Humor with honest undertones?

Having been trained as a historian, I inevitably found myself thinking about the role of history in the practice of design and innovation. Design thinking, as we know it today, is largely an amalgamation of perspectives of psychology, anthropology, engineering, architecture, art, economics, and business strategy; to include history, seems to be going against the grain of innovation. If innovation is about the creation of a better tomorrow (because yesterday wasn’t good enough), can history be useful? Beyond drafting a timeline with the history of innovation (or “failed” innovations), is there value in incorporating an historical outlook in our application of design thinking?

The anthropological bent in the discipline of History—studying the past as a foreign country and that they do things differently there, to quote Leslie Poles Hartley—has inspired new generations of historians to re-consider Oriental and even Occidental cultures on their own terms. Broad socio-cultural contexts and the perspective that “we need to understand them on their own terms, rather than based on contemporary value systems” have enabled historians to find new interpretations and understandings of past human behavior.

In design research, we often talk to people and observe them in their habitats in order to contextualize their words and behavior onto a larger map. In this sense, we are trying to understand these folks and their needs on their own terms (although, arguably, researcher biases do remain). These maps allow design researchers to glean insights into the underlying motivations and invisible forces that shape the research participants’ behavior.

But are there maps that we cannot see? What if “their own terms” lays a fuzzy foundation?

That human nature is not constant, value systems change and that similar events are not precipitated by the same human passions and prejudices, how do we best define frameworks and create design solutions for shifting sand? More crucially, if design thinking is to be applied to complex social problems like education and global warming—where the stakes are higher than designing the next cool gadget—how do we  build lasting systems that are flexible enough to accommodate different (future) drivers that lead to seemingly similar problems?

Above is an advertisement for ChicagoNow. Tongue-in-cheek from one perspective, but perhaps also a subtle reflection of a disconnect between problem-solvers and solution-recipients?