Summary of A Quick Guide to Design Thinking by Ida Engholm

In some circles Design Thinking is are dirty words. It has been critiqued as an oversimplification or watering down of design that has since been superseded by more inclusive approaches like human-centred design and co-design. But this popular understanding of design thinking is just a fraction of the literature, there are also areas of inquiry that are more about understanding how designers think and what this means for knowledge creation. So before we discount design thinking entirely its worth reviewing these less talked about areas.

I was happy to find Ida Engholm’s book A Quick Guide to Design Thinking. It helps tease out some of these different understandings of design thinking. The book explores the different perspectives on design thinking, drawing from design practice, academia, innovation and management discourse. It provides a more nuanced view of how design thinking has evolved and how it is applied in practice, challenging some of the oversimplifications seen in mainstream discussions.

The first half of the book focuses on the origins and evolution of design thinking within design practice and theory. The second half examines the discourse in the management and business world.

Designerly thinking from a practitioner and academic perspective

Design as science of the artificial

The first half chronicles the evolution of how we’ve thought about design and design thinking. The journey begins with Herbert Simon’s concept of design as “science of the artificial,” positioning design as a way of creating what doesn’t yet exist. Simon famously stated that “everyone designs who devises a course of action aimed at changing existing situations to preferred ones.”

From here design thinking was thought of more as a methodology, traditionally broken into three stages: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It’s depicted as linear and known, reflecting the aspiration of design being considered alongside the sciences. This represents a reductionist and simplified view of design that was to be challenged later on as ambiguity and complexity are introduced into the problem spaces that design is tackling.

Design as a way of thinking

Later, Design thinking is framed as a cognitive approach to problem-solving, with Buchanan’s Four Orders of Design illustrating the types of problems that designers solve—Ranging from graphic design, product design, and experience and service design to systems design. The higher orders of design (services and systems) required a less linear way of thinking, allowing for emergence. However, these thinkers still frame design as a way of problem-solving. Which is being challenged now by strengths-based approaches that focus more on possibility.

Donald Schön’s concept of the “reflective practitioner” and Kimball’s work on design cognition reinforce the idea that design is more than just a methodology—it’s a distinct way of thinking.

In attempts to describe what makes designerly thinking different from other ways of thinking writers like Dorst and Cross highlight designer’s ability to reason abductively. According to Dorst, design abduction involves navigating unknown parameters, where both the problem and solution are explored simultaneously. This means that through making, doing and trying things the designer is getting a better understanding of the problem, or reframing the problem space. It is a fluid interplay between problem and solution in parallel.

Design as exploration and inquiry

Next Engholm discusses design thinking framed as a form of exploration. Co-design and exploratory design approaches are highlighted here. She writes that these methods engage diverse stakeholders in the “fuzzy front end” of the design process, they are sometimes criticised for not delivering concrete outcomes. One critique is that these processes are expensive and can become stuck at the exploration phase, with outputs remaining as sketches or post-it notes rather than finalised solutions.

This is definitely a risk, and in my practice I will highlight when we are doing co-design and when we are doing exploratory design research (which I think are two different things in my opinion). I think the criticisms that Engholm raises are warranted, but perhaps a missing piece here is that those holding the purse strings for co-design work are often more happy to receive research findings than actually committing to change. Organisations often get stuck in a discovery/ ideation loop, where they are unable to prioritise or move forward on recommendations and instead go back in for more research.

The book then introduces “design as a science of the imaginary,” where design research generates new knowledge through the creation of prototypes. This connects to ideas around constructive design research, where new realities are explored and brought to life through making. However, this approach has also been criticised for not delivering concrete solutions, with prototypes sometimes being seen as incomplete or unfinished outputs.

Serendipity in Design

One of the more interesting discussions in the book is about serendipity in design—the unexpected discoveries that emerge through sketching and prototyping. Engholm highlights that experienced designers develop a trained eye for recognising opportunities within sketches, a skill that requires both experience and historical knowledge. This aligns with the 10,000-hour rule, emphasising that design expertise comes with practice.

Engholm seems to suggest this means non-designers are not able to take advantage of this side of design. However, I feel that design activities can be structured in ways that allow non-designers to discover similar moments of serendipity, particularly through making and reflection.

Design as sensemaking

The book also explores the semantic turn in design, where design is seen as a way of making sense of cultural meanings. Designers, through their work, shape the meanings, positioning design as a tool for sensemaking in complex environments.

Designerly Thinking in Management and Innovation

The second half of the book focuses on the application of design thinking in management and innovation. This is where design thinking has been most popularised, particularly through the work of IDEO and its founder David Kelley. While IDEO initially claimed to have invented design thinking, Engholm clarifies that IDEO built on the earlier work of thinkers like Simon and Buchanan. IDEO’s approach—framing design as a three-step process of inspiration, ideation, and implementation (later expanded into a 5 step approach)—has been criticised for oversimplifying design thinking into a linear, formulaic method.

Engholm critiques this mainstream version of design thinking for treating it as a quick fix, often ignoring the complexity and non-linearity of the design process. Similarly, Roger Martin’s framing of design thinking as a tool for business leaders to balance analytical and creative thinking is seen as oversimplified, with design and abductive reasoning conflated with loose notions of creativity.

However the management and innovation discourse has more recently taken on board some of these criticisms, and moved to acknowledge and integrate some of the earlier design theory, as well as introduce more evidence and evaluation.

The book ends by discussing the role of design thinking in addressing complex, systemic challenges, including calls to move from human-centred design to life-centred design. She highlights Manzini’s ideas of expert design (design by professionals) and defuse design (design by non-designers) and how they inter relate. But ultimately she is not choosing a side, merely offering differing discources and schools of thought.

Final Thoughts

Engholm’s book presents a more nuanced view of the many ways design thinking is understood and applied. While some methods—such as IDEO’s—are criticised for being too formulaic, the book highlights that there is a rich history of theory and practice here.

Ultimately design is interested in imagining things that don’t exist yet. If science is interested in what is, design is interested in what could be. For me, this book reinforces that design thinking should not be though of as a process. Instead, it’s about recognising that there are different ways of thinking, reasoning, and creating knowledge. Designers have developed a particular “designerly” way of thinking, which can be helpful to understand and use, especially in complex situations.

Key to designerly thinking is abductive reasoning—a form of reasoning that explores situations and potential responses in parallel. Instead of starting with a predetermined goal or outcome, abductive reasoning enables us to move fluidly between understanding a context and generating new possibilities. It’s not about finding the “right” answer; it’s about emergence—recognising that in complex systems, ideas and opportunities evolve through iterative exploration, where each step informs the next, rather than following a linear path. Here I have purposefully moved away from Cross and Buchanon’s use of problem and solution to situation and response as a way of recognising that abductive reasoning can be used in a more strengths-based and systems-oriented way. I don’t think that it is only designers who think this way, but it is a common strength developed through design. Especially in design applied to the higher orders of Buchanan’s model.

The acronym VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) can help us understand the settings where this type of emergent strategy is helpful. Designerly thinking helps navigate this uncertainty by encouraging experimentation, testing ideas, and allowing solutions to emerge naturally over time, rather than through rigid analysis. The way I think of it is, abductive reasoning and prototyping are ways of operationalising emergence.

The other key insight is the value of serendipity—the discoveries that arise unexpectedly through sketching, prototyping, making and doing. This process of making often reveals new insights and possibilities that were not immediately visible, demonstrating the iterative, non-linear nature of design work or “Learning through doing.” Again this is an element of emergence.

Ultimately, Engholm doesn’t take a stance on whether design thinking should be the remit of designers or non-designers, and I agree there doesn’t need to be a clear divide. Designers, through experience and repetition, have honed these skills, but facilitation and structured activities can help non-designers access similar ways of thinking. It’s also unproductive—and perhaps even arrogant—for designers to assume that they alone can engage in abductive reasoning or discovery through doing. These are fundamentally human skills. As a culture, our discomfort with ambiguity and complexity can make these ways of thinking seem unfamiliar, but they are accessible to anyone willing to embrace them. However, it is also unrealistic to expect that a short training session, or a toolkit will give someone the ability to instantly be able to do designerly thinking at a high level. There is still a role for designers, but it is more as convener helping scaffold and support others embrace a potentially new way of thinking.

One area that wasn’t fully addressed in the book is the idea of designerly ontology—designerly ways of knowing, and being. The worldview that designers take. This is a big part of transformation, which is often not acknowledged. Through design, we don’t just respond to existing situations; we explore and shape new ways of being, inviting people to imagine and enact alternative futures. This ontological perspective moves beyond addressing immediate needs or challenges—it shifts the focus to world-building, using design as a means of exploring what could be.

Our ontologies, or worldviews, define what we perceive as possible. They shape the boundaries of our imagination and limit the futures we believe we can create. For designerly thinking to truly be impactful, we must embrace new ways of being that allow us to acknowledge radically different possibilities—ones that do not conform to the status quo. This shift in worldview is where the true power of design lies: it’s not just a process, but a way of transforming how we see and engage with the world. This overlaps with social imagination; imagining and prototyping new ways of being together and viewing the world.

I believe this kind of transformation is where a collaborative designerly approach can become a form of activism. By creating spaces where people can co-create and explore new possibilities together, we are not just designing solutions—we are opening ourselves up to internal change and reshaping the world around us. Through this collective imagining, we challenge existing structures and create opportunities for futures that are more inclusive, equitable, and imaginative.

Engholm, I. (2020) Quick guide to design thinking. Vedbaek: Strandberg Publishing (Danish design series).

References

Brown, T. (2009) Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. 1st ed. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: HarperCollins Publishers.

Buchanan, R. (1992) ‘Wicked problems in design thinking’, Design issues, 8(2), pp. 5–21.

Dorst, K. (2011) ‘The core of “design thinking” and its application’, Design Studies, 32(6), pp. 521–532. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006.

Cross, N. (2006) Designerly ways of knowing. London: Springer.

Manzini, E. (2015) Design, when everybody designs: an introduction to design for social innovation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press (Design thinking, design theory).

Schön, D.A. (1984) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action. Arena: Ashgate.

Simon, H. A. (2019). The Sciences of the Artificial, reissue of the third edition with a new introduction by John Laird. MIT press.

Tischler, L (2009) IDEO’s David Kelley on ‘Design Thinking’. Fast Company. 2 October 2009 https://www.fastcompany.com/1139331/ideos-david-kelley-design-thinking