Studying Design: Exploring the drivers of design theory and practice
Tania Allen, Assistant Professor of Art + Design
North Carolina State University
Written for the Proceedings to the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student, 2015. Theme: Engaging Media: Identifying Means l Interrogating Methods l investigating materials
Introduction
In Time for Change: Building a Design Discipline, design educator Sharon Poggenpohl argues “that design practice and education are changing, particularly in relation to…research and collaboration. If design is to develop as a discipline, it must necessarily develop further based on these themes.”(1) At the center of this development, Poggenpohl continues, is the transformation of the tacit knowledge that designers traditionally employ, to explicit knowledge that is a core asset to cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration. “This is the shortcoming that makes design appear elusive, special, inarticulate, and even unknowable. As long as designers consider themselves to be first and foremost aesthetic finishers of ideas that are well advanced in the development process, they will be trapped by the tacit and unable to provide a clear explanation.”(5) Since Poggenpohl’s call, design discourse has been increasingly focused on this building of explicit, critical knowledge. Designers are no longer comfortable or willing to be the “aesthetic finishers” that Poggenpohl aptly names. This paper argues that we are at a critical moment in time, where the cross-disciplinary nature of design necessitates a common perspective on the main themes and drivers of design thinking and practice.
But as Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin have argued, much of the evaluation of design has been dictated by those outside of design practice—and in doing so, the focus has leaned to the artifacts that are a result of design practice, rather than the practice itself. In The Idea of Design, Margolin and Buchanan call for an integration of the liberal arts into the evaluation of design — to both broaden the discussion of design evaluation to include that which is focused on the human experience, but also to connect design philosophy and practice (x). This call is in part a response to the recognition of designs focus on “wicked” problems, and a necessary shift in motivation from what we (as designers) can do, to what we should do. As architectural practice dips into urbanism and visual communication; and as graphic design expands into strategies that involve spaces, places and environments, the ability for students to see across disciplines to find patterns and commonalities as well as differences is increasingly critical. This paper looks at how a cross-disciplinary Design Studies course for sophomore students at NC State University evaluates design artifacts, environments, experiences and impacts through a series of common, contemporary and critical themes that sit above any specific discipline. By looking at design through its technology, usability, morality, sustainability, and cultural context and impacts, students focus on how design shapes, and is shaped by, the human experience. As a course for non-studio majors, the work in this course might provide insight for studio instructors into how the language and evaluation of design might evolve to include more cross-disciplinary, systems-based perspectives, to help young designers see the work that they do as part of a larger design theory and practice.
Design, Science and the Humanities
Nigel Cross, author of Designerly Ways of Knowing, suggests that the key to developing design as a discipline lies in its differentiation from both the sciences and the humanities. According to Cross, the identification and “scientifization” of design put forth by theorists such as Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial belied inherent and serious problems in characterizing design problems as complete and well-articulated. Cross cited Donald Schon’s criticism of the “positivist doctrine underlying much of the ‘design science’ movement, and offered instead a constructivist paradigm…propos[ing] an ‘epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict,’…and which he characterized as ‘reflective practice.’” (123) Yet Cross does acknowledge the critical importance of Simon’s work in building a “fundamental, common ground of intellectual endeavor and communication across the arts, sciences and technology. What he suggested was that the study of design could be an interdisciplinary study accessible to all those involved in the creative activity of making in the artificial world.” (124)
In the 15 years since Cross’s call, the discipline of design has changed dramatically. Increasing numbers of cross-disciplinary courses, studios and even programs have paved the way for new methods and processes for evaluating and practicing design. The increase of Design Studies and PhD programs around the world is another clear indicator of a shift from design as an activity to one that involves practical and disciplinary reflection. But the question remains if these shifts have advanced design as a discipline—and if we have done an adequate job of investigating and identifying what is common between the design disciplines to help build the credibility of the field as a whole. A common argument in opposition to this shift figures around the need for specialization and expertise within a given design discipline. The idea of including more cross-disciplinary perspectives and experiences should not be in place of the deep dive that students in a given field need to have, but as a way to expand the possibilities for the field and to learn from what each design specialization is doing, and doing well.
The question then becomes, what might hold these fields together and provide a theoretical, topical and practical foundation through which to operate in a cross-disciplinary way? As a field and practice, design is inherently linked to the world around us. Design is not theory alone, but tied directly to practice, and that practice also connects to the current tides of human action, behavior and perspective. The architectural historian, author and critic Mark Jarzombek has argued that “criticality is shaped not by concepts like resistance and novelty but by the need to solve pressing and large scale communal, corporate, ethical, computational and global problems.” (149) As a result, the examination of design methodology and theory might be expanded to include the identification of core principles guiding design action across all fields. Further shaped by a contemporary landscape of wants and needs, the identification of these drivers of design theory and practice means an acknowledgement of the temporary and contemporary nature of all design activity.
Many would argue that design already sits comfortably at the intersection of science and the humanities—attempting to find a universal truth (within a specific context) that improves the human experience. It is also acknowledged that for designers to be able to act and propose interventions at all, they need to narrow their considerations or else risk paralysis in the decision making process. In an article responding to ICOGRADA’s manifesto on the future of design education, graphic designer and educator Hugh Dubberly wrote “the shift is not only about what’s produced (from things to services) and how they are produced (from long-lead editions to continuous adaptation, from proprietary to open source, from transaction to relationship), it is also a shift in world view (from mechanism to organism), a shift in framing metaphors (from clock-work to ecosystem, from turn-the-crank-linear-causality to feedback-enabled-dynamic-equilibrium), a shift in organizing structures (from individual nodes to webs of links, from top-down to bottom-up, from serial to parallel), a shift in human values (from coherence to responsiveness, from seeking simplicity to embracing complexity).” (dubberly.com) The argument for a more explicit inclusion of a humanities-based perspective into design theory and practice might lie in changing how designers view the work that they are doing—from solution to intention. In tandem, a shift in perspective for designers own role might include one of interpreter, connector and meaning-finder.
A main driver underlying the need for, and ways in which, we study design relates to the impact that design objects have on our everyday life—encouraging (or discouraging) certain behaviors, values, and interactions. For too long, designers have only evaluated the short-term impacts of design action, i.e. will this hurt someone? or will it make this experience harder to navigate? In his book, Moralizing Technology, Peter Paul Verbeek argues that “the active contribution of technologies to our daily lives has an important moral dimension.” (1) Important examples of this impact on human behavior can be seen when “ultrasound machines help us to ask and answer moral questions about the lives of unborn children…Coinlocks on supermarket push carts remind us to return each cart neatly to its place …Current developments in interactive technologies show this moral significance more explicitly…interacting with people in sophisticated ways and subtly persuading them to change their behavior…” (Verbeek, 2) Historically, design process and outcomes have been explicitly divorced from issues of morality and ethics in part one can speculate because of the magnitude of the topic and potentiality to affect the design process negatively. However, as innovative practice continues to expand, we mover further beyond what design can do, to what design should do. These questions are explicitly linked to issues of health, the environment, natural resources and safety and therefore need inclusion in the evaluation of both design and design process through this understanding.
Looking at both design outcomes and proposals through the ethics and value laden within them brings about larger questions about the scale of impact that design artifacts and experiences have on human values and behavior and how clear that impact is for both designers and users.
Issues of Technology
Technology has always been explicitly linked to design, functioning to shape design proposals, impact the transition from plan to artifact and especially today, affecting the way that designers and users work and interact with one another and the design artifact. In their book Technology as Experience, John McCarthy and Peter Wright argue that “We don’t just use or admire technology; we live with it. Whether we are charmed by it or indifferent, technology is deeply embedded in our ordinary everyday experience…[O]ur interactions with technology can involve emotions, values, ideals, intentions, and strong feelings.” (2) Too often, they explain, the study of technology ignores the important experiential qualities that technology holds—that are emotional, visceral and values-laden. By looking at design through this lens, we start to expand and evaluate process and propositional interventions as mediated by a network that is influencing decisions and outcomes, and not tied to one discipline.
Looking at design outcomes—and also possibly design proposals—through the technology inherent in the development of design solutions, and embedded in the design artifact, starts to incite larger questions about its impact on human culture and behavior—questions such as how technology is affecting the way that the design is being produced, the interventions being proposed and the realization of those proposals. But also, questions start to arise regarding how the technology embedded in design artifacts is affecting the way that people interact, communicate and understand one another. How it is influencing they way that we think about the physical world—geography, space, place, proximity—even aesthetics. And then, how it is changing the way that we think about one another—through language and cultural norms.
Issues of Usability
In The Design of Everyday Things, the cognitive scientist Donald Norman sets the foundational criteria for how users interact and respond to design objects and experiences through a reciprocal relationship between expectations, actions and emotions. “When the result of our actions are evaluated against expectations, the resulting emotions affect our feelings as we continue through the many cycles of action.” (37) Norman identifies 7 stages of action and three stages of processing which are critical to evaluating how users interact with designed objects. Such concepts as the theory of affordances and conceptual models shed light on the cognitive processing that is underlying the frustration or satisfaction that users have with a given product. While much of the usability testing and explanation currently in use are heavily situated within industrial and interface design, the concepts prove very useful in thinking about design at all scales and within multiple contexts.
Considering the critical importance of usability and cognitive understanding helps to ask and answer questions focused on the relationship between inputs and output and how cultural context might shape cognitive understanding of design artifacts and experiences.
Issues of Sustainability:
The concept of sustainability is not something new in design, and likely runs the risk of being overused and over generalized, or locked into a singular interpretation. This course defined sustainability as lifetime in an attempt to expand the interpretations and understand of its impact on a multiplicity of design field. In his book In The Bubble, John Thackara, argues that there is an imbalance between the drive for innovation and the impact that innovation has on the world and the people in it. Thackara suggests “an approach to innovation in which people are designed back into situations…from innovation driven by science fiction to innovation inspired by social fiction. As well as designing people back into the picture, we need to design ourselves more time to paint it.” (4) This perspective expands the evaluation of design impacts to include impacts on people and quality of life—a useful perspective when attaching relevance to design as a whole.
Looking at design through issues of sustainability provoked questions about new ways of designing obsolescence; the life and livelihood of design objects and experiences; and how the routine of change affects consumerism and the ways that we approach design processes.
Course Structure and Exploratory Work
As a non-studio course, the range of assignment prompts asked the students to engage in evaluation, curation and intervention strategies, but not necessarily to come up with specific designs as a part of that. Set up as a series of modules that each focused on a particular theme, students were encouraged to make connections across multiple disciplines in their response to the project prompt. The sequence of projects was also designed to increase in complexity and connectivity—moving from a directed evaluation of a design artifact through one of the thematic lenses, to a curatorial project connecting three distinct objects through an interpretation of one of the themes, to an intervention that asked them to apply and give hierarchy to the themes in their development of a social enterprise. Through this evolution, students increased the complexity of the connections that they were being asked to make.
Project: Curating a Design Narrative
Situated after two evaluation assignments, this project asked students to curate a series of three objects, environments or experiences into a narrative of design that tackled one of the course themes by telling a story about it. To that end, the students were given a series of critical themes that could be interpreted and connected to the main issues of technology, morality, sustainability or usability. These themes included impermanence, joy, and time among others. Students were challenged to choose examples of design in three different fields, and to unpack what was similar, and dissimilar between the three. They were also challenged to curate both everyday and unique pieces, with the goal of making the strange familiar, and making the familiar strange.
Fig. 2. Concept Mapping
The structure of the assignment was set up much like a design studio project might be, with an initial “mapping” of the conceptual narrative of the curatorial project (fig. 2). Project questions and prompts included consideration of how the situation of the three design pieces in proximity (both literal and figurative) to one another changed and influenced their meaning. Students were also encouraged to think about and explain the functionality of the object, but also how it has impacted human experience—cognitively, culturally and physically. The concept maps helped the students to visualize the connections and see patterns between design pieces. By prompting them to find these connections outside of a single discipline, students were challenged to see the theme and topic first, and the design piece as a part of that topic rather than the other way around—a structure that could transfer into the studio environment.
Project: Designing a Social Enterprise
The final project of the semester asked students to tackle a messy, wicked problem—paying close attention to the thematic drivers that influenced and contributed to that issue (fig. 4). Given expansive topics—voter registration and discipline in schools—students were driven to uncover the myriad factors contributing to the complexity of the problem through systems-mapping, research and eventual strategy intervention. Given no prompt for the type of enterprise, product or experience they should be creating, students were encouraged to let the research dictate the strategy for the intervention. The conversation and evaluation of the interventions were based on the recurring themes throughout the semester, with particular emphasis given to the intent of the strategy connected to the ideal outcomes identified. Students projects ranged from textbooks to social media apps and were heavily influenced by the nature
of their identified problem.
This project provided the opportunity for the students to propose alternative solutions to a given problem and to enact upon the critical reflection and evaluation that they had been doing throughout the semester. The complexity of the problem necessitated an internalization of the evaluation they had previously undergone. As a departure from the other projects, this one also allowed the students to propose an intervention and to act upon the discussion and evaluation that we had been engaging in throughout the semester. As a result, the energy, creativity and critical thinking was especially pronounced. One particularly interesting outcome was the ability for students to connect the virtual, physical and social worlds and create interventions that understood all three of them. For instance, in their concept for a social enterprise, a “voter ride sharing app” Sarah Shively and Ben Credle considered proximity and distance between polling places, the importance of peer to peer communication and knowledge-sharing in decision making, and the infrastructural limitations and possibilities of the urban environment. It is these types of connections, relationships and systems that are key to understanding the systematic nature of design that is at the core of cross-disciplinary study.
Reflections
One of the motivations in attempting to define some large thematic threads across disciplines is to provide some structure for handling its evaluation as well as its production. The main tenet driving this perspective—focused on theme, outcome and impact—is to engage in a reconfiguration of the design process, considering more fully the human experience and the individual interpretation of design objects as critically important to the perspective of the designer himself. In addition, identifying themes and concepts that are developed and utilized heavily in one discipline, but applying them to another, can provide new insight into why those principles are relevant and how we might continue to develop them within a larger cross-disciplinary context. While the course is not a studio-based one, the hope is that it could start a conversation about how student projects and perspectives might be re-evaluated to encourage a more dialectical component.
Sources
Buchanan, Richard and Margolin, Victor. The Idea of Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Print.
Jarzombek, Mark. “Critical or Post-Critical?” Architectural Theory Review. Vol 7, No. 1, 2002. 149-151.
McCarthy, John and Wright, Peter. Technology as Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007. Print.
Norman, Donald. The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Poggenpohl, Sharon Helmer. “Time for Change: Building a Design Discipline.” Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2009. Print.
Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005, Print.
Verbeek, Peter Paul. Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. Print.