Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*t.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- During her Design Indaba Conference talk she expands on her thinking since declaring: Design Thinking is Bullshit.
Graphic designer and Pentagram partner, Natasha Jen, gave a talk last year called 'Design Thinking is Bullshit' that caused quite a stir. Speaking at the Design Indaba Conference earlier this year, Jen said the reaction to her talk got her to do a lot of soul-searching.
This is why she decided to expand on her thoughts on design thinking by framing it as a list of six questions that she expanded on as part of her talk.
For her the role of a graphic designer can be summed up as follows: “I always try to think about my role as a graphic designer through the lens of playing with words, symbols and images. It’s really about making information tangible and understandable and if we can make things delightful, that’s really the goal.”
The three-time National Design Award nominee has been recognised for work that makes innovative use of graphic, verbal, digital, and spatial interventions that challenge conventional notions of media and cultural contexts.
She tracked the history of design thinking, pointing out that its popularity began to rise around 2011 and then peaked in 2015.
For Jen, who also teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she is a guest critic, design thinking tends to oversimplify really complex concepts.
She says that the jargon used in design thinking involving words like co-creation and ideation or the idea that design thinking is something you unleash or unlock is also problematic.
“It’s kind of terrifying to see that design is being presented as this kind of beast that you can just let go and attack the world... I think there is a kind of attitudinal problem here,” she says.
“It’s sort of like wanting to become an Olympic athlete without wanting to be trained,” she later added.
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Thanks Natasha. Whoever said "treat them like mushrooms, keep them in the dark & feed them Bullsh*t" was right on so many levels.
where can I see that poster?
Thank you for your truthful suggestion
By the comments, I can tell nobody cared about her points, not a lot of people know about design nor of its power.
Speaking in public is not easy.....
ikr, so sad
Natasha has practised what she preached by expanding on her thoughts on design thinking to frame them into a list of 6 questions. She did her own soul searching when faced with criticisms and perhaps those of you who has gotten so upset (because of your own insecurity from being called out that you were simply jumping on the bandwagon???) should do the same?
There’s plenty of effective Design Thinking case studies though, the classic children’s MRI machine for example actually worked. Unfortunately the thing is Natasha’s arguement just sounds like why listen to a lot of people’s opinions when you could just listen to me. It’s got an equal amount of bullshit in it and is her own personal PR campaign
Thanks a lot :)
Some pathetic comments here. It feels like a lot of people jumping in to defend their own investment in themselves that dogmatically follow the principles she is trying to start a discourse in from her own perspective.
Also, her delivery; English is not her native language and she's presenting to a large audience. For a lot of people this could be a difficult thing to do.
There's a lot of exploration in trying to evolve and find better ways to design. Design Thinking is a tool, and a good starting point, but it's a facile one to encompass the whole spectrum of requirements.
I can't believe someone complained about her English. It's 2022. A lot of people around the world speak English, and a lot of us have "accents". I don't know what's so wrong about having an accent. I bet English speakers also have accents when they speak another language. They gotta stop this hate. Really interesting talk🌟
Great thoughtful follow up to her previous talk that criticizes design thinking (DT)... but I still wonder if she has a better alternative. I wish that could propose something to help the audience that DT was intended for: non-designers who need to solve creative problems.
Clearly designers (artists, architects, etc.) understand DT... but for regular people (everyone else), how would she communicate her discipline? This kind of high level problem solving does takes a lifetime to master... so what's a better way to teach it? And what would be the difference from regular problem solving?
Wait, maybe that's what she is doing? By provoking, by criticizing its fundamentals, by questioning it, and stirring up conversation... she is forcing us to think deeper about DT and design in general? I'm not sure.
Still, I did enjoy her talk :)
Thoughtful??? You are being sarcastic right. This is everything but thoughtful.
@@wisepurnima Sure, I don't agree with Natasha Jen. But I just rewatched it and still think she is thoughtful. She demonstrates the heart of DT without explicitly saying so: highly critical analysis of a wide-range of research followed by creative development.
- She bases this argument on her amazing credentials (academic and professional),
- She asks 5 critical questions,
- She highlights extensive evidence to support her argument (photos, articles, historical references),
- She analyzes this evidence thoroughly,
- Finally, she offers a poster that summarizes these critiques (which is joyfully sarcastic)
Of course, she is doing this as a provocation -- to push the buttons of DT supporters and to shift the emphasis back to professional designers. She does this in a comedic/entertaining way.
Again, I do not agree with her, but I appreciate her method of persuading... unemotional, critical, evidence based, occasionally comedic and indeed, thoughtful.
What' s the alternative?
@@tawbatawba9480 The alternative to design thinking? There are many other creative methodologies: 6 Thinking Hats, Lean Startup, TRIZ... and many others, but none are as popular as DT right now. Is that what you're asking?
Otherwise, I also believe that good thinking in general is creative: one that critically analyzes a situation, involves stakeholders, and continuously experiments with many different solutions/ improvements.
Does this methodology have a specific name? Not necessarily. Do the general masses need some sort of framework to start to learn good, holistic, healthy, collaborative thinking habits? Seems that way.
Lastly, reflecting on this video 2 years later... I think this general debate and discussion is what Natasha Jen was trying to illustrate and provoke for us.
@@tamonline01
I am planning to teach english as a foreign language to kindergarten using design thinking methodology, but I hesitate to do so. I feel like it is too much on the brian of little children. Latter on, in the high school they may get tired. I beleive the other methodologies depand heavily on drilling and repeatition, which I don' t support either. I don' t support learners learning item through memorization. Drawing on my own experience, I start to feel like I am memorizing item and rules in phisics and different disiplines without understanding in high school . At the moment, it is hard to find a methodology, and I start to quit this idea of teaching 3 years old children english in my country, because I don't want to risk the brian of those children.
I have seen design thinking in practice in New York. The deliverable worked, but was easily 2-3x budget and schedule.
I agree. This all sounds like the emperor's new clothes - a fast food route to success. No one doubts the process of creating, improving or forming products and services, but insisting on giving it a name is nonsense. What did all the companies before the birth of this buzzword do? Ask a design thinker and they'll tell you they were design thinking without knowing it.
I agree with everything. Some people call it design thinking. I just call it thinking.
Design thinking is just a framework to give guidance in the process on developing something(can be anything basically). I have the feeling that alot of people think, that design thinking replaces designers, research & observation - which is certantly not true at all.
What it does is give people a toolbox of methods to help them be more efficient at having workshops/brainstorm sessions and so on.
Design thinking is not about making something beatiful - it is about bring interdiciplinary teams together and express their ideas and views so everybody is on the same page - and designers & development teams are enabled to do the best possible job.
Design thinking sessions without designers (product / ux /ui / graphic / sound ect.) involved will not result in beautful end products - thats for sure.
So lets agree on "design thinking, without designers involved is bullshit"?
But does it give them tools? What does it bring that wasn't and hasn't already been available to teams? We should be suspicious of this kind of buzz word/method as promoting a lie of simplicity. Many methods appear to have the allure and security of faith. Any web search for design thinking successes only shows examples from organisations offering fee-based training, with no actual verified evidence of improvement...only subjective opinion.
The idea is everywhere but seems to be promoted by training providers. It smells heavily of undefined BS.
They earned their success….for the most part.
Strong reasoning:
When you search design thinking you only see the same images.
Why do you write the user comments on post it papers.
Having trained in Toastmasters have made me hear "uh's" and "um's" too much that it made it difficult to hear her message.
I'm always interested in seeing an opposing point of view, but she's speaking from a very 1-sided POV. This myopic view is ridiculous. I understand designers feeling protective of the process. While I can empathize, I don't agree.
Her point about images in design thinking is super weak. The outcomes of design thinking are anything: products, processes, solutions, problems. The visuals are replaced with prototypes. Images are part of it, but they aren't the entirety. (Also, has she not seen David Kelly's TED talk with the MRI machine and the story that goes along to turn it into an experience... not just graphics.)
Graphic design lives neatly nested within Design Thinking. She's thinking within the 1st and 2nd order of design when design thinking lives within the 3rd and 4th orders.
I for one am incredibly excited about sharing the process of designing with those who aren't classically designers.
She's being provocative to make a point. Design Thinking is incredibly accessible. It's inclusive not exclusive. But the bar to quality is so so so low compared to a traditional, trained, experienced designer. But the latter is rare. Her words may threaten your 'safety' in what you believe but a true designer can entertain any idea without being threatened and choose accordingly
I guess you are just too dumb
Watch again? It starts from 16:13. She said specifically that besides graphics on the wall, the rest of the environment was terrible - including stray wires hanging from the ceiling, poor lighting. She said that the bar for "design thinking" should be set higher. So if you're talking about the entire experience, then don't you think the other elements that mentioned should have been cared for too? I know it hurts to hear the truth and to know that you really don't know sh!t about design, but simply jumping onto the latest hype and will soon move on to the next.
words misunderstood
In the first 25 seconds of her speech she said "umm" 10 times! There's umm no way umm I can watch umm this talk umm to the umm end.
You should be ashamed of yourself, English is obviously not her first language
I'm just being crushed by the ums...can't....make it...
So correct (imo).
The the the the 😂😂😂
I really think she don't understand Design Thinking at all. She keeps pulling physical or tangible things for comparison. Design Thinking got nothing to do with graphic design or visual design. Removing the word Design solved her problems i think. Just my opinion :(
I very much disagree with Natasha here. I myself am an engineer and I can say that most of our work is below the surface... Our work shows its beauty not always visually but in its functional implementation.
Even if you look at things on graphic design level I find her to be very narrow-minded about such a subjetive matter.
Bold, opinionated, superficially informed, and so plenty wrong. Agreed with the points about form and quality.
Agree it seems as if she thinks design thinking is one track minded and works like a bootcamp lesson and that alone shows how little she understands or is just misunderstanding. I cringed while watching because I was hoping she actually had something eye opening to say.
Design being reduced to a set of instructions is ridiculous.
It isn't. Educate yourself. This woman is very dumb.
7:30 Google Image proposing "Design Thinking Process" images when she search for "Design Thinking Project" and then she said, "you know, when you search for Architecture you actually see building..." basically confusing a framework of thinking with the result of a specific discipline... :facepalm:
Architecture is a form of design that is connected to real world usage. Her critique is exactly about design grounded in, e.g., engineering where the mechanics and the process of bringing about what is abstract into something of utility. And with utility, you cannot detach from real world instances of specific disciplines.
Rename this talk to “Uhm..”
I think you have the wrong idea of what design thinking is, the light bulb in your room currently is a product of design thinking
She is the designer behind the new reddit logo ...sigh
She starts with "so humble to be here". From her last talk on this subject, she does not come across as a humble person to me at all. She has certainly softened up on her know it all attitude around design thinking - I think...
From reading between the lines she rants on, what I perceive from this traditional designer is that her bubble has burs-ted. I feel her approach to the matter, has been addressed in the wrong way, by running to CRIT, he favorite word. She is clearly new to modern collaboration, it's obvious! her experience to team and discussion is probably very different from what the design thinking community applies at this time.
Natasha Jen is wrong! In order for her to have a strong case on her CRIT, she will need to apply ... yes! Design Thinking to her own anticipated judgement. She has her own mental model and set assumptions, which will come back to haunt her.
Design Thinking is not going to go away because it works, and is not only applicable to graphics design or product design, but even to sales processes and many other areas. She needs to start assessing her position with better context.
A concrete example from Natasha Jen is that with the intention of being funny, she mocks. As a principle, this is not a good sign of any professional or even a human being that is humble as the claims in the start of this talk. One of the pressing points of Design Thinking, is that this methodology is not a linear as she tries to repetitively imply.
Another point she tries to make is that there's shallow evidence to the results of Design Thinking because when you do a Google search for 'Design Thinking projects' she only gets diagrams... She compares this to Architecture results. Again she fails at context. You can not get the same output of results from a search based on 'methodology', than on actual 'architectural design of projects'. If you instead do a search on 'architectural design methodology', you will also get graphs!
I find her approach unprofessional, and based on very narrow thinking. Not impressed by her or the firm she is a partner of which claims to be the world’s largest independently-owned design studio (Pentagram). In summary, this is all FLUFF!
The spread of design thinking as corporate BS only serves to devalue what she has spent her life's investments on. She is truly putting the work in, so people can go around spreading "design thinking". I think she has a right to critique it. Her main point is that actual design requires critical thinking, and a lack of attachment to certain iterations for the sake of the "best design" ...
Design thinking is light minded bullshit
@@benmick7437 I'm leaning the same way, not a designer but from what I've looked at around Design Thinking seems like vapid nonsense. Coming up with an idea, applying it, testing it on people and changing it based on feedback is sort of stating the fucking obvious. Hype and bullshit similar to the Agile methodology in software development.
I find your comment unprofessional and kind of petty-minded.
I suppose you can call her unprofessional if you'd give Steve Jobs the same title. She showed us a clip of basically identical use of tone by him. She is passionate about the subject and conveys emotion because so-just like Steve Jobs frequently did.
one almost feels uncomfortable with how little Natasha Jen tried to understand about design thinking. It is easy to learn about how successful the GE scanner case study was. and no, it's not all about the look and graphic design. design thinking might not be a silver bullet but being stuck in a silo is much more dangerous today, especially if you're a designer. preaching at Design Indaba and not understanding at all what are you talking about is just sad.
Exactly! She has got to be being willfully ignorant with some of her examples. I'm wondering if in her years as a designer she's been avoiding learning anything about the business side of her client work.
She was talking about the room where the GE scanner is placed and how that can be frightening for people. She goes on to mention design itself considers culture, audience, form/function and so forth. Now let's consider a bigger picture: how many people avoid medical facilities due to some attributed emotion with it, and they die due to said avoidance. This is an issue of culture, audience, form and function that children's artwork does not solve. She used a great example to illustrate her points about design thinking leaving out critical bases of design. Just because you disagree does not mean she doesn't know what she is talking about.
@@asplitpea2087 Where is the actual study/research that shows how 'more' effective the new child-friendly room is? If you do a search there are only a few stock examples ever given.
Everyone wants to coin a new term. It's pathetic, really
Ahahaaams
Um
interesting but im not sold with these ted talks things, just more people saying the same shit you hear all the time..
Very close-minded thinking with lack of true knowledge about design and UX/UI...
Design thinking is often used in the medical field, and NASA, it is often used in plenty of non profits fighting climate crisis issues that she hopes to see it used in. She just didn't do research against what she knows. There are so many cases out there. I cringe.
Adding, she doesn't understand how companies are slow to accept design thinking and UX design in general and they won't apply things properly or at all, so the cultural shift is slow to hire designers for what they are worth and allow them the space to solve things. It's a very developer or graphic designer heavy society of problem solvers.
Would love to see someone like Kees Dorst debate this woman.
The stupidest Ted talk ever recorded
You miss understand what does D.T mean, your don’t realise the different between graphic designer and design thinking, you should learn what is design thinking is, anyway you can’t learn as long as you buy yourself in a close circle, no wonder
You are trying to prove that you are intelligent super designer and others are idiots, design thinking can deal with wider problem and you talk about deep problem, you don’t understand, stupid Natasha , sorry to say that but you are idiot
@@fadiismail8078 I don't like that you call her an idiot but I agree with everything else. It's a publicity effort.
Clearly, you have NO understanding of Design Thinking; they very criticisms you offer have NOTHING to do with Design Thinking and this would be difficult for a person who has no understanding of their own Business.
All I heard from this was Um
She should train more breathing and talking in front of an audience, way too many "ehms"
If i got a dollar for every ehms she said
What would shitty men have to complain about then?
30 seconds in and i’ve already heard ummm 30 times
It's Ummm.....very...um annoying
Let's see how you are going to talk in a 2nd language like Korean without any flaw madam. I would recommend you to learn about "L1 and L2 interference" in languages
To be completely honest I've never seen someone with so little knowledge about a subject trashing it so hard.
So humbled to be here, wooow... That's a pissing all over the audience and the subject you're talking about. I've seen two videos of you trashing the Desing Thinking and that's it, I'm not wasting any of my time on your videos anymore. There are no informations, only your poor judgement.
P.S. its always something-99 because our brains read the numbers front to back or left to right if you don't get what's front and what back and in this process it's cheaper to buy the bootcamp/course for 199 in comparation to 200. (Factual it's correct). But what would you know about it, you're a designer.
P.P.S. and so on and so forth.
P.P.P.S. Problematic.
Yeah, OK, but what is actually new about design thinking? What is it adding? The hype around it seems to de-value the hard work and dedication that successful designers and product developers put in, boiling it all down to some simple steps like a recipe. Sure its a good starting point for students to learn how to engage with design/development but that's about where it ends. Once you get any deeper it just seems empty.
@@PaulSijpkes I guess you're against any bootcamps. Againd democtarisation of MBA programs, anything what's quicker and more efficient. I've met folks like you, I have them working for me... ;-)
Umm. How many times is she going to umm. I normally don't pick on people about this but,.... Umm this is just to much!!!
Incredibly annoying!
English is not her first language. I'd like to see how you do when you speak a foreign language, if you do at all?
How about trying to learn and talk Hindi or maybe Mandarin or maybe German without any flaw sir ? So is this your lowest level of empathising with people ?
🤡 don’t watch it