Design Thinking Blog

Overview: This is a “rant” of sorts from Adaptive Path and the struggle they are experiencing with hiring Design interns.

Thoughts: I like this!  The struggle that they outline highlights where Design Thinking originated in the overall Design process.  The make a fantastic point that students who go to design school to become Design Thinkers are not going to be good designers.

Original Post and comments HERE at Adaptive Path

by Dan

It’s that time of year when Adaptive Path wades through stacks of design school students’ resumes, looking for summer interns and potential hires. As I was doing this, a trend that that I had suspected became clear to me: quite a few design schools no longer teach design. Instead, they teach “design thinking” and expect that that will be enough.

Frankly, it isn’t.

I was taught that design has three components: thinking, making, and doing. (Doing is the synthesis, presentation, and evaluation of a design; the bridge between thinking and making.) If all design schools are teaching is the thinking, well, they are missing the other two thirds of the equation. They have abandoned craft for craze. Thinking without the making and doing is almost useless in the job market, unless you want to work at Accenture or some other big consulting firm. It probably won’t help you get a job as a designer in a studio environment. You’d be better off getting a degree in Humanities; at least you would be well-rounded. Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Article: This is Part 2 of an interview with David Butler that is a follows up on the Fast Company Article and Business Week article that have drawn so much attention.

Thoughts on this Article: I like the questions that are raised and David Butler’s honesty in his answers.  This is a great “rest of the story” to go with the original interviews.

Part 2 of Designing on Purpose: An Interview with David Butler, VP of Design at Coca-Cola

by Henning Fischer

Welcome to part 2 of our interview with David Butler, VP of Design for the Coca-Cola Company. Part 1 is available here. When we left off we were talking about the different roles that design fills within Coca-Cola. This part of the interview shifts gears a bit and talks about one of the major themes we’ll be exploring at MX: designing in a down economy.

[Henning Fischer] How do you design with purpose in a down economy?

[David Butler] That’s a good question. It’s all in how you look at it. That sounds kind of trite, but there’s a similar discussion about the value of design. Is part of the value of design driven towards productivity? Doing more with less? Or is designing to do more with less thought about in terms of sustainability? They’re both sort of the same thing. In a down economy, doing more with less is exactly the focus of the company. In reality it’s what we do every day. As designers it’s always about how we can provide more value or more enduring experiences. It’s not that different from what we do in an up economy.

[Brandon Schauer] Design is easily seen as a cost center in a tough economy. What advice would you give to people who are feeling that? Read the rest of this entry »

Overview of Article: This is an interview with David Butler that is a follows up on the Fast Company Article and Business Week article that have drawn so much attention.

Thoughts on this Article: I like the questions that are raised and David Butler’s honesty in his answers.  This is a great “rest of the story” to go with the original interviews.

Original Post and Comments HERE at Adaptive Path

by Henning Fischer

Photograph by Jake Chessum

Brandon Schauer and I (Henning Fischer) recently sat down with David Butler, VP of Design for the Coca-Cola Company and MX 2009 speaker. Here’s part 1 of “Designing on Purpose.”

[Henning Fischer] Could you tell us a little about yourself, your team, what you do for Coca-Cola and where you sit within the organization? Read the rest of this entry »