Why should I be toxically positive about a bad method/framework/whatever it is this week? Why should I be under pressure to be “positive” about something that’s killing the quality of UX work and the whole UX profession? I don’t want to be tone policed as “harsh.” You can disagree with my points if you want to, but I’d advise you to stay away from how “positive” or “harsh” you think I am. This isn’t about feelings. Design thinking is a disaster, and more and more people are speaking out against it.

When design thinking goes away, what will you do? Start doing that now.

I will not celebrate IDEO for their attempts to line their pockets at the expense of UX work and workers. Their way isn’t “great.” There’s nothing great about design thinking, especially since barely any 2 people have the same definition of it.

“Design thinking” is a very watered-down version of UCD, designed for people who don’t work in UX to imagine they can do UX or HF work. I stand by my article.

• Design thinking rarely makes people really care about users. They pretend to, but they are often guessing or working from stereotypes. There is nothing in design thinking that requires that great research was done first. Many are doing no or incorrect research.
• Empathy is a lie. Most people barely have sympathy for our users. If they had empathy or sympathy, we would rush to solve users’ problems the moment we hear about them. We wouldn’t rush out crappy products that need to be fixed later. We wouldn’t ship minimally viable anything. Empathy is an overused buzzword.
• Most startups fail because they don’t achieve product-market fit. Design thinking won’t help them. The Lean Startup book isn’t helping them.
• IDEO’s way is poor, and the article quotes them — they know it’s poor. They know people are doing it “wrong,” whatever that means, and they’re not fixing it. Did you get to that part of the article?
• You don’t need to shift design thinking to UCD or HCD. You need to drop design thinking, walk away from it, leave it behind as a fad and empty promise, and just use UCD, HCD, and critical thinking.

The “more positive” approach would be to join with me and many others in helping design thinking go away faster so that we can do proper UCD, HCD, and critical thinking. That would be positive for customer/user outcomes. Positive for UX jobs and working experiences. Positive for company culture and collaboration since now, people won’t assume they can do what I do just by “design thinking.” That’s the more positive future. Join it, please. :)