Jess McMullin’s Friend on Abductive Thinking
[A friend] pointed out that analytical solutions are deductive – working towards a solution based on inputs from different sources (user research, business plan, etc.) while design thinking relies more on abductive thinking – thinking about the possibilities of what could be. This leads to multiple models, a wide range of prototypes that lend themselves to iteration, instead of narrowing in on one solution. It also means that there’s discontinuous jumps – from a solution, back to a situation before iteration occurs. It’s not a smooth incremental improvement – but that’s why it works better.
1 I also like what he writes about ‘Design As Framing’ (‘there’s more power in defining the problem than solving it [...] the greatest advance beyond form and function that design thinking can bring to design practice’).