[hn30000]

I work in architecture and went to school for it. The only reasonable definition of design thinking that I’ve heard is “a way of thinking that considers the affordances of a design decision across multiple scales or perspectives.”

For instance, you need a floor plate of the second floor of a building to be a bit bigger to accommodate a certain type of room. So you make the second floor cantilever over the entrance, thereby also providing the functionality of an awning that protects people from rain while they wait for the bus. This is a bit of a silly example because the cantilever adds cost etc but that’s the general idea. Identifying opportunities that are “win-win,” might be a crude way to say it.

In my experience this is a particular mode of thinking that some people are clearly better at, and those people tend to be the superstar designers. Whether it can be taught or not is a bit of an open question.

Any other definition I’ve heard for “design thinking” doesn’t really make sense to me, but that might just reflect my background.

[yamazakiwi]

Couldn't you come to the same conclusion about making the 2nd floor cantilever over the entrance and call it engineering? I guess it depends on how you personally arrive to the conclusion, but the results can be interpreted.