Entrepreneurship & Innovation Research Seminar – Dr Lucy Hatt

Title: Deliberate Process Navigation Through Sensing as a Design Thinking Threshold Concept

Date: 15 October 2025

Time: 13:30- 14:30

Venue: NUBS.2.05

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Deliberate Process Navigation Through Sensing as a Design Thinking Threshold Concept

Speaker:   Dr Lucy Hatt

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business/people/profile/lucyhatt.html

Abstract:

While there is much written about design process steps—including their associated practices—there is scant literature addressing how designers move between steps. For example, current guidance often suggests practices as important whilst simultaneously cautioning against their overuse with little clarity on how such judgements should be made. Yet, many processes in both practice and educational contexts fail not because of an inability to execute basic practices, but to bring them together into a coherent process in context. Hence, there is an urgent need to better understand how designers navigate processes.

In response to this need we turn to threshold concepts as cornerstones for distilling and communicating particular ways of thinking and practising that may not be “easily assimilated or accommodated within one’s existing meaning frame” (Land et al., 2016, p. xi). While several works have outlined practice focused threshold concepts none have to-date applied this lens to process navigation.

We build on the widely held idea that designers navigate processes through sensing various areas of concern when designing. However, we also acknowledge design thinking is an ill-defined term (Carrion-Weiss et al., 2021). For example, Kolko (2018) identified two different interpretations of Design Thinking – one rooted in designing and one rooted in business. Hence, we aim to elicit types of sensing the cut across interpretations as well as examine potential conflicts between business- and design-based sensing and navigation. To this end, we examine:

Sensing of Uncertainty

Sensing of Design Space

Sensing of Context

Sensing of Others

We define these types, elucidate their features, and explore their theoretical roots as a basis for their communication into practice and educational contexts. Hence, we shed light on the “signature approach of a designer,” explaining what happens in the gaps between the steps in the design process.