Design Thinking – Roisin Kelly (200239096)
Kees Dorst questions, in his article Design Research: A Revolution Waiting to Happen (2008), how someone would start a new scientific discipline aimed at studying a complex area of human activity like design. First, he says, we would probably observe the activity, and then describe it (“which in itself involves a degree of interpretation”). Then we would seek to create models to explain the phenomena as observed. This explanatory framework could then be used to prescribe ways for improving practice and developing methods and tools.
Dorst (2008) says that this has not happened in the field of design research. He says the field emerged from practitioners developing ways of working to help them cope with problems they faced, that these prescriptive statements were put into words and published as formal tools and methods.
Dorst (2008) says that studying the process of design would include four components – the object of the activity (the design problem and emerging solution), the actor (the designer or design team), the context in which the activity takes place and the structure and dynamics of the activities (‘the design process’).
He says however that three of these four aspects are often ignored. He says the overwhelming majority of descriptive and prescriptive work in design research focuses entirely on the design process and, as a result, design methods and tools being developed inevitably focus on enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. He suggests that an overriding focus on design processes holds us back from a deeper understanding of the design activity.
I think that IDEA9106 and design thinking has challenged Dorst’s point. And while ‘designerly acts’ are part of the design process, I think that significant aspects of the other components emerged in a more rich and subtle way than they may have if we blatantly identified them and tackled them.
For example, I was curious and intrigued about the relationship between cognitions and the design process and how intricately linked they are. The class discussions around knowing, discovering and interpreting allowed these issues to emerge organically, as a consequence of the designerly acts.
Let’s look at interpretation for example. Gabriela Goldschmidt (1988) says that interpretation is the hinge on which the entire design process is pivoted. Consider how uniquely individual and misconstrued interpretations can be and ask whether looking this aspect of the design process can really exclude emotion or passions. I can vividly picture members of a design team departing a brief or brainstorming session in frustration because no-one cared about or understood their interpretations.
Goldschmidt says that interpretation can be the central process within the wider activity of designing. She refers to ‘knowledge’ which includes information, norms, beliefs, requirements, wishes or stylistic preferences that a designer is aware of, and ‘design moves’ which are actions on the knowledge – adding or subtracting from the knowledge, changing the relationship among items. Priorities, for example, can emerge from design moves. The possibilities of ‘knowledge’ alone are vast and, often, emotional or even irrational.
And what about discovery? Goldschmidt says that the opportunity for discoveries is wide open when designers experiment with their material intensively enough to see issues and problems in new ways. So if a designers ‘material’ includes their knowledge we are asking them to challenge and experiment with their beliefs, requirements or preferences. I ask whether looking at this part of the design process could ever exclude emotions or attitudes.
And what about reflection? Personal or collective reflection in a professional context can inevitably result in personal challenges that raise emotions.
Consider Schon’s (1983) chapter about the limits to reflection in action in town planning.
He talks about his (and Argyis’) models I and II of theory in action. Model I is typical of my experience with how statutory planners behave. Values in this model include (among others) achieving the task as I define it, try to win and control the task unilaterally. I have heard planners return from meetings with applicants and claim to have “won”.
Schon says that in applying this model negotiations will be imbued with “mystery and mastery” because each side protects themselves and hides information that could, if revealed, facilitate negotiations and achieve and a better outcome.
The model II theory in action, alternatively, proposes creating conditions for open and informed communication and exchanging directly observable information from which valid assumptions can be made thereby creating conditions where parties play an intrinsically satisfying role, rather than one based on loss or gain, and where commitment to decisions may be stronger. (I suspect that many professions could benefit from this model and I am certain that statutory planning could. I am curious to know whether I would derive such certainty if the chapter was written from the perspective of another profession).
When I consider Schon’s (1983) detailed assessment of reflection I again question Dorst’s (2008) comments that while the study of design has focussed on process this means it has ignored the design problem, the actors and the context because I believe that reflection in all its frustration and revelation cannot be reasonably considered without including at least some emotion, other actors or the context.
Consider, for example, a professional discussion of Schon’s two models. How is model I applied? When is model II applied? How useful have practitioners have found them in different circumstances? Are there benefits or drawbacks? Have there been gains or losses as a result of a certain approach? What may have occurred had the alternative model been applied? This debate, if nothing else, might allow practitioners to see and acknowledge their behaviour and surely this is the beginning of reflection.
The issues that would inevitably arise as a result of this professional discussion, whether personal or collective, would necessarily include feelings, other team members, the context and the actual design problem. Some would say “I felt angry, impatient, ignored…”. Others would say “The engineers/administrators would not allow it…” or “That is not suitable for this situation…”.
So while Dorst thinks that almost three-quarters of the aspects of designing have generally been overlooked by focussing on process I think that design thinking allows deeper understanding of the design activity.
Some further ideas for IDEA 9106.
Design has wide application in many professions. Furniture – from elite items in Milan to basic household or office furniture. Websites – from functional to funky. Games –board games, computer games, children’s playground equipment. Clothes – from catwalk to utilitarian. Machinery – household to industrial, useful to useless. Print media – catalogues, magazines, industry journals and bill boards. Packaging and advertising in their many shapes and forms. Vehicles – from skateboards to helicopters. Does drafting policy and legislation feature design? Does systems planning or business analysis use design principles? I think that many professions could and sometimes do apply some or many of the ‘designerly acts’.
IDEA 9106 could benefit from drawing on different examples of how and where design is applied.
I think that a class of people: younger and older, from all over the world, with different beliefs, knowledge and professional backgrounds will apply the ‘designerly acts’ individually with unique and possibly interesting results. Imagine for instance if in Week 4-6 students were asked to use the acts studied so far to design something – some would sketch, some would use computers, some may build it. Some might refine an existing example or come up with something entirely new. Some would focus on appearance and others may focus on function. Some would target marketability while others may aim for individuality. Some would mimic and others would innovate. There would be good, great and preposterous.
And what about other ‘designerly acts’? For example Goldschmidt (1988) refers to ‘play’. Apparently the word ‘play’, as a noun and verb, is often used in discussion of architecture and designing. One famous example in architecture is Le Corbusier’s definition: ‘Architecture is the skilful, correct and magnificent play of volumes assembled in light’. Likewise Donald Schon talks about ‘design worlds’, virtual in nature, within which design activities take place.
I raise play because speculative sketching or testing seemed to be a relatively common effort in the design process. And while play could be captured in other ‘designerly acts’ like exploring or modelling, I think that play allows or even encourages, less rigid or defined engagement with the brief whereby team members can test or sample fanciful ideas.
I think that IDEA 9106 allowed speculation, experimentation and engagement and also filled a gap identifed by Dorst.
References:
Crilly, Nathan; Good, David; Matravers, Derek; Clarkson, P John 2008 Design as communication: exploring the validity and utility of relating intention to interpretation Design Studies, Volume 29, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 425-457
Cross, Cross 2007 Forty years of design research Design Studies, Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2007, Pages 1-4
Dorst, Kees 2008 Design research: a revolution-waiting-to-happen Design Studies, Volume 29, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 4-11
Goldschmidt, Gabriela 1988 Interpretation: its role in architectural designing
Design Studies, Volume 9, Issue 4, October 1988, Pages 235-245
Schon, Donald 1983 The Reflective Practitioner Ashgate Publishing Ltd
This is a well put-together, thought provoking essay; again, I should say. Using Dorst’s 2008 paper as the primary generator is an interesting move. It’s not a bad choice. It’s a strong paper intended to challenge readers and influence the way design research is conducted.
In general, I agree that design research is immature, compared to physics, say, but I don’t know whether major aspects of the topic are being neglected, or are simply occurring in other domains, such as architectural science, project management , environment behaviour and structure. The big problem in my view is fragmentation of potentially interrelated work. One reason for the fragmentation is that design research interacts with many more mature disciplines, which have different issues and methodologies. The tricky questions are how to deal with it and, I would say, where to start and when. It’s a big (in scale) problem but I don’t think all of the many interfaces are equally urgent.
As to whether IDEA 9106 challenges Dorst’s critique of design research, in case anyone wonders, that was not consciously on my mind at the time of planning the unit. In one sense I agree with Dorst, in that I have been skeptical of abstractly coded, process oriented studies, which disregard what designers are actually thinking, since I first tried to decipher one. I conceded that maybe someone had to do them, but not me; and since then I have headed in a different direction. The reason for my skepticism, which must be obvious to anyone who designs, is that designing is so much about content. The stuff of information, meaning, knowledge, skill, memory, insight, reasoning, exploration, discovery, reflection, learning, your own values, what you are trying to do, and so on, is content.
Designers need to do things with the information, using their skulls and skills, but what? I am not convinced there is a necessary cognitive process that distinguishes designing from other strategic behaviours. Designers need different types of knowledge, particularly wide ranging general knowledge, deeper more highly structured knowledge of their domain of practice, and knowledge acquisition skills. I would include in the last one, the strategies identified by the second generation researchers like Rittel, Darke and Schön. But I would also add that designers are individuals first, adaptable individuals. A strong impression from my study is that highly skilled and motivated designers draw from a wide range of options in going about their work. A really good analogy, that occurred to me too late to mention during the semester, is how the Slumdog Millionaire movie character was able to respond to each question. Every answer had an origin situated in his life.
To lay out my feelings more candidly, I think IDEA9106 was a challenge for me. It was a bit daunting but also very stimulating. I had fears, but the opportunity to deliver a new unit of study was also a now-or-never experience. Something I had wanted for a long time fell into my hands. This was just like the genesis of my PhD, ten years ago. That was a big challenge that ultimately worked out nicely. In fact, other challenges in the past, even the ones that fell flat, have left me with few regrets. So the key questions were simply; why not? and what have I got to lose? Then rather than struggle under the challenge alone, I looked at how I could share it with the class, by trying to convey the sensation of design thinking, rather than just pass on the theories.
So when you say that significant aspects of Dorst’s wider of design emerged in a rich and subtle way that is reassuring, particularly as some of the other essays include similar or compatible views. Gabriela Goldschmidt’s comments on interpretation, discovery and play are a good find. I haven’t delved so deeply into the Design Studies archives. I think the full catalogue (including vols 1 to 15) has only become available on-line fairly recently. It’s a mighty resource which I will browse over before writing up the 2010 content.
Before next year I will review the designerly acts and could make changes to the sequence, or the titles. Early in the semester I was undecided, between Discussion or Expression. Ultimately I was pleased with Discussion. You are right. Play is a good term to add. Certainly my first thought is to add it to Exploration. But I appreciate that play has several meanings, apart from the being playful sense, like play of volumes, or playing out. When Goldschmidt refers to moves in designing I suppose they are moves in an implicit game. Is designing a game, or a role, or a sequence of events? Interesting.
Paul