Design Thinking and Designerly Ways of Knowing in Operational Research Practice

Abstract

During the last century designing has gone through a major change, from a predominantly individual creative process to a multidisciplinary interaction process, mainly between the engineering, economic and social sciences. Tim Browne, the scientific father of Design Thinking describes Design Thinking as essentially working in three core steps: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. In this contribution in the first part an analysis of the concept of Design Thinking is provided to get clearer how Design Thinking can support the designer on his way to a successful designed product or service. Design Thinking seems to be widely accepted as complex innovation method which almost guaranties creative results. However, until now there is no grounded attempt known which validates at least some of the complex, general, and partly very abstract assumptions. However, the question arises: Can design thinking be/ come a (design) method? Or do we simply believe in it? Then, the method is a myth. In the second part we will present an analysis of Design Thinking that is based on the human thinking process as such and furthermore provides a scientific base of how designers think. Thus, the designers` thinking process can be steered and – if necessary – modified. If Design Thinking becomes a part of the ‘normal’ thinking process other cognitive aspects become relevant for the design output, for example, the question-asking behaviour.