Over the past three decades, something curious has happened to design. As the term has spread into business, technology, policy, and organisational change, the practice of design has quietly receded. What remains is the word itself, accompanied by a growing menagerie of hexagons, double diamonds, journey maps, and workshop rituals. As can be observed, typing the words ‘design thinking’ into Google’s image search tends to return a page full of process images.
The word design is everywhere, yet design – in any rigorous, disciplinary sense – is increasingly absent. Design Thinking – and a series of grand narratives of design that now travel under labels such as service design, strategic design, and systemic design are not genuinely reflective of design practice. Instead, what we have are a series of generalised problem-framing activities that have borrowed the authority of design while minimising its critical, reflective and creative substance.
Historically, design disciplines such as graphic design, industrial design, fashion, architecture were defined by material engagement, craft knowledge, aesthetic judgement, and shared traditions of critique. Designers were trained through prolonged studio practice, training, and – importantly – by immersion in disciplinary histories. Rigour emerged not from process diagrams but from repeated confrontation with the constraints of practice, such as materials, production, audiences, cultures and so on.
However, from the late 1970s onwards (albeit drawing on earlier writings), a new theoretical framing began to dominate. Thinkers such as Donald Schön (1983), Bryan Lawson (2006), and Nigel Cross (1982) re-described design not primarily as a disciplinary practice, but as a mode of thinking. Design became reflective practice, problem framing, iterative inquiry, or a distinctive epistemology such as ‘designerly ways of knowing’ (Cross, 1982).
This move had genuine value. It challenged the marginalisation of design within academia and articulated forms of knowledge that did not fit comfortably in existing either scientific or humanistic models. But it also had a side effect: design was abstracted away from its disciplinary roots. It became something that could, in principle, be practised anywhere, by anyone, provided they adopted the right mindset.
Once design was philosophically framed as a transferable way of thinking rather than a demanding practice, it became susceptible to appropriation. From the early 2000s onwards, consultancies, innovation labs, and technology companies embraced ‘design thinking’ as a universal problem-solving method. Empathy, ideation, prototyping, and iteration were presented as a repeatable sequence applicable to everything from mobile apps to corporate strategy to public policy.
Crucially, this version of design was deliberately non-disciplinary. It needed to be accessible to managers, engineers, and civil servants. Deep material expertise, aesthetic judgement, critical reflection, and disciplinary literacy were often treated as obstacles, not assets. Design was essentially recast as a consultative toolkit within managerial process facilitation.
Service design, strategic design, and systemic design are best understood as extensions of this same logic. They do not represent a return to disciplinary depth at a higher level of abstraction; rather, they push the abstraction further. The artefact disappears, then the interface, then the service, until only systems, strategies, and perceived stakeholder alignment remain. In practice, the overlap between these domains is striking – with methods often adapting and repurposing. Similar workshops, processes, and diagrams reappear under different labels.
One of the clearest indicators that something has gone wrong is who is doing this work. In many service, strategic, and systemic design projects, trained designers are marginal or absent entirely. The work is led instead by consultants, facilitators, researchers, or managers fluent in design language but not design practice. Designers, when involved, are often relegated to execution at the end of the process — visualising conclusions reached elsewhere. The authority of design is invoked, but the discipline itself is largely treated as a veneer.
This is not accidental. Disciplinary designers bring with them standards, critique, and resistance to superficial solutions. They ask awkward questions about form, meaning, and consequence. Generic design processes prefer compliance and the uncritical safety of sandboxed solutions.
At the heart of all this lies the absence of rigour. Rigour in design does not come from following a process, or ring-fencing critical challenges and opportunities. It comes from:
- research and reflection;
- mastery of materials and form;
- the use of critical imagination and iterative refinement beyond the first plausible solution;
- sustained critique by peers who share disciplinary standards;
- accountability to cultural, social, and historical contexts.
Most non-disciplinary design practices lack comparable mechanisms. Success is defined procedurally (workshop ‘outcomes’) or affectively (stakeholder ‘engagement’), not through enduring outcomes. Failure is difficult to identify, because there are no agreed criteria against which to judge the work. When critique disappears, so does design.
What remains is often performative – a pastiche or simulation of design, research, and creativity without its underlying discipline. For example, ethnography becomes short-term ‘user interviews’ or shadowing exercises with no longitudinal depth, theoretical framing, or analytic accountability. Attempts at synthesis become clustering sticky notes or theme labelling, without interpretive labour, counterfactual testing, or sustained sense-making. Prototyping becomes role-play, slides, or low-risk enactments that are never exposed to real constraints or consequences. And iteration becomes movement through prescribed stages rather than revision driven by failure or critique.
What we are left with is a paradox. Design has never been more visible, yet design as a rigorous practice is increasingly marginalised. The term circulates freely, detached from the traditions and practices that gave it meaning and distinguished it from the arts and the sciences – all the values that first endeared it to the original developers of design thinking.
Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies, 3(4), 221-227.
Harland, R. & Meron, Y. (2024). Design Thinking: Standing on the Shoulders of… Graphic Design!, Design Issues, 40, 49-61.
Hernández-Ramíirez, R., & Meron, Y. (2025). Neodesign: The Loss of Craft, Imagination and a Playful Attitude, DRS LearnXDesign 2025, University of Aveiro, Portugal.
Jen, N. (2017). Natasha Jen: Design Thinking Is Bullsh*t.
Lawson, B. (2006). How designers think: the design process demystified. Elsevier/Architectural.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner : how professionals think in action. Basic Books.
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