The foundation of my practical social interventions is formed by an approach that is derived from the idea of 'Design Thinking', a method that gained increasing attention within the last decade. As part of my Bachelor Thesis I deconstructed this trend in order to expose underlying biases, based on which I developed this method of my own. 'Social Design Thinking' digs down to the roots of the Design Thinking movement and offers a fulfillment of the promises made by its propagators.
THESIS
In the following I want to give you a quick walk through the development of my theoretical work and its main ideas. I will give an overview about what Design Thinking is and explain a few of the claims that make it sound so promising. Afterwards some main points of critique will be laid out, some of which also sparked my initial interest in further research. This leads me to the exploration of the more underlying causes, which I will then present in context of the bigger picture, before I'll come back to the phenomenon of Design Thinking. Within the expanded framework the latter will reveal itself as a mere temporary climax and surface event of a much bigger cultural trend. Finally I will present my own method as an approach radically opposite to that of Design Thinking, that strips it down to its hollow rhetorics and proposes an alternative way of claiming what was initially promised.
This page is just here to showcase some main aspects of my theory. If you are interested in reading further into it or in checking some of the sources, feel free to download the full text:
Social Design Thinking.pdf [German] Social Design Thinking.pdf [English]
Design Thinking is an approach that claims to tackle problems and find innovative solutions, using empathy and creativity to come up with products or services, that fit the customers needs perfectly. This sounds great and led to a quickly rising popularity within and beyond the corporate world.
Based on the book:
'Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation‘ by Tim Brown
As the name 'Design Thinking' already implicates, the method is inspired by the process in which designers develop their solutions. This involves techniques such as the abstraction of an initial problem in the search for underlying causes, field research including target group interviews or a rapid prototyping of solutions, that get tested and refined in an iterative procedure. The participants are encouraged to be bold and show creativity in order to come up with extraordinary ideas, as well as a sensitivity towards fellow humans, that should enable them to truly understand the needs of a certain customer group.
Reading the book in which Tim Brown introduces the method, feels like reading the manual for a revolution. It picks up the rhetorics of the 1970s counterculture and calls its readers to stand up and stand in for a better world – a post-uniformity individualist world in which people would finally get their right to express themselves and find fulfillment in life.
This pretty picture falls apart as sociologist Tim Seitz describes it. He exposes how the Design Thinking method is not as free and open minded as it presents itself to be. Furthermore he even identifies Design Thinking as a manifestation of a new working culture, in which the workers exploit themselves instead of being exploited.
Based on the book:
'Design Thinking and the New Spirit of Capitalism: Sociological Reflections on Innovation Culture' by Tim Seitz
According to Seitz, the participants creativity and critical thinking are only demanded and allowed within clearly defined parts of the process framework. The Design Thinking method is precisely structured into different phases. Each step being strictly timed, the participants are working under artificially induced pressure. This is believed to help the creation of bold and intuitive ideas, while suppressing second thoughts and overthinking. The call to 'go for quantity' is criticized by Seitz, because it oppresses the qualitative development of an idea by the participant and dismisses his or her ability of judgement. He goes even further by comparing the process with a Tailorist production line, wich is segmented to a point where each worker ends up just having one repetitive movement to do, without requiring any further understanding of the subject.
The incentive to participate in this working culture lies in the linkage of creative fulfillment and gainful employment, in which the workers are addressed as individuals. Furthermore Seitz criticizes Browns activist rhetoric, which gives participants the feeling of developing products on behalf of society. User surveys and field research do play a significant role in Design Thinking. But according to Seitz, the way in wich these measures are executed lacks any scientific foundation. He rather states that throughout multiple activities such as e.g. the creation of personas the users feedback gets interpreted until it takes the shape of needs that can be fed with a marketable product or service. This way the workers of Design Thinking culture only seemingly help people while actually doing nothing more than further drive capitalism.
Seitz' accusations get backed up and make sense in the context of a 'New Spirit of Capitalism' which has risen to replace hierarchical Fordist work structure.
Based on the book:
'The New Spirit of Capitalism' by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello
The authors describe how earlier capitalism drove itself into a dead end situation due to its inherent tendency to create inhumane working conditions. In the Fordist production scheme which arose after the industrial revolution, workers were alienated from the product, while having to work long hours for little salary. They had to work in the factories due to their lack of capital, but still had little incentive to actually work hard or committed. The prevailing Christian virtue of humbleness had resulted in a uniform product culture with slow product decay, which led to an increasing market saturation and with a new generation of young people came a growing discontent towards bureaucratic repressive capitalism. The critique can be structured into two categories:
A – Artist Critique:
The awareness of the beautiful and the great is lost through increasing standardization. The world is becoming disenchanted and there is a loss of authenticity with regard to things, people and feelings. All this results in a loss of purpose. Furthermore, the critics feel restricted in their freedom, autonomy and creativity by the oppressive structures.
B – Social Critique:
The poverty of the workers and the unequal distribution of wealth are deplored. Furthermore, the existing structures promote egoism and opportunism. It rewards those who are only interested in themselves and thus demoralizes society.
As a result of this Boltanski and Chiapello describe the rise of a new 'spirit of capitalism' – a term established by sociologist Max Weber, who states that capitalism always need a real cause of legitimation in order to justify its existence. This new spirit comes in the shape of a renewed culture of work and consumption, in which the workers and consumers are addressed to as creative individuals with taste and style.
Further insights into the upcoming of a New Spirit of Capitalism can be drawn from Andreas Reckwitz' text on the 'invention of creativity'. He there describes how the demands of the 1960s counter culture in the US and Europe got exploited according to capitalist interest.
Based on the book:
'The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and the Culture of the New'
by Andreas Reckwitz
The dead-end, which capitalism found itself to be facing, couldn't have been avoided without the multitude of protest movements such as the Hippies in the US or the student protesters of Mai 68 in France. The two formerly described categories of critique echo in their demands for self-realization, a fair distribution of wealth and social equality.
Those demands were heard and seemingly satisfied by new schools of management which implemented them by restructuring organizations, based on the new conception of workers as beings that draw their motivation from a drive for self-realization. As a result, workers were given more freedom to manage themselves and find fulfillment within the organization, in order to raise productivity and commitment.
At the same time marketing started to adress consumers as beings with individual needs, which allowed them to offer a much broader range of products. Design played a significant role in this process, since the upcoming of 'Radical Design' or 'Anti Design' broke free the formerly popular timeless design language of Bauhaus or HfG Ulm. Now the industry was able to produce not just one, but a range of product varieties.
Reckwitz describes this entire transformation process as upcoming of a 'Creativity Dispositif' which sees creativity as something that is unquestioningly desirable. Under this conjecture the property of 'being new' becomes one of the highest valued qualities in workers, consumers and products.
Under this conditions a new spirit of capitalism could rise, which offers creativity and self-realization through work and consumption. This way the critical voices were muted and the international protest lost its drive, eventhough the demands of artist critique were only fulfilled within the capitalist framework.
Furthermore the demands of social critique got ignored, while the newly accelerating consumerist capitalism continued to widen the social gap and workers got incentive to now exploit themselves instead of being directly exploited by their companies. The workers unions lost power and unpaid overtime as well as decreasing social securities spread again.
CONCLUSION
Design Thinking can be seen as one of the most advanced manifestations of this new culture. It motivates workers to commit themselves to the development of new products and services, which will be happily bought by consumers due to their quality of being new.
This way they add to the acceleration of capitalism which wastes the earths resources and after all still isn't working on behalf of most people.
SOCIAL DESIGN THINKING
As a result of the search for a method that actually brings the demands of social and artist critique to realization 'Social Design Thinking' can be seen as an approach that is radically opposite to Design Thinking.
What the method wants to offer is at first the freedom for people to think creatively and change their living environment according to their own ideas. Secondly it places the strength of community into the center of all solutions. Rather than searching self-realization and social contribution in corporate work and consumer choices, it neglects the use of capitalist structures as part of any solution.
An essential claim of Social Design Thinking is the 'emancipation within the social body', which encourages people to cut down their consumption in order to be able to reject gainful employment. This way all the former working time turns available for direct social contribution and can also be used to access and redistribute products of over-production such as sorted out food, waste material and other free potentials. Those can be used to further free oneself from the pressure to work for money and therefore increase the capacity that one has for their friends and family.
Besides the access and distribution of free potentials, Social Design Thinking encourages the designer in particular, to use their skills and some of the gained time to create spaces of exchange within their living environment. A strong community is much more resistant to oppression or exploitation than a group of isolated individuals, but it can't work without common values or ideas of how to live together. In its essence the key skill of a designer lies in the development of solutions that communicate ideas between multiple parties that speak 'different languages'. Therefore the best job a designer can do for his community is to help people exchange the expectations they have towards their shared living environment.
All theses claims are pathetically summarized in the following manifesto, it serves as core of the Social Design Thinking method and intentionally avoids to present itself as a step-by-step instruction. Thus it encourages independent and critical thinking in order to differentiate itself from Design Thinking's strict procedure:
Social Design Thinking Manifesto
Something has to change! The demands for humaneness, that were already raised 60 years ago have still not been fulfilled.
They are the demands for boundless creativity, for freedom of self-development and for a meaningful life.
They are demands against the capitalist system, which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
It rewards those who think only of themselves, promotes a culture of exploitation and while demoralizing society.
The demands were not met, but internalized and instrumentalized by that same capitalism. A new spirit of capitalism has emerged.
A spirit that drives people anew to participate in the capitalist system.
It offers creativity in work and consumption.
It offers self-realization through work and consumption.
It offers meaning to life in work and consumption.
Thus, the new spirit of capitalism silences the critics. It gives the appearance that their demands have been met. In this way, it leads workers to find the meaning of their lives in work and to realize themselves in it.
All ahead of them are the members of the creative class who, with their zeal for work, serve as role models in today's capitalism. In the fire of their self-realization, they forget about the end of the working day, the weekend and everything that the trade unions have fought hard for. Chronically underpaid, they work on holidays and sick days.
What drives them is the belief that every problem of humanity can be solved through a product or service. For them, work is not only self-fulfillment but also a service to society. Under the mantra of empathy and user-centricity, they look for problems in other people's lives and design goods for them to buy. They think up products that the users themselves did not know about, that they need them.
Needs are invented and dependencies created.
Dependence on consumable goods.
Dependence on consumption and
dependence on gainful employment.
Thus, the creative class relentlessly contributes to a capitalism,
which continues to drive inequality around the world,
while consuming limited resources available to humanity,
ever more effectively.
The creative class really wants to help, but only exploits itself in the process. Ironically, this also leaves them with even less time to
dedicate themselves to the people who are close to them.
Self-fulfilment in work for society gets priority and is placed above friendship, family and relationships. This must end!
I call for emancipation in the social body:
The synthesis of individualism and community thinking.
More freedom through the rejection of consumption constraints.
More freedom through help from the community.
This creates a social potential of 30 hours per week.
More time and energy for supporting one's fellow human beings.
More time and energy for strengthening the community.
The designer is at the service of his fellow human beings.
His or her strength lies in his ability to make ideas understandable.
Thus, the designer has two tasks in society:
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The creation of spaces that encourage reflection and that promote exchange among people.
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Supporting fellow human beings in communicating their respective conception of shared living conditions.
Only through mutual understanding can community develop.
The strong community is the most powerful weapon against oppression.
It is time to channel all efforts directly towards this!