Accidental Vagrant

It is very difficult introducing 'design' to audiences who have invested emotionally and financially in the 'design thinking' juggernaut. There is so much more to designing than the IDEO model and its imitators imply. Design thinking, aka creative problem solving, is fine for those situations that it best fits but it is not representative of the breadth and depth of serious design. The   backlash against the IDEO model is growing . The challenge is to not let real design get dragged down in the process.

Most social systems are embedded in various ‘designs’ for societal governance (i.e. ‘cybernetics’ from a systemic perspective) or are the dominate governing system themselves in some cases. One form of governance that is still in the process of development is ‘democracy’. Although very old, it is still under construction, repair or reformation and we are still exploring what is possible and desirable of democracy. Although many, if not most, organizations are not democracies themselves they are often entangled with democratic governance systems. The ‘democracy files'   being developed collaboratively by a colleague and friend, Birger Sevaldson, is an example of using a ‘design’ stance and approach to something that can be said to be ‘important’, contrasted to something ‘urgent’, or merely ‘gainful’.  When ‘looking’ (see graphic below) at how ‘design’ is used within organizations, for example, it is equally important to look ‘around’ to see how design externally effect...