Don Norman doesn't love "modern" design thinking, and offers his 4 principles of design

This is a clip from Don's live appearance on 19 May 2021 in this video:    • The Future of Design Education: A conversa...  

Don appears to believe that the current definition of design thinking seems to be focused on fun exercises. But based on the conversations he's having, it's not working at companies, partially because companies aren't transforming towards customer-centricity (he calls this design-driven instead of customer-centric).

Here are his 4 principles of what he considers design thinking to be. You might notice that it's quite far from most of the definitions, frameworks, paradigms, mindsets, and other things currently calling themselves "design thinking."

1. Design for people. People aren't the obstacle. They're not stupid or "using it wrong." Take people the way they are, not the way you want them to be.

2. Never solve the problem you're asked to solve. Ask why is that a problem. Keep asking why until you find the root causes. If you solve the symptoms, the problem will come back.

3. Everything is the system. You could find a cause and solve that issue, but you could make the system worse. Making a change "over here" can have implications in other places.

4. Continually prototype and test. Refine what you are doing based on observations. The perfect design right now isn't perfect in a year. The perfect designs requires continual modification.