Abstract
Many of the problems we face in today’s society are extremely complicated; they tend to spans many different disciplines, to be ill-structured, and their solution requires a creative, solution focussed approach. In other words, many problems we face today are bearing an ever closer resemblance to design problems. This realisation has led to an extensive study into the possibilities of developing a ‘design methodology of the social sciences’, where fields such as ‘lawmaking’ and ‘the making of a curriculum ’, have been described in design-like terms, and supported by design methods [Heffen et al. 1999, Visscher-Voerman, 1999]). The solution of these problems requires design expertise. We can also see that ‘design expertise’ is spreading through society in yet another way – we find people with a design background in all walks of life. And they profess to use their design expertise to solve the problems they face. Designers find new roles for themselves. To create these new roles for design we need a much more detailed and clearer understanding of what ‘design expertise’ really is, and how to support its development. But what IS design expertise ? In this paper we will describe this ‘design expertise’ in two, quite different ways: we will start with a brief description of the nature of design expertise (§ 1). Then we will introduce a model that deals with the development of design expertise (§ 2,3), and match that with some empirical data (§ 4). The conclusions (§ 5) concentrate on outlining a research programme for the further development of these models of design expertise.
Citation
Dorst, K. (2004) Investigating the Nature of Design Thinking., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/38
Investigating the Nature of Design Thinking.
Many of the problems we face in today’s society are extremely complicated; they tend to spans many different disciplines, to be ill-structured, and their solution requires a creative, solution focussed approach. In other words, many problems we face today are bearing an ever closer resemblance to design problems. This realisation has led to an extensive study into the possibilities of developing a ‘design methodology of the social sciences’, where fields such as ‘lawmaking’ and ‘the making of a curriculum ’, have been described in design-like terms, and supported by design methods [Heffen et al. 1999, Visscher-Voerman, 1999]). The solution of these problems requires design expertise. We can also see that ‘design expertise’ is spreading through society in yet another way – we find people with a design background in all walks of life. And they profess to use their design expertise to solve the problems they face. Designers find new roles for themselves. To create these new roles for design we need a much more detailed and clearer understanding of what ‘design expertise’ really is, and how to support its development. But what IS design expertise ? In this paper we will describe this ‘design expertise’ in two, quite different ways: we will start with a brief description of the nature of design expertise (§ 1). Then we will introduce a model that deals with the development of design expertise (§ 2,3), and match that with some empirical data (§ 4). The conclusions (§ 5) concentrate on outlining a research programme for the further development of these models of design expertise.