Abstract

The current popularity of ‘design thinking’ in business and engineering presupposes an understanding of the decision-making process in design. However, knowledge about designing often does not go deeper than the superficial content of the process phases. In this paper we will discuss decision-making in design by showing the complexity of this hermeneutical process. How are decisions made in design which, first of all, has the nature of a dialogue, based on abductive reasoning in which both intuition and logic play a role? Even more relevant, designing is a multidisciplinary endeavor with players from several fields: designers, economists, lawyers, engineers, psychologists, anthropologists,and marketers. Hence, a designer must work effectively with a team composed of members of different disciplines. Every discipline will have its own way of decision-making according its educational tradition and type of problems to solve. To tune these different approaches in decision-making is the real challenge in developing innovative artifacts. The paper will be based on theoretical notions from literature and on empirical studies performed by the authors in the area of design and business.