Design Process as Lateral Thinking
Practicing design helps develop lateral thinking: try different approaches, challenge assumptions, and suspend critical evaluation temporarily to allow flexibility and variety.
THE IDEA
Summary
The design process is a convenient format for developing the idea of lateral thinking. The emphasis is on the different ways of doing things, the different ways of looking at things and the escape from cliché concepts, the challenging of assumptions. Critical evaluation is temporarily suspended in order to develop a generative frame of mind in which flexibility and variety can be used with confidence. For the design session to work it is essential that the person running it understands the purpose of the session. It is not practice in design but practice in lateral thinking.
When to use it
Brainstorming sessions for product innovation where conventional ideas are exhausted.
Problem-solving in team meetings when standard approaches fail to yield solutions.
Educational settings to encourage creative thinking and challenge students' assumptions.
Personal development to overcome mental blocks and generate novel approaches to daily challenges.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Redesigning a Chair
In a design thinking workshop, participants are tasked with redesigning a chair not for comfort but to challenge the assumption that chairs must be comfortable. This forces lateral thinking to explore functions like storage, exercise, or social interaction.
Business Strategy Shift
A company uses lateral thinking to find new markets by redefining a product's use — e.g., repurposing a cleaning solution as a disinfectant for medical equipment, opening up a new customer segment.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How can you apply lateral thinking to a current problem you are facing?
What assumptions are you making about the problem that might be challenged?
In what ways can you temporarily suspend judgment to generate more ideas?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Lateral Thinking A Textbook of Creativity (Edward de Bono)