Domain is problem solving paradigms although lets not restrict Design Thinking to a problem solving process – it’s involves synthesis which, by definition, implies “making”; not necessarily solving
So these are thought patterns – its way that people think. Essentially some very smart people achieve repeated success in their fields making some other very smart people want to come observe how they work and write about them. One such thing is Design thinking. This process has been perfected by engineers. Define a problem, research, brainstorm and SYNTHESIZE – implement a solution and see how it works out. Gather feedback, incorporate it into the original prototype – incremental improvements. So how did this come about?
One predecessor is Systems thinking – where we take a problem and see how it behaves in the given context. Not just in an isolated way but actually how it affects and is affected by the big picture. How, over periods of time, has the “thing” changed in response to its surroundings. Lego’s predecessor was that thing which allowed you to build a house. Next versions allowed you to interconnect and build two houses. So the kid is not building a house anymore, he is building a city. Can see how the two houses interact. Someone walking by see a door propped open and close it to “fix it”. Only if they had bothered to figure out the context of the situation, they would have figured out that the temperature inside was 27 degree C – too hot for a class of 30+ to be giving presentations!
In the past two decades “design thinking” has become more of a buzzword thrown about in business. It has become a process but the practitioners have failed to take into account the tools that differentiate and enhance this process – else its just a fancy version of Systems Thinking and Rapid Prototyping. Its mainly human-centric – empathy – where the problem solver accounts for all the actors in the situation. The people being affected and the people doing the affecting, perpetrators so to say. And creativity – novel solutions that require your typically atypical “outside the box” thinking. The Working House – essentially has thought through their service and realized that only their need-specific clients know best. So the Working House is actually guided by the clients!The Treaty where Tress were considered to have human rights. Humans first realized they have problem. They tried to solve it through the Copenhagen Summit. Didn’t work since all parties talked about what they wanted. That’s OK – organizers gather feedback and try again. This time, they analyze the actors (empathy) and figure out that the actors involved are big proponents of human rights and value their freedoms immensely. OK so if they declare trees to have human rights (the heck?! Creativity!) the actors would in turn be motivated by the need to uphold the right. It worked!The resolution was finalized and everyone was happy!So here, a solution was SYNTHESIZED by analyzing the situation and its actors. Situation was thought about from the actor’s point-of-view; this is empathy. And synthesis, by definition, is the art of “making” which is essentially a creative practices. Only in the second iteration of the process, did this work in the second iteration, requirements were refined the include the actors and the research was expanded to include the actors’ POV. This was a practice in Design Thinking!