This week on Khoi Vinh’s site Subtraction, the principle designer at Adobe published a transcription of a recent talk he gave at the the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Nicely titled “In Defense of Design Thinking, Which Is Terrible,” the lecture hinges on the argument that the backlash to “design thinking”—that step-by-step, codification of the design process, usually to be used in business—is a resistance among designers to democratize design. Developers and engineers, Vinh suggests, are eager to encourage the idea that “anyone can code” and value educating people over the prospect of “bad code.” Designers, on the other hand, prefer to keep design an exclusive domain for fear of a proliferation of “bad design.” Vinh sees this kind of thinking as being behind the aversion to design thinking, and suggests an attitude adjustment:
“Any embrace of design by non-designers is a good thing, and design thinking qualifies here,” he writes. “The reason for this is that when that happens, it means our language, the vocabulary of design, is broadening to the rest of the world.” It’s a smart piece; read the full thing here.