Exploring, a Disignerly act

The following text aims at understanding some of the main issues related to exploring as a “designerly” act.  The word “design” can be used as a verb or a noun.  It means to “Plan something for a specific role, purpose or effect” (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). As Petra Falin states, “The term design covers a broad field of activities from systematic processes of engineering to the artistic processes of haute couture. There are elements of design that are common to all or most of the fields of design but still we cannot assume that the term would denote equal meaning to all designers.”(Petra Falin 2007)

Exploring means “to traverse or range over for the purpose of discovery… to look into closely / scrutinize / examine” (The Macquarie Dictionary 1990)

Man Chau Chau(Eric)-Essay 1-Exploring

Introduction:

Design is not a new term in the world. Many people hear about it or work in design industry. Nevertheless some people still do not understand and they are dreading design. They thought design is merely a simple design process. That is because that they have not tried to understand and learnt how to design. In fact, design is the main platform for people to show their creative and personality. Every person has his or her own way to design. In design industry, there are different ways and no simple correct way to design. Every design method is real and absolute. Design is not a hard term to understand, but the quality of design depends on the designer’s understanding and knowledge of things. Understanding design is the first step to become a good and professional designer. There are many ways for different designers to understand what design is. One of the most important process is exploration.

 

Essay 1 : Exploration in Design – Pete Chemsripong

The first meaning of the word “explore” in the Concise Oxford Dictionary Tenth Edition is “to travel through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it.” (Smith 2000) As an acknowledged and significant phase in the design process, Exploration has been the subject of study for many years. (Gero 2006) This paper will discuss what exploration in design is, methods for exploration and personal opinions.

What is Exploration

Unlike problems commonly found in Science or Human philosophy, design problems are considered “ill-defined” or “wicked” problems. (Rittel and Webber 1973)  One cannot rely on gathering and analysing data in design problems since many parameters are constantly changing. Any attempt to test an hypothesis and achieve a reliable result requires testing on real problems, often with irreversible consequences. In order to tackle the problems in a “solution-oriented” style, “exploration” of ideas must be used to generate as many possibilities as possible.