Episode 83: Post-Its and Blocks

Michael and Jessica talk about the latest flare-up in the Design Thinking wars, beginning with Lee Vinsel’s article There’s So Little There There: A Response to the Stanford d.school’s Defense of Design Thinking. Jessica agrees with Vinsel that there is an “Emperor’s New Clothes” quality to design thinking:

He’s basically coming back to language, simplicity, clarity, honesty… Design Thinking, how dare it coopt language that speaks for us all? How dare it say that, in order to be empathetic, in order to be empathize, you have to follow this quid pro quo process.

Michael says that

It’s tempting and fun to piss all over design thinking, but I know a lot of smart effective designers, not just well-intentioned but actually really successful professionals, who take design thinking really seriously.

Also mentioned this week:

Natasha Jen, Design Thinking Is Bullshit
Lee Vinsel, Medium, Design Thinking is Kind of Like Syphilis — It’s Contagious and Rots Your Brains
Vinsel, Chronicle of Higher Education, Design Thinking is a Boondoggle
Lilly Irani, Catalyst, “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies
Roger Martin, The Design of Business
Alexandra Lange, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids
Jessica on the Incredibles (Design Observer, 2004)
Christopher Bonanos, Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous

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Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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