Design Thinking - Differences From Science and Humanities

Differences From Science and Humanities

Although many design fields have been put in a category somewhere between Science and the Arts and Humanities, it can be seen as its own distinct way of understanding the world based on a culture of solution-based problem solving, problem shaping, synthesis, and appropriateness in the built environment.

One of the first Design Science theorists, John Chris Jones, postulated that design is different than the arts, sciences and mathematics in the 1970s. In response to the question ‘is designing an art, a science or a form of mathematics’ he says:

The main point of difference is that of timing. Both artists and scientists operate on the physical world as it exists in the present (whether it is real or symbolic), while mathematicians operate on abstract relationships that are independent of historical time. Designers, on the other hand, are forever bound to treat as real that which exists only in an imagined future and have to specify ways in which the foreseen thing can be made to exist.

Design can be seen at its own culture in education with its own methodologies and ways of thinking that can be systematically taught in both K-12 and higher education. Nigel Cross sets out to show the differences between the humanities, the sciences, and design in his paper Designerly Ways of Knowing. He shows that:

The phenomenon of study in each culture is

• in the sciences: the natural world
• in the humanities: human experience
• in design: the artificial world

The appropriate methods in each culture are

• in the sciences: controlled experiment, classification, analysis
• in the humanities: analogy, metaphor, evaluation
• in design: modeling, pattern-forming, synthesis

The values of each culture are

• in the sciences: objectivity, rationality, neutrality, and a concern for ‘truth’
• in the humanities: subjectivity, imagination, commitment, and a concern for ‘justice’
• in design: practicality, ingenuity, empathy, and a concern for ‘appropriateness’