History
| pre-1960 | The origins of new design methods in the 1960s lay further back in the application of novel, ‘scientific’ methods to the pressing problems of the 2nd World War from which came operational research methods and management decision-making techniques, and in the development of creativity techniques in the 1950s. |
| 1960s | The beginnings of computer programs for problem solving, the so-called soft-systems approach.
The 1960s marked a desire to “scientize” design through use of the computer science soft-systems approach. |
| 1962 | The First ‘Conference on Design Methods,’ London, UK.
The first design methods or methodology books start appearing: Asimow (1962), Alexander (1964), Archer (1965), Jones (1970). The first creativity books Gordon (1961), Osborn (1963). |
| 1965 | Bruce Archer, professor of Design Research at the Royal College of Art states – “The most fundamental challenge to conventional ideas on design has been the growing advocacy of systematic methods of problem solving, borrowed from computer techniques and management theory, for the assessment of design problems and the development of design solutions.” |
| 1969 | Herbert A. Simon notable for his research in artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences establishes a “Science of Design” which would be “a body of intellectually tough, analytic, partly formalizable, partly empirical, teachable doctrine about the design process.”
Visual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim publishes his book "Visual Thinking," inspiring the teaching of Robert McKim in the design program at Stanford University. The class McKim creates, "ME101: Visual Thinking," is still taught today. |
| 1970s | Notable for the rejection of design methodology by many, including some of the early pioneers.
Christopher Alexander, architect and theorist wrote – “I’ve disassociated myself from the field. There is so little in what is called ‘design methods’ that has anything useful to say about how to design buildings that I never even read the literature anymore. I would say forget it, forget the whole thing.” John Chris Jones, designer and design thinking theorist stated - “In the 1970s I reacted against design methods. I dislike the machine language, the behaviourism, the continual attempt to fix the whole of life into a logical framework.” |
| 1973 | Robert McKim publishes Experiences in Visual Thinking. One important theme in the book is the idea of "Express, Test, Cycle" (or ETC) as an iterative backbone for design process.
Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber write Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning showing that design and planning problems are Wicked Problems as opposed to the tame problems of science. Horst Rittel also proposes that the developments of the 1960s had been only ‘first generation’ methods (which naturally, with hindsight, seemed a bit simplistic, but nonetheless had been a necessary beginning) and that a new second generation was beginning to emerge.” This suggestion was clever, because it let the methodologists escape from their commitment to inadequate ‘first generation’ methods, and it opened a vista of an endless future of generation upon generation of new methods. |
| 1979 | Bruce Archer starts off the next decade’s inquiry into designerly ways of knowing stating – “There exists a designerly way of thinking and communicating that is both different from scientific and scholarly ways of thinking and communicating, and as powerful as scientific and scholarly methods of inquiry when applied to its own kinds of problems.” |
| 1980s | Engineering design methodology of the systematic variety developed strongly, the International Conferences on Engineering Design (ICED) forms.
Early engineering developments were especially strong in Germany and Japan. Series of books on engineering designs starts to form: Hubka (1982), Pahl and Beitz (1984), French (1985), Cross (1989), and Pugh (1991). Series of Design Journals starts to form: Design Studies in 1979, Design Issues appeared in 1984, and Research in Engineering Design in 1989. Other important developments include: the publications of the Design Methods Group and the continuing series of conferences of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). The national Science Foundation initiative on design theory and methods led to substantial growth in engineering design methodology in the late-1980s. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) launched its series of conferences on Design Theory and Methodology. The 1980s also sees the rise of human-centered design and the rise of design-centered business management. |
| 1980 | Bryan Lawson, professor of architecture at University of Sheffield, pens the seminal text How Designers Think about design cognition. |
| 1981 | Nigel Cross, Professor of Design Studies and Editor of Design Studies Journal writes Designerly Ways of Knowing showing Design as its own culture to be taught in schools by contrasting it with Science culture and Arts and Humanities culture. This is based on the idea that “There are things to know, ways of knowing them and ways of finding out about them that is unique to the design fields.” |
| 1983 | Donald Schön, professor and theorist in organizational learning, pens his seminal text Educating the Reflective Practicioner in which he sought to establish “an epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which practitioners bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict.” |
| 1986 | The business management strategy Six Sigma emerges as a way to streamline the design process for quality control and profit. |
| 1987 | Lin Hsin Hsin, IT inventor, artist, poet, composer, delivered a lecture on
"Thought As An Art Form" @ the National Museum Theatrette, Singapore, in conjunction with her 4th solo exhibition titled "Music Observed" |
| 1987 | Peter Rowe, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, pens Design Thinking the first significant usage of the term “Design Thinking” in literature. |
| 1988 | Rolf Faste, director of the design program at Stanford, creates "Ambidextrous Thinking," a required class for graduate product design majors that extends McKim's process of visual thinking to design as a whole-body "way of doing." |
| 1990s | Ideas of organizational learning and creating nimble businesses come to the forefront. |
| 1991 | IDEO combines from three industrial design companies. They are one of the first design companies to showcase their design process, which draws heavily on the Stanford curriculum. The firm was the subject on ABC’s Nightline in 1999 in an episode called “The Deep Dive.” |
| 1992 | Richard Buchanan's article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" is published. |
| 1995 |
Ikujiro Nonaka writes The Knowledge-Creating Company on how to transfer knowledge from expert to novice within a business based on the work of Michael Polanyi’s tacit versus explicit knowledge. |
| 2000s | The 2000’s have seen a boom in design thinking as the term becomes a buzzword in business. There is a rise of books written for the business sector about how to create a more design-focused workplace where innovation can thrive: Florida (2002), Pink (2006), Martin (2007), Gladwell (2008), Brown (2009), Lockwood (2010).
This shift of design thinking away from the product fields and into the business sector sparks a debate about the hijacking and exploitation of design thinking. Accordingly to Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO, in the end of 2000, Lavrans Løvlie, Ben Reason and Chris Downs, joined forces to found live|work, an UK based design consultancy firm which opens up for business on the basis that the design approach should be extended and adapted to tackle the design of services. This marks the beginning of the service design consultancy firms movement worldwide. |
| 2000 | The Rotman School of Management develops a new model for business education based on Dean Roger Martin’s use of integrative thinking for solving wicked problems. |
| 2005 | The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (or the d.school) forms at Stanford. |
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