After my Thanksgiving thesis paper writing blitz, I realized I needed to once again revise the abstract to more coherently attempt to express the aim of my paper. While I’m still not 100 percent happy with it, the following abstract represents my latest direction for my paper.

It is difficult to talk about the design process without also talking about design thinking, for almost everything of importance in the design process is a result of thinking. Understanding the design process is therefore not just about procedures and models, but also involves understanding the mindset of the designer and the designer’s role within the process. In fact, bringing design to a situation is not simply a matter of following a predefined model or method, because each process is unique. This is a result of the design process itself needing to be designed. Models of the process, therefore, can only act as abstract representational tools that aid the designer in designing the design process. The effectiveness of the design process is thus contingent on the ability of the designer. To be good at design, designers need to understand the nature of design thinking and how it differs from scientific thinking. Designers also need to be reflective of their process, challenging their own thinking and assumptions. This is critical in tackling complex design problems, which inherently have no given solution. Developing ones design ability, or design judgment, requires critical reflection of both the design problem and solutions. For it is through recognition of good design that design judgment skills are cultivated. Highly developed judgment skills are what form the rigor of the design process, and provide the means to make the creative leaps necessary to transcend the limitations of the present and design successful products and services of the future. It therefore may behoove designers to recognize designing oneself as a designer as paramount to achieving good solutions from the process of design. Understanding the design process, design thinking, and the role of the design will also help designers articulate their value and communicate what is it they actually do in a way that demystifies the process and instills a sense of trust in their solutions.

Feedback is welcome.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

No, this post is not about sex. It’s about Bryan Lawson’s How Designer Think, which is an orgasm of design process and thinking. On nearly every page I found an idea I could relate to as a designer and often thought the book should be required reading for those entering design. If you’re not screaming “Yes!” inside your head, or out loud, while reading this book, you might want to consider another field.

Bryan Lawson is both an architect and a psychologist. But I think everything he says applies to interaction design, and big D design in general.

He begins by defining design and acknowledges that design is “an everyday activity that we all do.” However, “professional designers also design for other people rather than just themselves,” and “are highly educated and trained.” This juxtaposition may serve me as I consider the implication of the design process for non-designers, a possible direction for my thesis.

One of the central themes of the book is that models of design are too logical and not actually useful for practitioners. Lawson says, “Designing is far too complex to be describable by a simple diagram.” This idea is in part my motivation for my paper, having encountered quite a few models that illustrate the design process only to feel like they weren’t quite right, and certainly, never actually using them when it comes to the actual process. “We probably work best when we think least about our technique.”

That said, I did draw several models of the design process as I read the book.

For me, the book was validation of my experience as a designer. (Hence, the “Yes! Yes! Yes!”) Some of the reassuring notions include:

“There is no natural end to the design process.”

On of the essential characteristics of design problems then is that they are often not apparent and must be found.”

The methods of science are perhaps surprisingly unhelpful to the designer.”

“It is often not possible to say which bit of the problem is solved by which bit of the solution. They simply do not map on to each other that way.”

The latter quote perhaps best mirrors my inquiry into the design process. Reflecting on decisions and directions, it is often very difficult for me to say how design solutions came about. I realize due diligence has been done, but there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between research and concept, which is why for my thesis I chose to focus on the leap of faith designers must take create good solutions.

The latter half of the book deals with design thinking, design strategies, design tactics, creativity, traps, and design as conversation. The latter chapter references Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner, which I am in the midst of reading.

“Good designers tend to be at ease with the lack of resolution of their ideas for most of the design process,” says Lawson. True, true, true. And for those who are not at ease, the design process is painful, as I have witnessed on some design teams.

This is not a sensible way of earning a living, it’s completely insane, there has to be this big thing that you’re confident you’re going to find, you don’t know what it is you’re looking for and you hang on. —architect Richard MacCormac

At first upon reading this I thought, how is this different than searching for the cure for cancer. In that case, you don’t know what you’re looking for. But then I corrected myself. No. You’re searching for the cure for cancer. In design, you only know that you are looking for a solution. It’s not a question of getting there. It’s how to get there.

In terms of my thesis and exploring the leap of faith, I worry that the design process—the leap—may be too complex: a psychological mystery. Lawson says, “Unfortunately, the really interesting things that happen in the design process may be hidden in designers’ heads rather than being audible or visible.”

What is it about what’s going on in designers’ heads that makes them good designers? Is it merely experience, developed over the course of doing it (Schön argues that we design all our lives.) Lawson says, “It seems impossible to learn design without actually doing it.”

For non-designers, is that all that it takes? Do engineers and business managers merely need exposure to the design process? Is this the philosophy of the business/design schools? Is design thinking a skill?

Lawson quotes Edward de Bono, Practical Thinking:

“To regard thinking as a skill rather than a gift is the first step toward doing something to improve that skill.”

I agree. But there’s still something more. Not everyone can be a good designer no matter how much experience and exposure to the design process.

Last year, while explaining the five reasons designers are valued, and thus the five characteristics of designers, Richard Buchanan told the class that if we didn’t possess all five, we shouldn’t be in design. I would argue that the five characteristics—whole/part , creativity, comfortable with ambiguity, polysensorial aesthetics, and emotion/empathy—don’t just have to do with how you think, but also who you are.

After reading Bruce Nussbaum’s recent article, Design Vs. Design Thinking, I have to ask, what is design thinking? Why? Because the way he refers to design thinking conflicts with my more or less ambiguous definition.

The first thing that struck me was his reference to design thinking as a new field. New field? Is design thinking a field, or a way to approach problems? I would go with the latter. It just seems really odd to think of someone saying, “Yeah, I work in the field of design thinking.”

I am a designer. Therefore, I bring design thinking to the problems I encounter. I can’t help it, because I’m a designer. Designers use design thinking. Isn’t design thinking merely recognizing what designers do as useful and applying the design process to problems that aren’t typically considered to be privy to designers?

It almost seems like the Nussbaum believes design thinking to be something beyond design, and definitely something that is closely tied to business and management. If so, perhaps he’s got the name wrong, which he acknowledges in the article.

The fact is that design thinking (or whatever we wind up calling this new field) is being created at the borders of design, business, engineering and even marketing. And I don’t know which institutions will take the lead in promoting it. We have the Stanford D-School, the IIT Institute of Design. and the Rotman School of Management in Toronto taking early leads in developing design thinking. The California College of the Arts is offering an MBA in Design Strategy.

Carnegie Mellon School of Design is not mentioned in the article, perhaps because we actually design stuff here. I find the school’s absence intriguing, regardless, especially since we have one of the foremost design thinkers on the planet in the form of Richard Buchanan. I’d love to get his perspective on the new field of design thinking.

This post is really just a collection of thoughts stemming from my last thesis paper meeting. I’m still mostly reading at this point and sort of framing the argument along the way.

My original inquiry had to do with the leap of faith from design research to design concepts. This has led me to a focus on design process and how designers approach problems.

Some ways of shaping my argument include:

• Can we teach the “black art” of design to non-designers?
• Ways for non-designers to become comfortable with the design process.
• If we can’t talk about design, how do we tell it to others?
• Clients are OK with visual design and product design, so why is everyone so freaked out by interaction design?
• Why do people want models? Process?

Some recent great quotes I’ve pulled from How Designers Think include:

• “None of the writers quoted here offer any evidence that designers actually follow their map.”
• “It is often not possible to say which bit of the problem is solved by which bit of the solution.”

One idea that has some resonance with me has been that the actual design process cannot be explained, and that every attempt is a reflective act that makes the process seem more logical than it actually is. This may be the problem I have had with trying to define the design process all along, as I recognized mid-process that I couldn’t explain how things were moving forward while acknowledging that the progress was in fact fruitful.

I’m not sure if that notion makes the step-by-step lists for plowing through the design process a useful act of faith or just completely useless to non-designers. Perhaps I will gain more insight the more I read and digest.

After finishing How Designers Think, I plan to move onto The Reflective Practitioner in earnest, and also Thoughtful Interaction Design, which arrived today.

So why do people want to model the design process? It’s complicated and mysterious, and like me, people want to understand. But what if the answer turns out to be, for all our effort, we can’t understand the design process, at least not in full?

My graduate seminar class with Dick Buchanan ended yesterday. For this last class, we discussed pluralism and objectivity, which Buchanan states as the fundamental problem of design.

Why is it a problem? There is no subject matter in design. Designers make their subject matter. “This is a very peculiar thing,” Buchanan says.

I agree. And while it makes sense, it’s not always obvious. For instance, I’m at a school studying design, which inclines one to think there is subject matter to study.

However, Buchanan warns of this temptation to believe design has subject matter. What one may think of as the subject matter of design is really either history of design, or comments on existing designs.

A Cup Is a Cup Is a Cup

Buchanan defines objectivity in design as the object we create. What makes design interesting is that we don’t all agree that a cup is a cup is a cup, and there are different ways of practicing design. Is this something in the nature of design? Or something in the nature of the world? These are questions he asked.

The frustrating aspect of design is that you can’t practice it without some idea of what you’re doing. Though the more you find your own way, you find that other people do things differently. This difference, or pluralism, is what needs to be reconciled.

So how does one deal with pluralism and objectivity? Well, designers need to understand that we don’t have to agree on the values of on how we see the world; we only have to agree on what we’re going to make. Buchanan says designers must help people find their own view, and understand how other people do things.

All Done, But Only the Beginning

I thought that was a nice way to round up the class: stating a fundamental problem, but providing hope that it can be overcome.

Overall, I thought the course was valuable, even though no absolute answers were offered. It makes sense now given the ambiguity of design problems, lack of subject matter, and different ways of practicing design.

While the class is over, it is only the beginning in a likely endless contemplation of design thinking in relation to design practice and it’s impact on the world, and, of course, my place in it all.

In response to a previous comment, I tried to define what an interaction designer does in rebuttal to the assertion that the goal is to build a better mousetrap. I wrote:

From an interaction design standpoint, you might ask why we have mousetraps? Are mice the real problem? How do mice get into areas where you would then want to trap them? The solution to the problem may not have anything to do with a mousetrap at all.

Hence, interaction design is not about building a better mousetrap.

Recently, I read “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,” from The Idea of Design by Dick Buchanan. As I read, I realized that what I described above is not an interaction design approach, but a design approach: taking the given problem; trying to find the real problem; inventing a solution.

Because of our use of the term interaction in Buchanan’s course (e.g., the four modes of interaction), I have been incorrectly mixing design and interaction design, especially when trying to answer questions from people outside the School of Design about what an interaction designer does.

While I can answer what an interaction designer does if I stay focused, I do slip into explaining general design practice, which in a case a couple weeks ago, produced a very strong reaction from one of my friends.

My friend had asked what sort of work I would do after my degree. And I told him I didn’t know, because design can be applied to any problem. As examples, I gave a range from redesigning a simply control to designing a country’s tax system.

He was amazed, and disbelieving. He could not believe that a designer would have much business designing a tax system, and thought subject matter experts would be quite offended to have a designer solving a problem believed to be within their domain.

What he didn’t understand, and what I found so inspiring about the Wicked Problem essay, is that designers do not have a domain, and that design is a way of thinking, not an applied art. Unlike subject matter experts, designers can move between subject matter and apply their practice.

While I did try to explain this, my friend would not accept it. And as I read the Wicked Problem and became excited about the potential for design thinking in the world, my enthusiasm was tempered by the hurdle this position faces, as I know from experience my friend’s idea of a designer’s role is not uncommon. In fact, just a few months ago I may have had his same understanding.

It makes me wonder how it will feel to go out into the world and try to apply design thinking as I am learning it, and if we will ever get to a place where the designer is called upon to contribute to the solution of all wicked problems.