Without Design Methods, I Feel Like I Am Cheating - another cracking post from Jon Kolko. This one is close to my heart because I teach design methods on HSLU’s MA Design and always make a point of saying that theory is practice and that methods are simply tools. As Jon says,
a design method won’t lead you to a good solution, because a design method has no natural relationship to the content of the problem. There’s no presumption of quality in the method, as each method is simply a series of artificial constraints that are introduced into a particular design context in order to help frame it.
There is a useful set of links at the end of Jon’s post too.