Design methods
Encyclopedia
Design Methods is a broad area that focuses on:
The goal of design methods is to gain key insights or unique essential truths resulting in more holistic solutions in order to achieve better experiences for users with products, services, environments and systems they rely upon. Insight, in this case, is clear and deep investigation of a situation through design methods, thereby grasping the inner nature of things intuitively.
Social, political and economic developments of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century put into motion modern benefits and constraints for living and working. Industrial and technological breakthroughs associated with this period created social and economic complexities for people and their environment. Disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, engineering and product development began to tackle new types of problem-solving past traditional artifact making. More informed and methodical approaches to designing were required.
Design methods originally drew from a 1962 conference called "The Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications
." This event was organized by John Chris Jones, and Peter Slann who, with conference invitees, were driven by concerns about how their modern industrialized world was being manifested.
Conference participants countered the craftsman model of design which was rooted in turning raw materials through tried and true craft-based knowledge into finished products. They believed that a single craft-based designer producing design solutions was not compatible with addressing the evolving complexity of post-industrial societies. They stressed that designers needed to work in cross-disciplinary teams where each participant brings his/her specific body of skills, language and experiences to defining and solving problems in whatever context.
The key benefit was to find a method that suits a particular design situation. Christopher Alexander
went on to write his seminal books Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building.
From a pragmatic standpoint, design methods is concerned with the “how” and defining “when” things happen, and in what desired order. Design Methods is challenging to implement since there are not enough agreed-upon tools, techniques and language for consistent knowledge transfer. While there are many conceptual models and frameworks, there needs to be more granularity of tools and techniques.There are also many variables that affect outcomes since logic and intuition interplay with one another. Two people can therefore use the same method and arrive at different outcomes.
for exploration
and improvement, in different directions.
The Design Research Society was founded in 1967 with many participants from the Conference on Design Methods in 1962. The purpose of the Society is to promote "the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields" and is an interdisciplinary group with many professions represented, but all bound by the conviction of the benefits of design research
.
The Environmental Design and Research Association is one of the best-known entities that strive to integrate designers and social science professionals for better built environments. EDRA was founded by Henry Sanoff in 1969. Both John Chris Jones and Christopher Alexander interacted with EDRA and other camps; both seemed at a certain point to reject their interpretations. Jones and Christopher also questioned their original thesis about design methods.
An interesting shift that affected design methods and design studies was the 1968 lecture from Herbert Simon
, the Nobel laureate, who presented "The Sciences of the Artificial." He proposed using scientific methods to explore the world of man-made things (hence artificial). He discussed the role of analysis (observation
) and synthesis (making) as a process of creating man-made responses to the world he/she interacted with. Important to Simon's contribution were his notions of "bounded rationality
" and "satisficing
." Simon's concept had a profound impact on the discourse in both design methods, and the newly emerging design studies communities in two ways. It provided an entry of using scientific ideas to overlay on design, and it also created an internal debate whether design could/should be expressed and practiced as a type of science
with the reduction of emphasis on intuition
.
Nigel Cross has been prolific in articulating the issues of design methods and design research. The discussion of the ongoing debate of what is design research and design science was, and continues to be articulated by Cross. His thesis is that design is not a science, but is an area that is searching for "intellectual independence." He views the original design methods discussions of the 1960s as a way to integrate objective and rational methods in practicing design. Scientific method was borrowed as one framework, and the term "design science" was coined in 1966 at the Second Conference on the Design Method focusing on a systematic approach to practicing design. Cross defined the "science of design" as a way to create a body of work to improve the understanding of design methods—and more importantly that design methods does not need to be a binary choice between science
and art
.
Nigan Bayazit, professor at the Istanbul Technical University, published an overview of the history of design methods. She stated that "Design methods people were looking at rational methods of incorporating scientific techniques and knowledge into the design process to make rational decisions to adapt to the prevailing values, something that was not always easy to achieve." The following is what design research
is concerned with:
The eventual debate about design methods and whether design is an art or science is not a new. Partisans on both sides of the issue have framed it as a binary choice of something to lose or gain. However, this false argument was viewed by John Chris Jones, who recognized the "logical, systematic, behavioristic, operational aspects of new methods" (which could be viewed as science) might be seen as "anti-life" which treat people as "instruments." On the other side, another group may define design with "animism, vitalism and naturalism" as a language (which could be viewed as art). Jones sought to bring both together and act as checks-and-balances for design methods.
Jones viewed methodology as "mere symbolic contrivances" and "would lose its value" if it did not reflect "the personal issues which matter most to the people who will take decisions."
American designers were much more pragmatic at articulating design methods and creating an underlying language about the practice of industrial and graphic design. They were tied to economic systems that supported design practice and therefore focused on the way design could be managed as an extension of business, rather than the European approach to design methods based on transforming engineering by design.
Industrial design was the first area that made inroads into systematizing knowledge
through practice. Raymond Loewy
was instrumental at elevating the visibility of industrial design through cult of personality (appearing three times on front cover of Time Magazine). Henry Dreyfuss
had a profound impact on the practice of industrial design by developing a systematic process used to shape environments, transportation, products
and packaging. His focus on the needs of the average consumer was most celebrated in his book Designing for People, an extensive exploration of ergonomics
.
Jay Doblin
one of America's foremost industrial designers, worked for Raymond Loewy and was later an employee of Unimark International
, the world’s largest global design firm during the 1960s with offices in seven countries. In 1972, Doblin formed Chicago-based Jay Doblin & Associates, a firm which managed innovative programs for Xerox Corporation and General Electric. Doblin was prolific at developing a language to describe design. One of his best articles was "A Short, Grandiose Theory of Design", published in the 1987 Society of Typographic Arts Design Journal. In seven pages, Doblin presents a straightforward and persuasive argument for design as a systematic process. He described the emerging landscape of systematic design:
Doblin and others were responding to the increased specialization
of design and the complexity of managing large design programs for corporations. It was a natural process to begin to discuss how design should move upstream to be involved with the specifications of problems, not only in the traditional mode of production which design had been practiced. Particularly since 2000, design methods and its intersection with business development have been visibly championed by numerous consultancies within design industry.
The continuity of approaches to design projects by such representative firms is the generation of inputs incited by the human condition in varied contexts. These approaches utilize a sustainable methods-based mode of making that takes into account critical analytic and synthetic skills toward more informed and inspired specifications grounded in:
. Since there were no established methods, each practitioner began to develop frameworks and languages to describe a new way to design. Like any market-based model, there were many competing ideas about these new methods and their basis. Many of these designers may have been aware of the design methods movement, but many were not. Yet all their ideas were aligned to many of the basic tenants of the 1962 conference which advocated a more rigorous way of doing design. However, the social perspectives and criticisms of mediocre products of 1962 participants may not have been shared or agreed with.
While this relationship has been identified, it has not been universally recognized or accepted by diverse design communities. Designers have strong connection not only to clients but also to end users who consume products and services. One of the strongest early advocates was Peter Gorb, former Director of London Business School's Centre for Design Management.
Design as a function within corporations, or as independent consultancies, have not always collaborated well with business
. Clients and the market
have traditionally viewed design as an expressive and production function, rather than as a strategic asset. Designers have focused their skills and knowledge in creating designed artifacts, and indirectly addressed larger issues within this creative process. They have been uneasy about articulating their value to business in terms that business executives could understand.
There were moves to bridge this gap. In England
, the British Design Council (now called the Design Council
) was founded in 1944 by the British wartime government as the Council of Industrial Design with the objective "to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry". The Design Management Institute is an international nonprofit organization that seeks to heighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy. Founded in 1975, DMI has become the leading resource and international authority on design management.
(1925–1998) was a trail blazer in the definition of sustainable design
and addressing social issues through design. His book Design for the Real World in the late 1960s articulated a world for design to use less resources and address local social issues for ecologically sound design to serve the poor, the disabled and the elderly. The disciplines of sustainable design and universal design
are echoed here.
Professor of design history at the University of Illinois at Chicago Victor Margolin addressed the inherent role of design communities supporting an economic system, which he called the "expansion model", where "the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. They attract capital which is either recycled back into more production or becomes part of the accumulation of private or corporate wealth." Margolin describes a "sustainable model" as having "ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and will possibly collapse."
Design methods initially was focused on how design could be integrated into engineering and grew to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of solving contemporary complexity in all its forms. John Chris Jones recognized the role of business, as one stakeholder among many, but did not view design methods as a business management tool. Design management
focuses on how to define design as a business function and provides a language and method of how to effectively manage it.
Customer relationship management
(CRM), Supply Chain
, and Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) professionals belonged to any of these groups. Together they had to rapidly accelerate time-to-value and learn how to do things that had little precedent. This context was an amplification of Donald Schon's theories of unstable knowledge bases developing new ideas by a phenomenological approach of direct application and experience.
Strategy
began to be redefined from an MBA-focused domain into an area both technology and brand/creative professionals moved upstream and engaged as up-front strategy. Other professionals were incorporated from cognitive science
, ethnography
, and library science
(to name a few). Inherent in these groups were rigorous research-based methods which were overlaid onto business, technology and brand/creative. User-centric approaches were developed resulting in the creation of whole workflow systems to accommodate diversity in skills and tools. These diverse groups brought markedly different languages and models native to their disciplines which posed significant integration-challenges, including hours, in determining how to work together.
Clement Mok
, founder of Studio Archetype (acquired by Sapient), recognized this trend and began to articulate the new professional design situation being agitated by new information technologies marked by the Internet
and advancements in computing
media. He described a multi-media landscape that was converging into an integrated digital space. Adjacent to this was the redefinition of skills and roles that would create, build, sustain, and innovate this dynamic environment. He called for graphic/visual designers to broaden their perspective, beyond traditional artifacts and methods, and immerse themselves in a collaborative workspace. In his book, Designing Business, Mok emphasized redefinition of design practice dramatically affected by technological change: "Designers are in a position to promulgate new values and to define and quantify the effects of those values, and over the next ten years, their optimum role will be to design 'understanding.' The age we're living now is an incredible time because of the extent to which designers, business people, engineers, and technologists can redefine their roles."
The focus of most post-1962 enhancements to design methods has been on developing a series of relevant, sound, humanistic problem-solving procedures and techniques to reduce avoidable errors and oversights that can adversely affect design solutions. The key benefit is to find a method that suits a particular design situation.
The benefits of their original work has been abstracted many times over; but in today's design environment, several of their main ideas have been integrated into contemporary design methods:
A large challenge for design as a discipline, its use of methods and an endeavor to create shared values, is its inherent synthetic nature as an area of study and action. This allows design to be extremely malleable in nature, borrowing ideas and concepts from a wide variety of professions to suit the ends of individual practitioners. It also makes design vulnerable since these very activities make design a discipline unextensible as a shared body of knowledge.
Long before Malcolm Gladwell
and his book Blink
, there was Donald Schon
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. In 1983, he published The Reflective Practitioner. He saw traditional professions with stable knowledge bases, such as law
and medicine
, becoming unstable due to outdated notions of 'technical-rationality' as the grounding of professional knowledge. Practitioners were able to describe how they 'think on their feet', and how they make use of a standard set of frameworks and techniques. Schon foresaw the increasing instability of traditional knowledge and how to achieve it. This is in line with the original founders of design methods who wanted to break with an unimaginative and static technical society and unify exploration
, collaboration
and intuition
.
Design methods has influenced design practice and design education
. It has benefitted the design community by helping to create introductions that would never have happened if traditional professions remained stable, which did not necessarily allow collaboration
due to gatekeeping of areas of knowledge and expertise. Design has been by nature an interloper activity, with individuals that have crossed disciplines to question and innovate.
The challenge is to transform individual experiences, frameworks and perspectives
into a shared, understandable, and, most importantly, a transmittable area of knowledge. Victor Margolin states three reasons why this will prove difficult:
In the end, design methods is a term that is widely used. Though conducive to interpretations, it is a shared belief in an exploratory and rigorous method to solve problems through design, an act which is part and parcel of what designers aim to accomplish in today's complex world.
- DivergenceDivergenceIn vector calculus, divergence is a vector operator that measures the magnitude of a vector field's source or sink at a given point, in terms of a signed scalar. More technically, the divergence represents the volume density of the outward flux of a vector field from an infinitesimal volume around...
– Exploring possibilities and constraints of inherited situations by applying critical thinkingCritical thinkingCritical thinking is the process or method of thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is true, false, or sometimes true and sometimes false, or partly true and partly false. The origins of critical thinking can be traced in Western thought to the Socratic...
through qualitative and quantitative research methods to create new understanding (problem space) toward better design solutions - Transformation – Redefining specifications of design solutions which can lead to better guidelines for traditional and contemporary design activities (architecture, graphic, industrial, information, interaction, et al.) and/or multidisciplinary response
- Convergence – Prototyping possible scenarios for better design solutions that incrementally or significantly improve the originally inherited situation
- SustainabilitySustainabilitySustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of union, an interdependent relationship and mutual responsible position with all living and non...
– Managing the process of exploring, redefining and prototyping of design solutions continually over time - ArticulationArticulation (architecture)Articulation, in art and architecture, is a method of styling the joints in the formal elements of architectural design. Through degrees of articulation, each part is united with the whole work by means of a joint in such a way that the joined parts are put together in styles ranging from...
- the visual relationship between the parts and the whole.
The goal of design methods is to gain key insights or unique essential truths resulting in more holistic solutions in order to achieve better experiences for users with products, services, environments and systems they rely upon. Insight, in this case, is clear and deep investigation of a situation through design methods, thereby grasping the inner nature of things intuitively.
Background of Design Methods
Design methods originally drew from a 1962 conference called "The Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications
Communication studies
Communication Studies is an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Hence, communication studies encompasses a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass...
." This event was organized by John Chris Jones, and Peter Slann who, with conference invitees, were driven by concerns about how their modern industrialized world was being manifested.
Conference participants countered the craftsman model of design which was rooted in turning raw materials through tried and true craft-based knowledge into finished products. They believed that a single craft-based designer producing design solutions was not compatible with addressing the evolving complexity of post-industrial societies. They stressed that designers needed to work in cross-disciplinary teams where each participant brings his/her specific body of skills, language and experiences to defining and solving problems in whatever context.
The key benefit was to find a method that suits a particular design situation. Christopher Alexander
Christopher Alexander
Christopher Wolfgang Alexander is a registered architect noted for his theories about design, and for more than 200 building projects in California, Japan, Mexico and around the world...
went on to write his seminal books Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building.
Where Process Meets Method
When process and method are discussed, they tend to be used interchangeably. However, while they are two sides to the same coin, they are different. Process (lat. processus–movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of operations or events over time which produce desired outcomes. Process contains a series of actions, events, mechanisms, or steps, which contain methods. Method is a way of doing something, especially a systematic way through an orderly arrangement of specific techniques. Each method has a process.From a pragmatic standpoint, design methods is concerned with the “how” and defining “when” things happen, and in what desired order. Design Methods is challenging to implement since there are not enough agreed-upon tools, techniques and language for consistent knowledge transfer. While there are many conceptual models and frameworks, there needs to be more granularity of tools and techniques.There are also many variables that affect outcomes since logic and intuition interplay with one another. Two people can therefore use the same method and arrive at different outcomes.
Expansion of Design Methods
Different groups took John Chris Jones's book Design Methods, with its alternative message of using design as a frameworkConceptual framework
A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought. For example, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin used the "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" approach; a "hedgehog" might approach the world in terms of a single organizing...
for exploration
Exploration
Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...
and improvement, in different directions.
Emergence of Design Research and Design Studies
After the 1962 conference, many of the participants began to publish and to define an area of research that focused on design. Three "camps" seemed to emerge to integrate the initial work in Design Methods:- Behaviorism interpreted Design Methods as a way to describe human behaviorHuman behaviorHuman behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics....
in relation to the built environment. Its clinical approach tended to rely on human behavior processes (taxonomic activities). - Reductivism broke Design Methods down into small constituent parts. This scientific approach tended to rely on rationalism and objectified processes such as epistemological activities.
- Phenomenology approached design methods from an experiential approach (human experience and perceptionPerceptionPerception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
.)
The Design Research Society was founded in 1967 with many participants from the Conference on Design Methods in 1962. The purpose of the Society is to promote "the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields" and is an interdisciplinary group with many professions represented, but all bound by the conviction of the benefits of design research
Design research
Design research investigates the process of designing in all its many fields. It is thus related to Design methods in general or for particular disciplines. A primary interpretation of design research is that it is concerned with undertaking research into the design process. Secondary...
.
The Environmental Design and Research Association is one of the best-known entities that strive to integrate designers and social science professionals for better built environments. EDRA was founded by Henry Sanoff in 1969. Both John Chris Jones and Christopher Alexander interacted with EDRA and other camps; both seemed at a certain point to reject their interpretations. Jones and Christopher also questioned their original thesis about design methods.
An interesting shift that affected design methods and design studies was the 1968 lecture from Herbert Simon
Herbert Simon
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,...
, the Nobel laureate, who presented "The Sciences of the Artificial." He proposed using scientific methods to explore the world of man-made things (hence artificial). He discussed the role of analysis (observation
Observation
Observation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity...
) and synthesis (making) as a process of creating man-made responses to the world he/she interacted with. Important to Simon's contribution were his notions of "bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
" and "satisficing
Satisficing
Satisficing, a portmanteau "combining satisfy with suffice", is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution...
." Simon's concept had a profound impact on the discourse in both design methods, and the newly emerging design studies communities in two ways. It provided an entry of using scientific ideas to overlay on design, and it also created an internal debate whether design could/should be expressed and practiced as a type of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
with the reduction of emphasis on intuition
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
.
Nigel Cross has been prolific in articulating the issues of design methods and design research. The discussion of the ongoing debate of what is design research and design science was, and continues to be articulated by Cross. His thesis is that design is not a science, but is an area that is searching for "intellectual independence." He views the original design methods discussions of the 1960s as a way to integrate objective and rational methods in practicing design. Scientific method was borrowed as one framework, and the term "design science" was coined in 1966 at the Second Conference on the Design Method focusing on a systematic approach to practicing design. Cross defined the "science of design" as a way to create a body of work to improve the understanding of design methods—and more importantly that design methods does not need to be a binary choice between science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
.
Nigan Bayazit, professor at the Istanbul Technical University, published an overview of the history of design methods. She stated that "Design methods people were looking at rational methods of incorporating scientific techniques and knowledge into the design process to make rational decisions to adapt to the prevailing values, something that was not always easy to achieve." The following is what design research
Design research
Design research investigates the process of designing in all its many fields. It is thus related to Design methods in general or for particular disciplines. A primary interpretation of design research is that it is concerned with undertaking research into the design process. Secondary...
is concerned with:
- The physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how they work
- Construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity
- What is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means
- Embodiment of configurations
- Systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity
Significance of Emergence of Design Research and Design Studies
Both research and design studies made design more visible and accountable. Research was recognized at the outset by design methods as a type of leg-work toThe eventual debate about design methods and whether design is an art or science is not a new. Partisans on both sides of the issue have framed it as a binary choice of something to lose or gain. However, this false argument was viewed by John Chris Jones, who recognized the "logical, systematic, behavioristic, operational aspects of new methods" (which could be viewed as science) might be seen as "anti-life" which treat people as "instruments." On the other side, another group may define design with "animism, vitalism and naturalism" as a language (which could be viewed as art). Jones sought to bring both together and act as checks-and-balances for design methods.
Jones viewed methodology as "mere symbolic contrivances" and "would lose its value" if it did not reflect "the personal issues which matter most to the people who will take decisions."
Professional Design Practice
Conversations about design methods and a more systematic approach to design was not isolated to Europe. America was also a magnet for practicing design professionals to codify their successes in design practice and backing into larger theories about the dynamics of design methods.American designers were much more pragmatic at articulating design methods and creating an underlying language about the practice of industrial and graphic design. They were tied to economic systems that supported design practice and therefore focused on the way design could be managed as an extension of business, rather than the European approach to design methods based on transforming engineering by design.
Industrial design was the first area that made inroads into systematizing knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
through practice. Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy was an industrial designer, and the first to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine, on October 31, 1949. Born in France, he spent most of his professional career in the United States...
was instrumental at elevating the visibility of industrial design through cult of personality (appearing three times on front cover of Time Magazine). Henry Dreyfuss
Henry Dreyfuss
Henry Dreyfuss was an American industrial designer.-Career:Dreyfuss was a native of Brooklyn, New York. As one of the celebrity industrial designers of the 1930s and 1940s, Dreyfuss dramatically improved the look, feel, and usability of dozens of consumer products...
had a profound impact on the practice of industrial design by developing a systematic process used to shape environments, transportation, products
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
and packaging. His focus on the needs of the average consumer was most celebrated in his book Designing for People, an extensive exploration of ergonomics
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
.
Jay Doblin
Jay Doblin
Jay Doblin was an American industrial designer, best known for his contribution to the field of design in particular his work related to systems thinking, design methods and design theory in general...
one of America's foremost industrial designers, worked for Raymond Loewy and was later an employee of Unimark International
Unimark International
Unimark International was an American design firm founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1964 by seven designers: Ralph Eckerstrom, Massimo Vignelli, James Fogelman, Wally Gutches, Larry Klein, Robert Moldafsky and Bob Noorda. Unimark filed for final Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1977, and no longer exists...
, the world’s largest global design firm during the 1960s with offices in seven countries. In 1972, Doblin formed Chicago-based Jay Doblin & Associates, a firm which managed innovative programs for Xerox Corporation and General Electric. Doblin was prolific at developing a language to describe design. One of his best articles was "A Short, Grandiose Theory of Design", published in the 1987 Society of Typographic Arts Design Journal. In seven pages, Doblin presents a straightforward and persuasive argument for design as a systematic process. He described the emerging landscape of systematic design:
- For large complex projects, it "would be irresponsible to attempt them without analytical methods" and rallied against an "adolescent reliance on overly intuitive practices."
- He separated "direct design" in which a craftsperson works on the artifact to "indirect design" in which a design first creates a representation of the artifact, separating design from production in more complex situations.
Doblin and others were responding to the increased specialization
Inheritance (computer science)
In object-oriented programming , inheritance is a way to reuse code of existing objects, establish a subtype from an existing object, or both, depending upon programming language support...
of design and the complexity of managing large design programs for corporations. It was a natural process to begin to discuss how design should move upstream to be involved with the specifications of problems, not only in the traditional mode of production which design had been practiced. Particularly since 2000, design methods and its intersection with business development have been visibly championed by numerous consultancies within design industry.
The continuity of approaches to design projects by such representative firms is the generation of inputs incited by the human condition in varied contexts. These approaches utilize a sustainable methods-based mode of making that takes into account critical analytic and synthetic skills toward more informed and inspired specifications grounded in:
- Direct investigation of human circumstances to draw out impressions
- Engagement by client-side and end-user participants in design process
- Open articulation by practitioners of multiple disciplines facilitated by design
Significance of Role of Professional Design Practice
Practitioners approached design methods from a different angle than John Christopher Jones and the group of engineers and designers who convened in 1962. Many practitioners, through actual design opportunities, began to confront the complexities of the market and clients. They began to address issues of specifications, users, distribution and innovationInnovation
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society...
. Since there were no established methods, each practitioner began to develop frameworks and languages to describe a new way to design. Like any market-based model, there were many competing ideas about these new methods and their basis. Many of these designers may have been aware of the design methods movement, but many were not. Yet all their ideas were aligned to many of the basic tenants of the 1962 conference which advocated a more rigorous way of doing design. However, the social perspectives and criticisms of mediocre products of 1962 participants may not have been shared or agreed with.
Design Management
An area of study and application that either raises the awareness of business professionals how to integrate and manage design, and/or the integration of business issues, systems and methods and managing their interdependency with design activities and outcomes that support the economic systems which benefit from a designers vision, skills and deliverables.While this relationship has been identified, it has not been universally recognized or accepted by diverse design communities. Designers have strong connection not only to clients but also to end users who consume products and services. One of the strongest early advocates was Peter Gorb, former Director of London Business School's Centre for Design Management.
Design as a function within corporations, or as independent consultancies, have not always collaborated well with business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
. Clients and the market
Market
A market is one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange. While parties may exchange goods and services by barter, most markets rely on sellers offering their goods or services in exchange for money from buyers...
have traditionally viewed design as an expressive and production function, rather than as a strategic asset. Designers have focused their skills and knowledge in creating designed artifacts, and indirectly addressed larger issues within this creative process. They have been uneasy about articulating their value to business in terms that business executives could understand.
There were moves to bridge this gap. In England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the British Design Council (now called the Design Council
Design Council
The Design Council is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as a charity.Registered charity number 272099.- In the beginning :The Design Council started in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design...
) was founded in 1944 by the British wartime government as the Council of Industrial Design with the objective "to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry". The Design Management Institute is an international nonprofit organization that seeks to heighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy. Founded in 1975, DMI has become the leading resource and international authority on design management.
Alternative View
Some designers and design historians have challenged, even rejected, the idea that design supports the goals and objectives of the economic systems they find themselves in. Victor PapanekVictor Papanek
Victor Papanek was a designer and educator who became a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures. He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or essentially useless...
(1925–1998) was a trail blazer in the definition of sustainable design
Sustainable design
Sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.-Intentions:The intention of sustainable design is to "eliminate negative environmental...
and addressing social issues through design. His book Design for the Real World in the late 1960s articulated a world for design to use less resources and address local social issues for ecologically sound design to serve the poor, the disabled and the elderly. The disciplines of sustainable design and universal design
Universal design
Universal design refers to broad-spectrum ideas meant to produce buildings, products and environments that are inherently accessible to both people without disabilities and people with disabilities....
are echoed here.
Professor of design history at the University of Illinois at Chicago Victor Margolin addressed the inherent role of design communities supporting an economic system, which he called the "expansion model", where "the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. They attract capital which is either recycled back into more production or becomes part of the accumulation of private or corporate wealth." Margolin describes a "sustainable model" as having "ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and will possibly collapse."
Significance of Design Management
Design methods initially was focused on how design could be integrated into engineering and grew to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of solving contemporary complexity in all its forms. John Chris Jones recognized the role of business, as one stakeholder among many, but did not view design methods as a business management tool. Design management
Design management
Design Management is a business discipline that uses project management, design, strategy, and supply chain techniques to control a creative process, support a culture of creativity, and build a structure and organisation for design...
focuses on how to define design as a business function and provides a language and method of how to effectively manage it.
Proliferation of Information Technologies
Internet businesses realized early that technologists alone were not going to create "killer apps" that would win customers. Companies such as Scient, Viant, Sapient, RazorFish and USWeb/CKS began to hire a wide variety of professionals to collaborate in three broad groups:- BusinessBusinessA business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
consultingConsultantA consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...
to address business models and front-end research of markets; - Technologists that knit together legacy systems with internet-based technologies; and
- BrandBrandThe American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
/creative professionals that would create a seamless customer experience.
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
(CRM), Supply Chain
Supply chain
A supply chain is a system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to...
, and Enterprise Resource Planning
Enterprise resource planning
Enterprise resource planning systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application...
(ERP) professionals belonged to any of these groups. Together they had to rapidly accelerate time-to-value and learn how to do things that had little precedent. This context was an amplification of Donald Schon's theories of unstable knowledge bases developing new ideas by a phenomenological approach of direct application and experience.
Strategy
Strategy
Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. In military usage strategy is distinct from tactics, which are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked...
began to be redefined from an MBA-focused domain into an area both technology and brand/creative professionals moved upstream and engaged as up-front strategy. Other professionals were incorporated from cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, and library science
Library science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
(to name a few). Inherent in these groups were rigorous research-based methods which were overlaid onto business, technology and brand/creative. User-centric approaches were developed resulting in the creation of whole workflow systems to accommodate diversity in skills and tools. These diverse groups brought markedly different languages and models native to their disciplines which posed significant integration-challenges, including hours, in determining how to work together.
Clement Mok
Clement Mok
Clement Mok is a graphic designer and author.Mok founded several design-related businesses — Studio Archetype , CMCD and NetObjects, Inc.. In 1997, Mok helped to launch the advertising campaign called the "The Internet Guy". From 1998 until 2001, he was Chief Creative Officer of Sapient...
, founder of Studio Archetype (acquired by Sapient), recognized this trend and began to articulate the new professional design situation being agitated by new information technologies marked by the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and advancements in computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
media. He described a multi-media landscape that was converging into an integrated digital space. Adjacent to this was the redefinition of skills and roles that would create, build, sustain, and innovate this dynamic environment. He called for graphic/visual designers to broaden their perspective, beyond traditional artifacts and methods, and immerse themselves in a collaborative workspace. In his book, Designing Business, Mok emphasized redefinition of design practice dramatically affected by technological change: "Designers are in a position to promulgate new values and to define and quantify the effects of those values, and over the next ten years, their optimum role will be to design 'understanding.' The age we're living now is an incredible time because of the extent to which designers, business people, engineers, and technologists can redefine their roles."
Significance of Proliferation of Information Technologies
John Chris Jones and many original participants knew that computer technology would transform and automate human actions. They were 30 years ahead of the expansion of the Internet and explained the basic premise of its value by stating:- "The ideal picture of a man-machine symbosis is . . .one in which machine and human intelligences are linked into a quickly responding network that permits rapid access to all published information . . .The nett (sic) effect is expected to be one of mutual stimulation in which open minded people and progammes nudge each other into unpredictable, novel but realistic explorations . . .".
Current State of Design Methods
There is no one way to practice design methods. John Chris Jones recognized this by stating:- "Methodology should not be a fixed track to a fixed destination, but a conversation about everything that could be made to happen. The language of the conversation must bridge the logical gap between past and future, but in doing so it should not limit the variety of possible futures that are discussed nor should it force the choice of a future that is unfree."
The focus of most post-1962 enhancements to design methods has been on developing a series of relevant, sound, humanistic problem-solving procedures and techniques to reduce avoidable errors and oversights that can adversely affect design solutions. The key benefit is to find a method that suits a particular design situation.
The benefits of their original work has been abstracted many times over; but in today's design environment, several of their main ideas have been integrated into contemporary design methods:
- Emphasis on the user
- Use of basic research methods to validate convictions with fact
- Use of brainstormingBrainstormingBrainstorming is a group creativity technique by which a group tries to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members...
and other related means to break mental patterns and precedent - Increased collaborativeCollaborationCollaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
nature of design with other disciplines
A large challenge for design as a discipline, its use of methods and an endeavor to create shared values, is its inherent synthetic nature as an area of study and action. This allows design to be extremely malleable in nature, borrowing ideas and concepts from a wide variety of professions to suit the ends of individual practitioners. It also makes design vulnerable since these very activities make design a discipline unextensible as a shared body of knowledge.
Long before Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
and his book Blink
Blink (book)
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking is a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell. It presents in popular science format research from psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious; mental processes that work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information...
, there was Donald Schon
Donald Schön
Donald Alan Schön was an influential thinker in developing the theory and practice of reflective professional learning in the twentieth century.- Education and career :...
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. In 1983, he published The Reflective Practitioner. He saw traditional professions with stable knowledge bases, such as law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
and medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, becoming unstable due to outdated notions of 'technical-rationality' as the grounding of professional knowledge. Practitioners were able to describe how they 'think on their feet', and how they make use of a standard set of frameworks and techniques. Schon foresaw the increasing instability of traditional knowledge and how to achieve it. This is in line with the original founders of design methods who wanted to break with an unimaginative and static technical society and unify exploration
Exploration
Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...
, collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
and intuition
Intuition (knowledge)
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify...
.
Design methods has influenced design practice and design education
Design education
Design education is the teaching of theory and application in the design of products, services and environments. It encompasses various disciplines of design, such as graphic design, user interface design, web design, packaging design, industrial design, fashion design, information design, interior...
. It has benefitted the design community by helping to create introductions that would never have happened if traditional professions remained stable, which did not necessarily allow collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
due to gatekeeping of areas of knowledge and expertise. Design has been by nature an interloper activity, with individuals that have crossed disciplines to question and innovate.
The challenge is to transform individual experiences, frameworks and perspectives
Perspective (cognitive)
Perspective in theory of cognition is the choice of a context or a reference from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, cohesively forming a coherent belief, typically for comparing with another...
into a shared, understandable, and, most importantly, a transmittable area of knowledge. Victor Margolin states three reasons why this will prove difficult:
- Domain knowledge is a mixture of vocationVocationA vocation , is a term for an occupation to which a person is specially drawn or for which they are suited, trained or qualified. Though now often used in non-religious contexts, the meanings of the term originated in Christianity.-Senses:...
(discipline) and avocation (interest) creating hybrid definitions that degrade shared knowledge - Intellectual capitalIntellectual capitalThe value of an enterprise is made of physical assets, various financial assets and, finally, intangible assets, i.e., intellectual capital . The term intellectual capital conventionally refers to the difference in value between tangible assets and market value. ....
of design and wider scholarly pluralism has diluted focus and shared language which has led to ungovernable laissez-faireLaissez-faireIn economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
values - Individual explorations of design discourse focuses too much on individual narratives leading to personal point-of-view rather than a critical mass of shared values
In the end, design methods is a term that is widely used. Though conducive to interpretations, it is a shared belief in an exploratory and rigorous method to solve problems through design, an act which is part and parcel of what designers aim to accomplish in today's complex world.
See also
|
Ethnography Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group... Conceptual framework A conceptual framework is used in research to outline possible courses of action or to present a preferred approach to an idea or thought. For example, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin used the "hedgehogs" versus "foxes" approach; a "hedgehog" might approach the world in terms of a single organizing... Heuristic Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical... Innovation Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, technologies, or ideas that are accepted by markets, governments, and society... Interaction design In design, human–computer interaction, and software development, interaction design, often abbreviated IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main... Intuition (knowledge) Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning 'to look inside'’ or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot necessarily justify... Metadesign Metadesign is an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social, economic and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place... Observation Observation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity... Participatory design Participatory design is an approach to design attempting to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process in order to help ensure the product designed meets their needs and is usable. The term is used in a variety of fields e.g... |
Phenomenology (science) The term phenomenology in science is used to describe a body of knowledge that relates empirical observations of phenomena to each other, in a way that is consistent with fundamental theory, but is not directly derived from theory. For example, we find the following definition in the Concise... Principles of Intelligent Urbanism Principles of Intelligent Urbanism is a theory of urban planning composed of a set of ten axioms intended to guide the formulation of city plans and urban designs. They are intended to reconcile and integrate diverse urban planning and management concerns... Programming paradigm A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming. Paradigms differ in the concepts and abstractions used to represent the elements of a program and the steps that compose a computation A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming. (Compare with a... Simulation Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system.... The Semantic Turn The semantic turn refers to a paradigm shift in the design of artifacts – industrial, graphic, informational, architectural, and social – from an emphasis on how artifacts ought to function to what they mean to those affected by them – semantics being a concern for meaning... User-centered design In broad terms, user-centered design or pervasive usability is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process... Wicked problem "Wicked problem" is a phrase originally used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve... |
Books
- Alexander, Christopher, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Oxford University Press), 1977, ISBN 0-19-501919-9
- Cross, Nigel, "Engineering Design Methods: Strategies for Product Design" (John Wiley & Sons), ISBN 0-47-187250-4
- Jones, John Christopher, Designing Designing (London: Architecture Design and Technology Press), 1991
- Margolin, Victor, "The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies" (University of Chicago Press), 2002, ISBN-0-226-50504-9
- Schon, Donald, "The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action" (Basic Books), 1983, ISBN 0-46-506878-2
External links
- Introductory Lecture on Design Methods by Rhodes Hileman
- Abstract: Design Methods
- Rethinking Wicked Problems: Unpacking Paradigms, Bridging Universes, Part 1 of 2. J. Conklin, M. Basadur, GK VanPatter; NextDesign Leadership Institute Journal, 2007
- Rethinking Wicked Problems: Unpacking Paradigms, Bridging Universes, Part 2 of 2. J. Conklin, M. Basadur, GK VanPatter; NextDesign Leadership Institute Journal, 2007
- Double Consciousness: Back to the Future with John Chris Jones. GK VanPatter, John Chris Jones; NextDesign Leadership Institute Journal, 2006