Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*t

If Google Image search is your sole barometer, “design thinking uses just one tool: 3M Post-Its,” says Pentagram partner Natasha Jen. “Why did we end up with a single medium? Charles and Ray Eames worked in a complete lack of Post-It stickies. They learned by doing.” In her provocative 99U talk, Jen lobbies for the “Crit” over the “Post-It” when it comes to moving design forward.

About 99U
99U brings you the best of the creative world through the lens of design and the people and work who are shaping it.

[jeanielin]

My understanding is that she wants to say that more people nowadays focus on the formula instead the real content. Design thinking can be the "formula" to help people to come up great design. However people reply on the "formula" instead of trying to make great design, . It becomes inflexible. Maybe sometimes some design projects don't need the full 5 steps ...I think Design thinking its self is not bad, Good or bad is not depending on itself but depending on how people use it.

[brendanh]

I was hoping that this talk would give me insight into the problem with design thinking, such as Henry Ford did with "If I asked the customer what they wanted, they would just tell me 'a faster horse.' " Instead I got a talk that fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the testing phase of design thinking. All her criticisms (criticism, iteration, evidence, immersion) can be found to be active in that stage.

[iamdanielkip]

Yeah, I don't really think she is necessarily attacking Design Thinking. The big take way from this video for me is how it became a thing that is superficial. Everybody will use it because it is a trend. It is one possibility, but not the only way to achieve or evaluate results and goals. It can be useful in some cases but who said you can't either adapt or go other ways.

[domeatown]

I think the main and almost the only problem is that design done well really only has two steps: 1. solve that problem and 2. make it easy. we've added a third step which is 3. do it entirely in visually driven software programs.
very few designers do physical labor or really have any connection with the physicality of the products they are designing. they aren't designing things with materials in mind and rarely just pick up stuff and mash product together until they comprehend why there is a problem in the first place. design is physical and we've made it almost entirely cerebral. that's why some of the best solutions usually come from people who sit and pick at bones in the spaces where the problem exists. they come from the bottom-up. it's honestly why some of the best designers who make the most useful products have very little artistic skills. What comes to mind almost immediately is Seymour Cray, father of supercomputing. His designs and strategic way of thinking has led almost entirely to our current AI moment. I know people who worked with him and have seen his personal papers and heard local tales. He was an oddball, but onto something new. Because he lived in a farming community and was driven by materials.
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?" is one of his famous quotes lmao.
he was driven almost entirely by removing the tedium from physical labor. and that is primarily because he did, in fact, do the physical labor.
we've eliminated the part of "solve problems" and replaced it with "replace things that were functional and pretty with newer, prettier things" and given ourselves tools that will always lead to cutting recognizable and entertaining elements out of older designs because we approach it entirely from the point of view of a staged photographic image. it's a cycle that is going to perpetuate itself because it must.
even typing these thoughts into words have reduced their potency. reading it here will strip the meaning from the knowledge I am trying to convey. that's the way youtube is set up, and it will behave that way because it must.
now, instead... imagine that I take you into the middle of a freshly plowed field. it smells like cow poop after a rainstorm. I hold my finger in the air and we try to guess the wind direction and speed. I set up a wind sock. it's orange. I set out a ruler. we make small guesses from that.
Now imagine that you are a wind surfer. You have learned to read the wind with your body, innately understand it's effects. you are more attuned to the physicality of the weather because you have learned to manipulate and interpret the wind with your shoulders and back. you could probably stand out there and tell me things even the best tools (windsock and ruler and maybe a gyroscope) could never, ever tell me. your physical understanding of the world is a data machine far more potent than these visual tools. I probably wouldn't be able to understand your description properly, because you would tell me with the vernacular of a surfer. but I would try. you could design a better tool for surfing the wind just by the way it feels, and you wouldn't need a windsock.
we've gone so holistic and data driven that we've forgotten how to feel the wind properly to understand it.
it's worth noting that Seymour Cray was a windsurfer and one of his first projects when his machines were functional was measuring the weather and the wind in particular.
meanwhile we never leave the house. our eyeballs are a great shortcut for understanding the world, but our eyeballs are why we have beautiful things that break easily, beautiful clothes that shred in a few months, beautiful ads that sell no products, beautiful phones that spend most of their lifecycle with cracked screens. beautiful white boards covered in beautiful post-its. clickable links and beautifully formatted articles with no substance. beautiful data. beautiful, beautiful data. beautiful watches to read our heart rates, beautiful food in beautiful packages with no real nutritional value. beautiful fonts to say meaningless words.
what is a font to a blind person. what is a story with a beginning and an end but nothing to say. we speak in shorthand.

our designs meddle with the surface of the world instead of becoming a meaningful fixture within it and really that's cultural

[brookepeterson]

Wow this was extremely hard to sit through. It was crystal clear in more ways than one that Natasha Jen had no idea what design thinking even was or how it is intended to be used. She repeatedly described it as a "hexagonal five step linear process, " which, as many design thinkers know, is blatantly wrong. In fact, she even included a photo in her slide of "Google images that pop up when you search design thinking" which explicitly demonstrates the nonlinearity aspect of the design process (arrows bouncing back to each stage to highlight the iterative nature of the process). Thus, her argument that design thinking does not incorporate criticism, or "crit" as she calls it, at every step is completely invalid. A good design process will understand the user by gaining feedback, or criticism, from the user. The designer will then define the problem based on that feedback and begin ideating, often with the user. Then, the designer will move onto designing a prototype to test it with the user to obtain feedback. Clearly, if done correctly, design thinking does involve criticism and feedback at every step. Natasha wraps up her talk by claiming that "design just becomes this box that you want to check off." Clearly, her company is approaching design and design thinking from the wrong angle if this is what she truly believes. While I do agree with her that many companies can improve upon this, and that design thinkers deserve a spot at the table, the entire point of design thinking is to embed it into the roots of the company and the mindsets of the employees so it is always factoring into every decision, not just design decisions.Lastly, she uses the example of Steve Jobs' office and how "he applied his own form of design thinking, which was intuition, by focusing on people's needs rather than business needs." This made me chuckle because she is perfectly describing design thinking (designing for people rather than the needs of a business) and its potential benefits (Steve Jobs' amazingly successful products), yet continues to use it as an argument as to why design thinking is bullsh*t. Overall, I think Natasha Jen brought up some great points: the importance of iteration, criticism and feedback in the design process, the use of many mediums and tools to carry out this process, and the implementation of this process in non-design fields. However, what I don't think she realizes is that she is describing crucial parts of the design thinking process. In a way, I think she actually believes the opposite of the title of her talk.

[ssbi]

I was an art director, I know this type of critique and ivory tower thinking - the designer as creative genius, because I was there myself. We would create work that was only validated by the client or each other and put out into the world after which we wait for the response from the public. There is nothing wrong with this because art direction and graphic design serve an entirely different purpose from say UX or industrial design.

Why she thinks she can speak on design thinking is beyond me. I can only assume it is because it has the word design in it? Design thinking, serves an entirely different purpose from the work that is done work done at Pentagram. A printed poster or book does not include user engagement that changes of the state product itself or requires input and output. It's closer to art which is perfectly fine, just different from a user interface for example.

Pentagram does awesome work but this kind of approach, the 'lone intuitive designer genius' serves little purpose in tech. I made the shift to design thinking because I'm doing completely different work now as a UX engineer. Sure, you don't want Pentagram to go out and validate their unique work because they don't design to solve business problems and user needs in the same way - they are paid to be the sole creative voice.

Last few points, design thinking is not linear (at all); it IS evidence based (she spoke about surrounding herself with evidence, although I don't know what that means to her) and I don't understand why she thinks design thinking is this neat process or why that would be a relevant criticism? She sounds like an aristocrat fearing a burgeoning middle class: 'How very dare they use the word design!'.

[tonyeaton]

A designer that doesn't like Design Thinking... of course!! Design Thinking is more about business strategy and less about the design of things. The very idea that everyone can use a participatory, non-linear, prototype-driven and research-led approach to solving problems many or even most of which extend well beyond the typical relm of most designers is perhaps challenging or even threatening. But your title grabs attention and sparks consideration. Thanks for your thought provoking presentation, Natasha.

[neverlast]

I understand that being a real designer is difficult since with the introduction of Design Thinking now everyone is "doing Design" - not just the *real* Designers. Dear Natasha - DT was implemented because, after 20 years of accountants, controllers, financial wizards running large corporations focus has been lost regarding the end user. DT is the answer to that. It has nothing to do with designers - nor does anyone believe that the guy in the post department is now on the same level as the top designer - just because he spent 2 hours creating user stories.

[ether]

I'm more of a traditional graphic designer, if you will, so I know what she's trying to say, but personally, I think the presentation is full of logical fallacies and I walked away with the impression that she's not aware of how design thinking isn't linear, if she understands it at all. I wonder if she had anyone crit her presentation beforehand.

I agree with her that intuition, etc. are just as important, but to assume that it excludes or invalidates those things simply because it's not an explicitly stated step, that's not a very valid argument.
"Crit" is the baked-in driving force behind each of those stages. Otherwise, where's the need to prototype, ideate, or test come from? If there's anything that makes design thinking superior to other design approachs, it would be the reinforcement that "you are not the user, " and outline the requirement to solicit "crit" from not just fellow designers or even stakeholders/clients, but the actual users, from start to finish.

Design thinking definitely isn't perfect, but it's perfect for the time when more and more engineers began to delve into the world of designing experiences rather than just features for digital products.

[peterfoley]

Natasha, I am now 52....I have 26 years working to learn and practice..'best practice' using design thinking... I always felt something was missing using this restrictive step guide design thinking approach. I love David Kelly's enthusiasm and his ability to 'equalise' status in a corporate workshop setting. However...many companies still fixate on on steps, hierarchy and 3m (lol), your speach is such a brilliant shout out. I still believe in empathy as it encourages collaboration and for us to (as you so rightly say) all surround ourselves with evidence... brilliant speech thankyou x

[dheerajb]

Interesting talk.. but I gotta admit I learnt more from reading the comments than the actual video🤔

[Bafunde]

The testing stage usually includes critique. It is also important to correct the speaker, no one has ever said DT is a linear process.

[LuisMartinez-ftnv]

2:26 "Very linear particular methodology..."

This title is clickbait. The basis of your argument sounds more like a personal preference (opinion) rather than a well-based hypothesis. A good argument would include how the points you made are causing issues and the proof to back it up (or a least a reference) else it's simply nitpicking. Critiques are already included in the process and how Google fetches images is unimportant. I agree that not all problems require Design Thinking but they can use it. The framework is best for complex problems. Solutions created by Design Thinking can seem obvious and effortless because that's what GOOD design is and good design is human-centered like Desing Thinking. Thank you for your talk and the opportunity to criticize it, the history of Design Thinking was informative.

[crevestudio]

She is an artist. She isn't a designer, she doesn't look at and fall in love with problems to solve. She has no empathy for the people, she loves beauty, evidence and critical view. She is focused on the 'word' DESIGN as a method that others force as a process, but it's messy, humans are messy and you must love the mess and not have 'graphic' design perfection to deeply understand and think through solving problems for people. The flippant remark about the painting on the wall was glossed over that 90% of kids were sedated because they were terrified, this took looking at the fear of children rather than focus on the people with the money and MRI analystst focused on perfect results. It's about SOLVING THE RIGHT PROBLEMS FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE. Yes the method is over used and less understood by 'GRAPHIC DESIGNERS' like her.

[eseoraka]

1. Design thinking goes beyond Design in the aesthetic sense- it is more of a philosophy and mindset for dealing with complex problems creatively
2. Design thinking is iterative (contrary to Her claims). You can move the subsequent steps back to the prior steps for clarity
3. Post-it is not a design thinking tool, just a material used while employing tools like Persona Building and Brainstorming - just like a whiteboard
4. Crit- is the same as testing phase of design thinking
5. Her example of Steve Jobs doesnt work because in describing Jobs approach she was describing the human-centered focus of design thinking. Ideo (Design Thinkers) have worked with apple to design some of apples most iconic products such as the mouse
6. Design thinking encourages us to surround ourselves with the evidence Contrary to Her claims)- The very first step in the process- empathy- is built upon getting unbiased evidence
7. Creative ability is not the same thing as artistic ability
8.Even though She is a Graphic Designer, She really doesn't understand Design Thinking
9. I wish I was in that audience :)

[Rain_power]

From personal experience, I've seen that strictly following design thinking methodologies as a process, tends to foster an environment where people are talking about ideas (AKA writing thing on sticky notes and rough napkin sketches) but are not in the process of thinking through the process of making things (the example of the architect studio with the foam prototypes). Both forms of thinking are valuable, but DT tends to miss out on the thinking through making approach. It makes sense that business execs. would gravitate towards and more easily understand the methods they can accomplish themselves.

Many design fields like architecture, graphic design, and industrial design tend to focus more on learning through making. This is much less prevalent in digital and UX design industries. I think this is one of the reasons digital design feels so homogeneous right now.

I only see opportunities to bolster UX processes from the criticisms that Natasha Jen makes here. This talk is crit 101. The fact that so many are struggling to deal with criticism perfectly exemplifies the industries inexperience with it.

[crlob]

"Real designers surround themselves with evidence" Thank you for blowing my mind.

[crashbanger]

Natasha, thank you so much for your thought provoking presentation. From a "designers" standpoint I think I get your point. However I believe there is real value in enabling and empowering non-designers with creative tools and mindset to solve business challenges. In my mind this is more about Business Straetgy and less to do with actual "design" of things. For example what does an organization design "look" like? Or how might we think about applying AI to our business or our service model? Maybe these aren't typical design problems but to simply write off Design Thinking because it's not typical to what "designers" use misses the point I think. Additionally when you say the 5 step process is linear I think that's not exactly right - typically we use and recommend it as a non linear approach with the main point being iterative improvements with customer or people centricity. Design Thinking as a methodolgy extends well beyond "designers" and the typical design fields they are engaged in. Lastly Crit is handled by ethnographic methods such as Think aloud Testing or the Rose, Thorn, Bud activity. There are others of course. The title of your presentation does help give the topic thoughtful attention. Thanks again for your thought provoking presentation!

[franrub]

I am a visual designer who values the use of design thinking to develop ideas quickly. A process can be valuable if understood because ideas don't only come from designers, they can come from anyone. Everyone brings their knowledge, biases, experiences, ideas into the discussion in an open and nonjudgmental manner to come up with a solution (conversion), and then branch out (diversion) from there. The method will push you to step outside your comfort zone resulting in results that are even better than expected. To see the potential of Design thinking, I think it must be experienced rather than read about or studied. This isn't only applicable to visual design; it applies to everything.

[chumleyk]

Everyone's a 'designer' now. Which, philosophically, means no one is. Design Thinking is an attempt to codify a simplified, replicable suite of processes to democratise the BASELINE for designing things by everyone. These are a minuscule fraction of the many internal and external processes an experienced and disciplined Traditional Designer goes through to do their job.

DT still has yet to compliment Traditional Design in many ways because of human error i.e. threatened ego, stubbornness, narcissism etc (on both sides of the equation). The bottom line is perception still is reality and Design Thinking is where the corporate perception is at with the checkbook for a lot of things right now.

I see this evolving in 5 years to welcome Traditional Design back into the fold once businesses realise Design Thinking practitioners fall horribly short in key areas like Trad Designers did in others, inclusive rather than the elusive exclusivity of talent. DT industries are a great place for those who couldn't find a home in Traditional Design to flourish in though. Room for everyone!

You can see it this way (exaggerated for effect): Trad Design is Individual Exceptionalism and Design Thinking is Socialist Pragmatism. I'm a fan of both and can't wait for the merger, call me a Design Liberalist.