Chris wrote: "The theory behind design thinking & d-schools is, to me, this: "Design is important. Too important to be managed by those fuzzy people who actually do design. It's time for designers to step aside and allow themselves to be led by a new generation of MBAs who have taken a couple of courses about design (but who don't do design)."
In all my reading on the ideas, theory, and processes of Design Thinking, my views are actually the opposite. I think it actually empowers designers and moves them up earlier in the process. Sure - some Design Thinking is being applied to business processes much in the way that TQM and all those other process aconyms became fads over the past 20 years. But - from the reading I have been doing, there is the opportunity such that designers/IxD folks are no longer downstream from the business analyst doing the problem definition and requirements gathering. Now designers are right up front helping to think within the problem space, exploring ideas, using abductive thinking (and teaching it to other team members), such that a plethora of ideas are generated well before requirements are solidified. Am I too starry eyed? After all my reading, I have begun to draft some ideas about a process (nothing new there :-), but to Dan and Chris' point - we only become design morlochs if we don't take control of the process. A few classes in design is not going to ingrain real strategic design thinking in any mba. There is simply no way that a semester can supplant 10, 15 years of real world problem solving through design. On the other hand - i think this d.school thing is a fad. At least the name, as such. Plenty of schools have offered combined MBA/Design masters degrees - I have one and from what I can tell - there isn't much difference accept for the fact that schools like CM, Indiana, Bentley, have been doing it alot longer, have a more seasoned curriculum, and a deep well of connected graduates. my 2 cents :-} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=21093 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
