That's not a construction related firm, is it?

@ET2020

I just checked the website of the company that apparently published this document. If by “some in the industry” you are talking about the built environment, this firm has nothing to do with it (although you could be forgiven by thinking that. By looking at their site, what they say they do is so abstract it could apply to almost anything), it looks like an IT-related consultancy business.

This firm aside, If I said “there is no such thing as jargon within the architectural industry” I would be lying. When you come across terms like “adaptive responsive through computational intelligence”, “parametricism is epochal”, “players and actors imbued with tactics and utility functions in a world of optimization” you know some people in this line of work just can’t help themselves.

There’s a mildly amusing article from ArchDaily where they published a list of some of the most popular architectural buzzwords such as “pastiche”, “genius loci”, “permaculture”. Link here: https://www.archdaily.com/775615/150-weird-words-that-only-architects-use

This is not an issue only in our profession, by the way. In some industries jargon overuse is more prevalent than in others. Put your hands up if you have heard of businesses blurting out gibberish such as “A coherent innovation strategy aligns all elements of an organisation to its corporate goals” or “harness innovation to accelerate growth” and let's not forget the all-time favorite “digital transformation”.

Nonetheless, let’s look at the case of the document you posted.

The text under the first two headings is really trying to say that quality design can be achieved only when the point of view of the end users (the people who are ultimately going to “use” such design) has been completely taken into consideration.

While this sounds like common sense, not every design (invention/project/etc.) has always been engineered that way. I am going to attach just a couple of examples where you can tell end users were not consulted.

The first shows a very disorienting pattern used for a staircase which is likely to get you confused and risk tripping. The second is from a university where all desks are for right-handed people only.

Another classic case of design where end-users have not been taken into account (or at least not all end-users) is when you have buildings that lack disabled access.

These are rather crude examples but they show that overlooking the users can have a detrimental impact on the end result.

On the other hand this article is a good example of why HCD concepts applied to our field can make a difference (“Why human centred design makes a difference in architecture”, link: https://medium.com/@social_archi/why-human-centred-design-makes-a-difference-in-architecture-3252cb798639 ).

Back to the Mad Pow document, the Diamond Model they show (divergent/convergent thinking) is just a rehash of the classic brainstorming session. In a brainstorming session people are encouraged to come up with as many ideas as they can, which are written down without judgement (divergent thinking). After everyone has exhausted their ideas/proposals, these are filtered (distilled) down to a more limited number of options (convergent thinking).

The rest of the document seems a long-winded way to explain how to work with the two concepts together.

All in all, that document is quite rambling but I think their heart is in the right place.