“Editor”, I agree that design/designers frequently get little recognition for what they do. They are often spectacularly bad at explaining it! They don’t always seem to be particularly aware of what they do and how their approach differs from what others do, so they miss the opportunity to ‘explain’ design as being more than ‘making stuff look nice’. Which brings us right back to the book, I guess.
(Thanks for the email btw and for rescuing my original comment from your spam filter!)

I do agree that it can be quite arrogant to assume that delving into new areas of expertise quickly will make you an expert in fulfilling tasks in that discipline. But spending time expanding your familiarity with a wider range of disciplines makes you much better at planning how those disciplines are best used, by the best talent, to solve a client’s problem.

If only that were the case in the other direction. Designers regularly face the dismissal of their abilities either through the same notion of ‘talent’ (as in “it’s easy for you because you’re talented,” thus negating the hard work that goes into designing), through the idea that everyone can do it and/or the technology does it all for us. There is very little respect for design from other disciplines across the range from business management through to the sciences and even in the arts (where it’s too commercial). Yet everyone encounters, is affected by and consumes many design artifacts every day.

I’m not sure designers in this regard are claiming that they have the same skills as the experts in another field, but I do think it’s not unreasonable to suggest design has parity with those other disciplines.

First, there is a kind of hagiography that goes on around “Designers” and “design thinking”. It implies that designers have a special gift, that the way they think is unique and other disciplines don’t or can’t do this. Yet we believe we can teach design. This implies that design thinking is a learned skill. The openness to ideas, the willingness to explore, to propose multiple solutions, to be uncomfortable with the haziness of the design problem and the process, is something that is actively taught to them. I taught design for a decade so believe I can say this with some basis.

Second: You talk about the “T” person that designers need to be. The idea that designers can branch out into any field (e.g. anthropology) and “do it well” has long struck me as insufferably arrogant. It’s an extraordinary leap to think that by virtue of being a Designer one can master another discipline without committing the same time and effort to studying it that a subject matter expert has put in. Do we really believe that because we “think as designers” we can circumvent the concentrated study and immersion in the topic that an anthropologist with a PhD has undergone? Architects seem to be particularly arrogant in this respect. Borrowing ideas willy-nilly, usually only superficially understood, from another profession does not make one any kind of expert in that subject.

Design thinking is a very good approach to complex problems that is equally applicable to a wide range of fields, but it certainly doesn’t confer mystical powers on the designer. It’s time designers stopped thinking they are ’special’ in this regard and begin to acknowledge the expertise that lies in other disciplines and not trivialise this expertise by the claiming parity with it. Use it, yes; learn about it, yes; draw on it for inspiration, yes; but do not mistake this for having gained expertise in it.