Pragmatism and Design Thinking

Abstract

IntroductionEven on a cursory inspection, just what design thinking is supposed to be is not well understood, either by the public or those who claim to practice (Kimbell, 2011, p. 286).The concept of design thinking has been the center of much attention in recent years, with researchers and practitioners from a range of fields contributing to discussions of what constitutes designerly ways of knowing and doing, and how such insights might inform and inspire domains beyond traditional design disciplines. However, as emphasized by Kimbell (ibid), this mounting interest has not led to a clear understanding of design thinking. Indeed, it may resulted in a blurred picture as stakeholders with disparate perspectives and agendas take part in the discussion. In this article, I will argue that the discourse of design, and by extension the practice of design, can be developed by drawing upon central understandings and concepts from an established and well-developed theoretical position, namely pragmatist philosophy. One of the benefits of this move is that pragmatism offers a set of coherent concepts and articulations for addressing key issues in design. This can scaffold a clearer discussion of design thinking in addition to enriching our understanding of design.My core field of research is interaction design. Although practitioners and researchers within interaction design distinct topics of interest pertaining to the nature of interactive technologies, the field shares a number of similarities with other design disciplines. Most prominently, it is a field characterized by theoretical polyvocality and flux. The theoretical positions employed in interaction design address a diversity of research topics and offer different perspectives on the design process, on the use situation and on the role of theory itself. Researchers and practitioners often to act as theoretical bricoleurs (Louridas, 1999), assembling and making use of parts of this heterogeneous pool of knowledge to best fit the given situation and object of concern. In her account of theoretical positions in interaction design, Rogers (2004) argues that it can be beneficial to 'import' existing theoretical positions into the field since they have the potential for being developed into a more extensive design language that can be used in both research and design... Designers and researchers need to engage in more dialogue, identifying areas of conceptual richness and design (p. 135). Several recent academic works contributed to the discourse of design. Some address general characteristics of a designerly approach (e.g., Brown, 2009; Buxton, 2007; Cross, 2007, 2011), while others focus on more specific areas of concern. For instance, Bardzell and Bardzell's (2008) proposal for the development of a discipline of interaction criticism echoes the concern for developing design articulations, drawing on and furthering work by Lowgren and Stolterman (2004), Bertelsen and Pold (2004) and McCarthy and Wright (2007). A common denominator among these works is that they contribute to the ongoing examination and articulation of practices, approaches and ways of understanding that are central to design. This area has been described as designerly inquiry, designerly approaches, design thinking and more. In this article, I employ the term design thinking in an inclusive sense to denote the ways of framing, approaching and addressing challenges that characterize design. This usage is in line with that of e.g., Buchanan (1992) and Cross (2011).ContributionsThe examination of pragmatism in this article can be seen as a response to the abovementioned calls for articulating central issues and aspects of design. The primary contributions of the article are thus a selective reading and discussion of pragmatism in relation to issues central to design thinking, an examination of the convergence and overlaps between the two fields, and the development of the argument that pragmatism can serve as conceptual scaffolding for developing design thinking, which in turn has implications for design practice. …