Looking broadly at the history of design methods, the design process models we focus have been developed over the past 70 years, from the 1950s and 1960s when design methods for system development began to be recognised in technology development, in industry and in management science. By the late 1960s we find a call for a broader and more holistic design approaches to tackle still more complicated technology infrastructures and the ways in which they impacted work places and organisations. This is what came to be known as the Scandinavian model for participatory design. During the second half of the 20^th century we find parallel endeavours to create comprehensive design process models, with the acknowledgement that design had moved beyond product design or construction into the wider arena of problem solving.

In recent years, as the disciplinary scope of design as a problem-solving process has grown to be a major approach for human-centredness and open innovation, multiple methods, such as design anthropology, artistic research and cultural probes, have been integrated into process models such as the Double Diamond, which we will be introducing you to next. This leads to the concept and enhanced design process of design thinking.

Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. It is a process to think with and through to propose the unexpected, to gain new perspectives and insights, and develop new and more holistic ways of understanding a problem while finding alternative solutions.

At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods. Thus, Design Thinking also marks a methodological re-integration of what we assume about earlier phases of design methods, such as experimental craftmanship and material knowledge that we find in today's maker culture.

Iterations in Design Methodology

In “Generations in Design Methodology” (2003) John Broadbent references four generations of design methodologies in which he sees the connections between design and science, hands-on approaches and conceptualising such as craft methods, design by drawing, and hard and soft systems.

While craftmanship has been with human culture as the very basis of cultural creation, the idea of crafting as problem solving process is still to gain wide acceptance. In the renaissance drawing enters design methodology via mathematics and topography, with the explorative processes of drawing maps being a major enterprise during early modern colonialisation. Craftmanship as well as drawn designs are still key to fields such as architecture and product design, and are key objects for humanities research and interpretation of history and culture.

In our introduction to Design Thinking and Maker Culture, we did not start out with crafts methods or drawing for design, though these two first generations of design methodologies are presented in various cases as they still impact human-centred design (see for example the case of weaving in Unit 2). We started our introduction in the mid 20th century when technology design and human culture intersected in complex problem fields and a call for a wider understanding of design as human-centred emerged; when ‘hard system’ design converged with a broader criticism of hard systems for being non-transparent and interfering with working conditions.

Hard System and Industrial Design

Hard system approaches are listed by John Broadbent as the third generation of design methodologies and may be said to have begun with the German Ulm School in the 1950s, and expanded to the US as explained in Lesson 1. Hard system approaches are based on operational research and management science for linear and well-structured technological solutions and were applied to industrial and technological design innovations during the 1950s and 1960s. The hard system approaches are considered as largely positivist and procedural and were criticized for lacking in higher order design approaches, including user orientation and human-centredness.

Despite this very justified criticism (not least that the hard system design created mass produced products of low quality as well as highly industrialised production systems) design thinking also owes to its initial development to hard system approaches in a search for a unified system of design, encouraging the integration of intuition and experience with structured processes. The Ulm School of Design (Hochschule der Gestaltung Ulm) has been highly impactful in this respect. Ulm was founded in 1953 as a continuation of the Bauhaus, as a restorative process to the German industrial sector after the Second World War. While Ulm diverted from the Bauhaus-focus on the autonomous artwork, engaging more with science and society. The Ulm Model highlighted the ethics of industrial object design, a sober, responsible design for mass production, as well as a preference for democratic materials, modular design and functional aesthetics. Most significantly, and following Bauhaus, Ulm developed a studio-based, highly student-centred model for teaching industrial design oriented towards interdisciplinary learning and still renowned as the Ulm Curriculum.

HfG Ulm Metal Workhop 1958 (Monoscop)

Soft System Approaches and Participatory Design

In "Generations of Design Methodologies", Broardbent argues that the emergence of a fourth design methodology, that of soft system methods, took off from the criticism of hard system approaches for being inadequate in solving ‘wicked problems.’ Wicked problems were defined as a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing” (Churchman, 1967). The 1960s definition of 'wicked problems' are similar to what we today understand as (grand) challenges and complex problems.

Soft system approaches are fundamentally participatory, based in creative and critical processes where problem definition and problem solving emerge gradually among participants. Whereas hard system approaches are grounded in natural sciences and technology development, soft system approaches are grounded in social sciences and adding purposeful, abductive, iterative and sense-making approaches to the more functional, linear and inductive technical design processes.

The Scandinavian Participatory Design Model

One of the first impactful soft system methodologies is the Scandinavian Participatory Design Model (see Unit 4 Timeline). This methodology was developed in Norway in the 1970s, when computer professionals worked closely, in a non-linear fashion, with labour unions and workers on the integration of new technologies into workplaces.

Subsequent projects in Scandinavia involved interdisciplinary research teams from computer science, sociology, economics, and engineering, collaborating with union leaders and members in repair shops, factories, and a department store, again on issues surrounding computer integration and its effect on workplace production and processes. (Martin & Hannington, p. 128)

The UTOPIA project of the late 1980s is a seminal example of a participatory design process, including its ups and downs. UTOPIA involved a Scandinavian team of researchers and typographers in the newspaper industry in participatory processes around the implementation of the TIPS image processing system for the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The image processing system was tested for its working processes as well as for user and developer experience. The UTOPIA project sparked the introduction of innovative, experience-based methods such as role-playing scenarios using low-fidelity prototypes, experimental test user requirements, and tests for alternative solutions in a workspace simulation environment. The participatory process and its new methods pointed to the need for a broader field of expertise and the acknowledgement of user involvement when new technological solutions – hard systems – are implemented:

"For us users it is not enough to have computer scientists as partners, although they are very sensitive, we also need working life and work environment researchers for justifying requirements on work organisation and environment. [...] With the help of paper simulations in Utopia we could define a usable model for combining images, with covering and partly transparent masks etc., which was then finalised by the TIPS programmers" (Utopia research interview with graphic worker, resources for the Utopia Project)

Design Thinking as a Fifth Generation Design Approach

'Wicked problems' were defined in the late 1960s as complex system challenges, and are the type of problems which we today recognize as grand challenges to be solved by user involvement and working across sectors and disciplines. This is also where art and humanities play the core role of bridging disciplines and empathizing as a way to arrive at new solutions, in user, value, and culturally-informed ways.

John Broardbent suggests a fifth generation design methodology: one that shows similarities with our approach of integrating art and humanities. As 'wicked problems' escalated into global challenges of the highest complexity, for example, the 17 highly interconnected UN Sustainable Development Goals, we recognize that soft system approaches open pathways for developing and expanding design thinking needs to be utilised on a larger socio-cultural scale. Where it has been said, that technology-only or hard system solutions work for ‘tame’ or well-defined problems, soft system solutions and design engage with complex problems of interfacing technology with human users and communities, as well as with a global environment in the delicate material balances of life. Broadbent's fifth generation of design thinking expands into an even broader–culturally, creatively and critically informed–approach, with humanistic and artistic approaches at its core.

The case study on the next page demonstrates how design thinking is used as a means to tackle one of these grand challenges.

References

• Andersen, Christian Ulrik, "UTOPIA and the Metainterface", Stages #7, Liverpool Bienale 2020
• Broadbent, J. (2003). Generations of Design Methodologies. The Design Journal. Volume 6. Issue 1.
• Martin, B. & Hanington, B. (2012). Universal Methods of Design. Rockport Publishers.
• Ulm School of Design, see https://monoskop.org/Ulm_School_of_Design
• Sundblad, Y. (2010). UTOPIA: Participatory Design from Scandinavia to the World. 3rd History of Nordic Computing (HiNC). Oct 2010. Stockholm. Sweden. pp.176-186