Abductive Reasoning: A Design Thinking Experiment

Design thinking fundamentally relies on abductive reasoning. Diverse thinking types such as divergent thinking, systems thinking, and empathetic thinking have been adopted in design thinking education. Yet, it is very rare to address abductive reasoning to be integrated in a design thinking course because of deductive validity and inductive strength. In practice, the quality of design thinking is judged from design outcomes in terms of creativity and innovation rather than the application of abductive reasoning in thinking that is necessary for educators to develop diverse instructional strategies for design thinking. Through a design thinking experiment where abductive reasoning was structured for groups of students to modify their chosen fairy stories by challenging identified lessons/values/beliefs, we articulated relevant strategies from case analysis. As a result, we discovered the following six strategies for abductive reasoning: questioning on socially given identity; restructuring a hierarchy of values; de- and re-contextualisation; perspective-taking; being intersubjective through body swapping; and developing imaginative empathy for compassion. The six strategies support pedagogical aspects of design thinking such as collaborative problem-solving and analytic and empathetic engagement; and thus, design educators can use them in developing instructional strategies to facilitate abductive reasoning in design thinking.