This document discusses how the field of design is evolving from making physical objects to facilitating collaboration across disciplines through design thinking and design-led integration. It argues that designers can create new platforms and methods to enable stakeholders from different fields to work together effectively on complex problems. These design-led platforms and approaches will facilitate collaboration, simplify specialized knowledge, and develop new tools and frameworks to democratize expertise. The document envisions design taking a leadership role in integrating disciplines and facilitating application-based, empirical academic research on design-led approaches.

1. Design
Making
Design
Thinking
Design
Leading
THE FIELD OF
DESIGN IS
EVOLVING.
Design has moved away
from its roots of making.
Consultancies have
instead popularized
design thinking by
simplifying its core
concepts and making
them broadly accessible.
Today many disciplines
are teaching their own
form of design thinking.

2. ?
WHAT WILL BE THE ROLE OF
THOSE TRAINED AS DESIGNERS
WHEN EVERYBODY
IS A DESIGN THINKER?
This question is posed in:
Sanders, E. (2017). Design Research at the Crossroads of Education and Practice.
She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 3(1), pp.3-15.

3. Previous Objective
Future Aspiration
Craft and Methods for
Human-Centered
Objects + Visuals
Mindset and Principles for
Empathy on a
Mass Scale
Integrative Platforms to
Create and
Lead Change
DESIGN RESEARCH
CAN REORIENT ITS
PRACTICE OF MAKING
TOWARD NEW
INTEGRATIVE
PLATFORMS.
Making
Thinking
Leading

4. Design-led Strategy for
Digital Transformation
Design-led Systems for
Operational Excellence
Design-led Resilience for
Climate Disasters
Design-led Justice for
Educational Inequality
Design-led Change for
Public Policy
Design-led Planning for
Refugee Immigration
Possible
Design-Led
Platforms
THESE PLATFORMS
WILL BE DESIGN-LED.
Both industry-based and problem-
specific research platforms will emerge.
Design-led practices will enable
integration across stakeholders,
disciplines and time orientations.
Design-led platforms can incubate:
• New academic research
• New products and services
• New methods
• New technologies
• New startups and innovation
initiatives

5. Why Design-Led Integration?
TODAY’S CHALLENGES
REQUIRE COLLABORATION
ACROSS STAKEHOLDERS.
Stakeholders across academia, industry and
government are working together to tackle
the massive problems we face today.
But they are often falling short.
Many can’t communicate with each other.
They lack a common frame of reference,
language and understanding of each
other’s perspective.
?
Technical
Experts
Behavioral
Experts
Industry
Experts
Aspiring
Change
Makers
Stakeholders
Policy
Makers
Current Attempts at
Interdisciplinary
Collaboration

6. Technical
Experts
Policy
Makers
Industry
Experts
Aspiring
Change
Makers
Stakeholders
Behavioral
Experts
Why Design-Led Integration?
DESIGNERS CAN ENABLE NEW
FORMS OF COLLABORATION
THROUGH MAKING.
The methods, technologies and insights from
deeply technical disciplines need to be accessible
to non-technical users and collaborators.
Design has a deep practice of creating
experiences, languages and tools that provide
affordances to others—giving people new
abilities to make use of complex machinery,
software and systems.
Designers can leverage these practices to
lead the integration of disciplines—
democratizing knowledge and making
expertise more accessible.
New Vision for
Design-Led
Integration

7. Up and Down the
Ladder of
Complexity
Using both human-level and
systems level understanding to
bring bold, abstract thinking back
and forth between:
• Different levels of analysis
• Quantitative and qualitative
outputs
• Historic, present and future
time horizons
Building and Facilitating
Access to
Authoring Tools
BringingUnderstandingtoa
1:1 Human
Scale
Operationalize insights into real,
tangible meaning for each
stakeholder involved.
Use empathy and storytelling
to design immersive content,
experiences and artifacts
that relay both reality and
its magnitude.
Systemic Insight1
NEW DESIGN-LED
METHODS WILL EMERGE
FROM PREVIOUS TRADITIONS:
Enablement3Simplification2
Develop new languages,
theories and frameworks that
give non-experts access to the
affordances of other disciplines.
Codify those affordances into
new tools, interfaces and
systems that give non-experts
access to authorship.

8. DESIGN MUST
TAKE ON A
LEADERSHIP
ROLE.
LEADERS MUST
INTEGRATE
THEMSELVES
WITHIN DESIGN TEAMS.
Leaders
Designing
Designers
Leading

9. DESIGN-LED RESEARCH
WILL REQUIRE
AN ACADEMIC
DISCIPLINE
THAT IS BOTH
APPLICATION
BASED AND
EMPIRICALLY
FOCUSED.
Application of
Design-Led
Research
Create holistic
understanding through
co-creation, application
and creation of artifacts
and prototypes
Academic Research with
Empirical
Methods
Create specific
knowledge through
controlled experiments,
simulations and applied
social research
Frame the Theory
New insights will emerge to
help point the microscope
in the right direction
Ground the
Practice
Evidence will help validate
methods and inspire new
design approaches

10. MY PROJECTIONS
ABOUT THE
EVOLVING FIELD
OF DESIGN.
The previous slides are based on
perspectives I’ve gained from working
in multidisciplinary design teams and
pursuing the frontiers of innovation.
I believe the application of design-led
integration will be incubated across
various hubs—leading corporations,
start-ups disrupting complex
industries, forward-thinking
academic programs, next
generation social enterprises and
progressive government programs.
My goal is to leverage design-led
integration to push change for the
better—building a cohort of fellow
travelers who capture learnings,
push each other’s thinking and
proliferate an ecosystem of
design-led practice, platforms,
methods and theory.