumentation and explanation of the design thinking concept. 230 ICED17 The focus of the literature review was to collect definitions used in the papers and to identify key references that are commonly used as key stances for argumentation and explanation of the design thinking concept. A final list of 15 core works that contribute to defining the design thinking concept were selected. The final selection of key literary works was made upon evaluation of their role in current design thinking studies, i.e. studies that are highly referenced when defining design thinking. The 15 selected works can be seen below: 1. Boland, R., and Collopy, F. (2004). Managing as Designing (book, cites 314) 2. Buchanan, R. (1992) Wicked Problems in Design Thinking (peer-reviewed Journal, cites 803) 3. Brown, T. (2008) Design thinking (peer-reviewed Journal, cites 729) 4. Cross, N. (1982) Designerly ways of knowing (peer-reviewed Journal, cites 382) 5. Dorst, K. (2011) The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application (peer-reviewed Journal, cites 43) 6. Dunne, D. and Martin, R. (2006) Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education (peer-review article, cites 213) 7. Kelley, T. (2001). The Art of Innovation (book, cites 870) 8. Krippendorff, K. (2006). The Semantic Turn (book, cites 591) 9. Lawson, B. (2006) How Designers Think (book, cites 2373) 10. Martin, R. (2003) The Design of Business (book, cites 138) 11. Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning (peer-review article, cites 5527) 12. Rowe, P. (1987) Design Thinking (book, cites 685) 13. Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner (book, cites 499) 14. Simon, H. A. (1969) The Science of the Artificial (book, cites 669) 15. Verganti, R. (2009) Design Driven Innovation (peer-reviewed journal cites 112) A categorization of the type of literature (book/peer-reviewed journal) and the evidence of impact through the number of citations (the 15th of March 2014) is listed. Due to the diversity of literature, the number of citations were gathered through Google scholar. We were well aware of the fact that Google scholar might be citing to non-academic work, however since part of the key references can be considered non-academic, a citation search in for example Web of Science will leave out more than half of the key literature. The key literature was subsequently thoroughly read, noting down key topics and contributions of design thinking. These were subsequently analysed by categorization, thus seeking a pattern to synthesize the contributions into a taxonomy for design thinking. A participatory research setup focuses on a process of sequential feedback, reflection and development, where the aim is to identify issues of lack of clarity, evaluate and develop the taxonomy upon. Thus, in order to provide further input for the developed levels, the taxonomy was presented and further developed in a workshop. The target group at the workshop was experts, i.e. researchers and practitioners within the design thinking field. The subsequent section will present the final developed taxonomy. 4 TOWARDS A TAXONOMY ON DESIGN THINKING Through the research process it has become apparent that design thinking is a concept that contains multiple aspects on different levels of abstraction. Examples of this diversity are Lawson’s (2006) ‘design thinking as a way of reasoning’ that focuses on the logic of abductive reasoning, Schön’s (1983) ‘a reflexive practice’ where design is viewed as practice based reflective reframing, or Buchanan’s (1992) ‘problem-solving activity’ which concentrates on how design thinking solves wicked problems. Much of the business oriented literature gives even more diverse descriptions of the concept e.g.