Industrial designLesson 1 of 3 in the course Industrial design practice

Design Thinking: Methods, Innovation, Applications, and Critiques

5 flashcards · 5 quiz questions · 5 match pairs · 5 fill-in sentences · English

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Summary

Design thinking describes how designers understand and work through design problems. It includes ways of thinking, practical methods, and knowledge about design activity. This lesson introduces the concept and explains why design problems often require flexible, iterative approaches.

Design thinking refers to the cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures designers use while designing, as well as knowledge about how people reason through design problems. It is also associated with approaches for innovating products and services in business and social settings.

All flashcards

What is design thinking?
It is the set of cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures used in designing, along with knowledge about how people reason through design problems.
What makes a problem wicked?
A wicked problem is difficult to formulate definitively, has no straightforward true-or-false solution, and often involves conflicting perspectives among people affected by it.
What is problem framing?
Problem framing is the process of exploring the context and interpreting or restructuring an initial problem statement so that it suggests a useful path toward action.
What is innovative abduction?
It is a form of abductive reasoning in which a designer infers a plausible new possibility from available information, experience, and tools such as analogy.
How do representations support design?
Sketches, diagrams, models, and prototypes make ideas concrete. They help people communicate, explore tentative solutions, recognize emerging features, and identify unanswered questions.

Quiz questions

  1. Which description best captures the broad meaning of design thinking?Answer: A set of cognitive, strategic, and practical design procedures and knowledge of design reasoning.
  2. What is a characteristic feature of a wicked problem?Answer: It lacks a definitive formulation and may involve sharply differing views among affected people.
  3. What does problem framing involve?Answer: Investigating context and possibly restructuring the initial problem to reveal a useful direction.
  4. How does solution-focused thinking help a designer?Answer: Proposing tentative solutions can reveal more about the problem and its constraints.
  5. A team sketches a possible service, discovers that users are confused about eligibility, and revises its understanding of the challenge. Which concept does this best illustrate?Answer: Co-evolution of problem and solution.

Based on the Wikipedia article Design thinking, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Adapted into a summary, flashcards and quizzes.

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