Making Sense of Design Thinking &

"Agile" Method
Published on July 19, 2016

GK VanPatter

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Co-Founder, HUMANTIFIC

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Happy summer reading everyone! In our many interactions with organizational leader
clients we are often asked to help explain the similarities and differences between
various innovation related processes appearing in the global marketplace.
Many organizational leaders have become a tad confused as various parties pitch
methods in a competitive marketplace that now includes the graduate business schools
and graduate design schools seeking to reposition themselves as innovation advisory
consultancies..:-)
Recently we have seen considerable confusion reign when well-meaning bloggers,
without much real-world innovation process knowledge, try to compare what they
frame as Design Thinking methodology, to Agile and other methodologies. Making
sense of the avalanche of confusing methodology pictures being posted to social media
can be a daunting task.
In this brief post, with an objective towards advocating clarity, we share how, from a
practice based methods perspective, Humantific differentiates between Design Thinking
methods, Product/Service/Experience Design Thinking methods and Agile methods.
While they all add value, they each add different forms of value applicable to different
contexts.

Unpacking Three Fundamental Layers of Confusion:

The first and foremost layer of confusion that we most often see is the misinterpretation
(creative redepiction) of Design Thinking as product/service/experience creation. This
widely held misinterpretation, often being driven by the slow moving, tenure track
interests in graduate design schools, sets off a cascade of false assumptions and
misdiagnosis that have substantially added to the mountain of confusion that now exists
around this subject. Design Thinking and Product/Service/Experience Design Thinking
are not interchangeable concepts or methods.
The second layer of confusion is around the term agile itself as this word has existed
for many decades in organizational development/change contexts. Many organizations
seek to build what has historically been depicted as agile, or adaptive capacity. In
several communities of practice, adaptive innovation process mastery has been a
recognized fundamental driving engine of changemaking since the 1950s. The everevolving subject and literature of Leadership Agility and Adaptive Innovation
Leadership is not only deep, spanning decades, but strategically worlds apart from that
of the later arriving (2001) Agile method.
In organizational change contexts adaptive or agile capacity typically means proactively
anticipating, initiating and driving organizational change. It seems clear that the socalled Agile" method was not designed for, nor is it suited to this long standing
organizational change objective but rather to the much narrower task of efficiently
managing, implementing and tweaking software in development.
To say it in simple terms; Agile is just a branded term for an implementation oriented
method (assessing the direction of software while its being developed) that has nothing
much to do with building organizational adaptive/agile capacity. Agile method might
have been better named Rolling Implementation Development (RID) method..:-)
In today's shifting marketplace a third layer of intertwined confusion exists as many
design industry folks, belatedly reacting to the need for change are busy selling the
depiction that downstream situational methods are upstream meta methods.
Acknowledging that numerous versions of each do exist, Design Thinking is an
upstream meta methodology while Product/Service/Experience Design Thinking and
Agile are all are downstream situational methodologies. They have different starting
points and assumptions baked-in. Suffice it to say there are significant differences
between meta methods and situational methods. Pretending that the later is the former is
a recipe for some rather fundamental force-fit methodology confusion. We see this
confusion in many organizations.
Welcome to the mind boggling messy subject of innovation methodologies as it exists
today. In simple list form here below are a few key differences, and similarities from
our Humantific perspective:

DESIGN THINKING [Also known as Meta Design Thinking, Strategic Design

Thinking and Adaptable Inquiry]
Key Words: Upstream, meta, iterative, human-centered, empathetic, creating,
optimizing, insight creation, design research, data/information fueled, visual
sensemaking, challenge framing, focus on right challenge, acceleration, adaptive,
inclusive.
1. Is a meta, iterative, nonlinear, holistic, human-centered innovation process.
2. Oriented towards multiple participant, cross-disciplinary cocreation.
3. Begins with no preconceived assumptions regarding what the challenges, and
opportunities are.
4. Begins upstream in Opportunity Challenge Definition Phase.
5. Begins with a fuzzy situation to be defuzzed.
6. Contains empathetic research insight creation that informs challenge framing and
opportunities for changemaking.
7. Recognizes that a constellation of diverse challenges likely exist simultaneously that
can be visually mapped.
8. Contains a high degree of empathetic visual sensemaking that shapes insights for
accelerated digestion by all participants.
9. Contains the surfacing and orchestration of participant innovation behaviors.
10. Contains the surfacing and orchestration of participant cognitive thinking style
preferences.
11. Like a Swiss army knife, is adaptive to various challenge types found in
organizational and societal contexts.
12. Serves as human-centered, adaptive toolkit/skill-set in the pursuit of organizational
adaptive capacity building.
PRODUCT/SERVICE/EXPERIENCE DESIGN THINKING
Key Words: Iterative, downstream, situational, human-centered, empathetic, insight
creation, sensemaking, acceleration, creating, optimizing, products, services,
experiences.
1. Is a situational, iterative, nonlinear, holistic product/service/experience creation
process.

2. Oriented towards a project team, or teams creating products/services/experiences.

3. Begins with preconceived assumptions that the challenges or opportunities are
product/service/experience related and will be outcomes.
4. Begins downstream in product/service/experience Opportunity Challenge Definition
Phase.
5. Most often begins with a predefined product/service/experience brief.
6. Contains empathetic research focused on insight creation that informs the creation
of products/services/experiences.
7. Recognizes product/service/experience challenges.
8. Might contain a high degree of empathetic visual sensemaking that shapes insights
for accelerated digestion by all participants.
9. Most often contains no surfacing or orchestration of innovation behaviors.
10. Most often contains no surfacing and orchestration of cognitive thinking style
preferences.
11. Like a hammer, screwdriver and wrench. Each applicable situationally to product,
service or experience challenges.
12. Can serve as a useful toolkit/skill-set in the pursuit of product/service/experience
creation capacity building.
AGILE METHOD
Key Words: Iterative, downstream, efficiency, abbreviated work cycles, accelerated,
repetition, incremental, inspect & adapt, optimizing, build software product iteratively,
reduce time to market.
1. Agile Method is an iterative, situational, nonlinear software/product
improvement/implementation process.
2. Oriented towards multiple project teams iteratively creating/tweaking software.
3. Begins with preconceived assumptions that the challenges or opportunities are
software/product related and will be outcomes. Define Requirements in Agile
typically means within the context of the assumption that software is needed and
will be the outcome.
4. Begins downstream in product Ideas/Implementation Phase.
5. Begins with multiple product/software ideas.

6. Recognizes a revolving stream of functionality ideas that will be actionized

iteratively.
7. Often contains little or no deep empathetic research insight creation that informs
tweaks to software.
8. Often contains little or no empathetic sensemaking that shapes insights for
accelerated digestion by all participants.
9. Typically does not contain the surfacing and orchestration of participant innovation
behaviors.
10. Typically does not contain the surfacing and orchestration of participant cognitive
thinking style preferences.
11. Like a hammer. Applicable to software product challenges.
12. Serves as toolkit/skill-set in the pursuit of organizational capacity to assess the
direction of software while its being developed.
How / Where the Methods Fit Together
To keep it simple: Design Thinking has numerous situational subsets including
Product/Service/Experience Design Thinking. We recognize Agile method as a subset
of the subset of Product Design Thinking which makes Agile method a subsubset of
Design Thinking.
Agile is essentially a repackaged, software specific, foreshortened version of Product
Design Thinking with a focus on the benefits of iteration and acceleration without really
acknowledging the downsides of method compression (known outside of Agile) such as
research-lite, poor challenge identification and working rapidly on the wrong problem.
woooo hooo!
Innovation Methodology Consideration Tips
If your starting point involves being unsure what your organizational or societal
challenges actually are today situational methods, with their built-in challenge and
solution path assumptions are not the ideal tools to help you figure out that fuzzy
strategic picture.
Situational Methods are geared for downstream contexts ie: after someone has
determined what the challenges and opportunities actually are for your organization,
community or society.
Abbreviated cycles might be very useful in some contexts and counterproductive in
others.

Be aware that abbreviated steps and work cycles are an Implementers dream and a
Conceptualizers nightmare.
Take a look at the thinking style preferences of your team. A heavy weighting towards
convergent thinking and implementation action can not only cripple the creative output
of a team but often ensures the arrival at the wrong solution rapidly.
Ensure that a constructive emphasis on tangible outcomes is not being misinterpreted as
license to privilege convergent thinking and implementation.
Acceleration is not unique to Agile method. Today most codified Design Thinking
methodologies act as accelerators, often incorporating synthesized information as
ignition fuel, surfacing cognitive bias up front, and proactively orchestrating behaviors.
All of these activities aid in acceleration. Some take time to learn.
If the goal is to build adaptive organizational changemaking capacity the mastery of
Agile or other situational methods is not going to get you there.
Before you invest in innovation capacity building understand the difference between
upstream and downstream, between meta and situational methods. Understand in detail
why building adaptive innovation capacity and building capacity just geared to creating
software or products, services and experiences are very different things. The fuzzy fog
era of Design Thinking is over. Get some methodology clarity up front before you
embark on any innovation capacity building adventure.
Good luck to all.
Related:
Innovation Process Design: Overcoming Design Missteps
Innovation Methods Mapping [ Preview ]
De-Mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design
Making Sense of Strategic Design Practice 2015-2016
Building Strategic Innovation Lab Capabilities
Harvard Downstreams Design Thinking?
Making Sense of" "Why Design Thinking Will Fail"
Clarity: The Next Design Thinking Evolution

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GK VanPatter

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Co-Founder, HUMANTIFIC
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Collin Smith

4h

Playful Designer and Researcher

I appreciate the clarification. I get projects at all points along the spectrum as well as some that try to
cover the entire gamut at once. I have founf the best approach is plan into the project a direction setting step where the team and advisors work together to identify what type of project you think you
have at hand and decide what is the best way to tackle it. Call it See more
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Joaquim Castelo

20h

Direco e coordenao de projectos da empresa Ars Design

Like in AI algorithms and in generative design, design thinking is also a bottom-up strategy that sets at
a low level the Conditions and the Field where Emergence/Innovation occurs
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