What are Design Thinking tools?

In my world, design thinking tools are used for opening up minds, getting everyone relaxed and on the same page, and then tapping into the group mind to plumb the ideas that they all have, but carry unconsciously. With careful observation of what happens, a facilitator/researcher can also gain insights beyond the parameters of the problem. These outliers might prove to be ideas that open up possibilities not originally conceived to be “on the table”.

You’re not going to see the explanation of quantum physics, but you’ll see things from defining a city’s essence in the year 2030, to understanding how people make their decisions in front of recycling bins, to hinting at how a community might understand and dig in to help people marginalized by homelessness.

I generally work with groups of 20 to as many as 80, breaking them into groups of about five. I use three tools for the most part and they are designed for the client and the challenge. They are usually aimed at:

1. Acclimatizing/educating and/or lowering resistance to participation (sometimes, some people don’t really want to play. Can’t fix it every time, but this helps a lot).

2. Sensitizing people to those who aren’t just like them. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said, “Make a friend out of someone who doesn't look like you, and you'll get to understand their humanity.” In these exercises, I get participants to explore that friend and their situation.

3. Asking groups to tell us about their new found friends/ future community/solution and what they’ve learned about them/it.

What are wicked problems?

Wicked problems are tangled, complex issues. They involve complexity in culture, finance, politics, education, and various other societal norms and expectations that make creating an absolute or global solution impossible. There are multiple parameters for a wicked problem. Generally, they are ill-defined and the solutions are not true or false. They cannot be tested as one would in science. The solutions lie in trials, and “every trial counts” as part of the solution. The success of solutions are dependent on how well the question is defined, as in “How might we apply community-driven methods to reduce the social stigma of homelessness?”

Labelled “wicked problems” in 1973 by UC Berkeley design theory professors Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, these kinds of challenges can often be more effectively addressed through multidisciplinary co-operation guided by people like designers and design strategists who, through their experience with divergent thinking and using abductive reasoning and collaborative sensemaking, can assist subject experts to see new ways of solving problems. 

What about the not-so-wicked problems?

Not every problem is as noble as shifting a social stigma. But with climate change, a pandemic, and other immovable external forces pushing on communities and companies, these organizations are wrestling with what the future looks like and how they need to reposition to adapt.

In these cases, pulling the community together around the issues is a way to empower people to become agents of change within that community. First, they are not simply asked questions. They are given tools to create and tell stories; many stories. And, if leadership is visionary,  those stories are heard, recognized, and folded into a design solution that feeds back into the stories and celebrates them. 

The goal is to provide the opportunity to build more resilient communities and, maybe, a better world.