Paper summary - Design Thinking: An Educational Model towards Creative Confidence, by Ingo Rauth, Eva Koppen, Birgit Jobst and Christoph Meinel

What I read

In this article, Rauth, Köppen, Jobst, and Meinel describe a view of design thinking in education, using interviews as a primary source of data to define how design thinking supports creative confidence development.

First, the authors explain that for “design creativity” to be successful, the work must be done in an “external setting”, with team communications, “non-routiness, unstable environments and incompleteness for operational specifications.” They describe that many authors think of creativity and information as a way of processing information, and the output of this form of creativity is actually knowledge generation.

Design education is the context in which the knowhow of this knowledge production is developed; the authors explain that design education is the “base of knowledge about design creativity.” There are few studies that show the methods educators use in fostering creativity, and therefore, in helping product talent for knowledge generation.

Next, the authors explain the context of their work, grounding it in the education provided at Stanford’s d.school and Potsdam’s d.school.

In the next section, the authors define various elements of design thinking. They explain that design thinking is a problem solving approach that deals with “everyday-life-problems” which, they explain, are synonymous with “wicked problems”, defined by Rittel in 1972. Design thinking is a way of solving these problems. This is juxtaposed to analytical science-based thinking: design thinking is a “meta-discipline” while science is a “mono-discipline.”

The authors explain their definition of design thinking:

It is not a static process, but an approach to creative problem solving. Each team and individual develops their own process as they work on a problem, adapting and adding to it as they go. The key element is being mindful of how you work, not just what your outcome is. Regardless of the steps you take, the elements underlying the process are the mindsets of empathy, an attitude of prototyping, collaboration, iteration, and feedback.

Schon and Moran and Carroll are briefly cited as showing how design thinking is iterative and externalized. Next, the “d.school” concept is introduced as a place for teaching this form of thinking. Their model of education is summarized (referencing Lande) as being Human-centered, Mindful of process, Empathetic, with a Culture of Prototyping, leveraging Show Don’t Tell thinking, with a Bias towards action, and using Radical collaboration. The authors describe that the use of “d.” as a prefix at the schools indicates the culture of the school is strong, which in turn indicates the beliefs of the people at the school are strong, too.

In the next section, the authors explain the data collection process of the work, which is based on interviews with 17 experts. The experts were “randomly selected”, and the interviews were “informal one-to-one meetings.” The interviews were organized around three goals of design education: “cognitive knowledge transfer,” “emotional and motivational abilities”, and “competencies and skills.” The authors describe that the gathered data was analyzed to identify “items,” which led to the creation of “key categories,” which then led to “key insights of each researcher.” The authors then explain their findings, primarily related to tools (methods), modes, and process steps.

Five modes are identified. This includes a mode for emphasizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. Basic tools are provided, which include brainstorming, drawing and prototyping. First, students learn the process in a linear way, with “predefined creative challenges.” Then, over time, students view less structured challenges, focusing on the wicked problems that were previously described.

The different mindsets are briefly mentioned, as well, although the authors explain that educators have only vague ideas of what that means. They explain that this was mentioned “by nine out of eight interviewees,” which seems like a written mistake.

The next section of findings explains that the development of creative confidence emerged as a theme from nearly all of the participants; the authors describe that as the “development of trust in one’s own creative skills.” Four teachers explained that this was a goal of design thinking education. The authors explain that “By continuously exposing students to creative challenges and by questioning more and more of the initial believes students developed confidence and competency within their creative behavior as the only reliable factors.”

Finally, the authors provide a model for thinking about creative confidence, focusing on modes and mindsets. Repetition is indicated as a key part of gaining confidence. The authors explain that “Some quotes of the interviewees were especially interesting regarding the confidence developed in students.” Students develop a “bias” towards being creative, based on this repetition and practice. All of the mindsets emphasize creative behavior and problem solving.

In the last section, the authors discuss their findings. They explain that this work “validated” their hypothesis: that by repetition, design thinking creates mindsets that in sum build creative confidence.” They now define creativity as “the ability to generate innovative ideas,” with design being the way in which those ideas are expressed. Their model, of moving from methods to process to mindsets to creative confidence, is visualized and formalized.

It’s pointed out that there was almost no agreement or “coherence” in defining design thinking during the interviews, and so the authors propose a definition of design thinking, in teaching: it is a “learning model which supports design creativity, utilizing a project and process based learning process by emphasizing creative confidence and competence.”

What I learned and what I think

The more I get into these published, peer-reviewed academic articles, the more confused, frustrated, and disappointed I seem to be getting. This paper provides very little in terms of a contribution of knowledge, has nearly no method or process to data collection and analysis and synthesis, has typos that aren’t just sloppy, but that also run into their method itself, and is just plain wrong in several places. I want to assign the model that was visualized some sort of value, but I don’t know to whom it would be valuable.

The paper makes a thin attempt to explain design thinking; this has been done many, many times prior to the publication of this paper in 2010. Tim Brown’s article in 2008, in HBR, is considered one of the base articles about pop-design thinking. The authors cite it, but provide no contributions to extending it. The 2007 article by Beckman and Barry isn’t cited. I quickly searched Scholar; there are over 5000 sources before 2010; I don’t see much or any contribution from this work.

The data collection that’s described is super weird. Randomly selected design professors, but from two schools? What was the “random” method – did they really scientifically select professors where each had a likelihood of being chosen, and then the teachers actually agreed to speak with them? In what world is an “informal meeting” considered strong data collection? Why were the three “goals” selected as a way of structuring the conversations? What does it mean to identify “items” in gathered data? How can nine of eight do something? How does nine of eight not get caught and fixed during peer review, or even a brief self-review?

The authors introduce “modes”, and imply that this is a progressive idea. But they then go on to explain that only four of the instructors understood what it meant. They explain that there was almost no coherence or shared definition of design thinking. Then how can results be generalized? If 19 people have dramatically different views of the pedagogical core of what they are teaching, it seems impossible to draw any conclusions about it at all, except to say that there is no agreed upon definition of design thinking, which then likely means there are no generalized ways of teaching it.

The authors describe the “Emphasize-mode.” That’s not anything, unless it’s an unfortunate typo for “Empathize.”

They introduce mindsets, but then quote a teacher as not using mindsets, and instead focus on risk taking, which isn’t included anywhere else in the paper.

The authors mention Rittel’s work, and equate design thinking to it. Every design problem is not wicked. Most aren’t. Design students certainly aren’t equipped to focus on this type of problem, even at the end of their study.

The paper makes sweeping generalizations with no substantiation, some of which are questionable or inaccurate:

• “Design education is the base of knowledge about design creativity.”
• “Design thinking is a holistic concept to design cognition and design learning that enables students to work successfully in multi-disciplinary teams and enact positive, design-led change in the world.”
• “Design thinking can be seen as a meta-disciplinary concept”

So ridiculous: The ‘d.’ prefix… can be seen as a strong indicator of the school’s culture.” The friggin’ d prefix is branding!

And the biggest issue of all: They go out of their way to tell us that creative confidence—the whole point of the paper—is mentioned only by four of the 18 teachers!

I picked this article because it is one of the most often cited papers on this topic that I could find! More than 400 other papers have included quotes and data from this paper. While the conference Design Creativity was in its first year when this was published, it went on for another five, so it seems legitimate. And it’s under the Design Society umbrella, which would imply legitimacy and rigor. I’m just so perplexed this got published at all, much less cited by others.

I need more coffee.