As a designer, one of my greatest questions centers around the value of design, in particular the aspects of design that make it effective, successful, and a valid approach to solving particular problems. I am of the mind that there is rigor and logic to design that is similar to the rigor of scientific research and inquiry. A candidate for the head of the School of Design suggested in a presentation that designers need to quantify design to convince the scientific folks that our approach is valid. This really troubled me.
I am not saying that particular aspects of the design process cannot or should not be quantified. It’s not necessarily a question of one or the other. But if we believe that design is a legitimate approach we must find ways to understand the rigor and logic in order to communicate that to others rather than adapt scientific approaches. The latter will not truly advance the understanding and appreciation of design. And if we quantify design with scientific approaches, would it even be design?
Certainly, there is a lack of understanding of design by both non-designers and designers. But attempting to quantify design is not the way to increase understanding. It merely attempts to treat a symptom of a larger problem.
Comments
16 responses to “Quantifying Design”
I’m confused by what you mean by “quantify design.” Do you mean quantifying the value of design? Quantifying the process? The artifacts?
I guess having more things that approach a system is what scientists are looking for. A scientific method if you will, that if someone followed it to a “t” would produce the same exact results.
And that’s where the issue lies, if someone reproduces someone else’s design to a “t”, often the result is much different. It might be because society realizes the copy and doesn’t appreciate or it might be because it lacked the timing and context of the first but it will be wholly different. Science projects do not share the same fate and thus most design projects will feel foreign to scientists.
Does that make design any less important or effective? Not in the slightest bit.
I mean quantifying the results, which, as I understood the argument, would increase the perceived value.
You might be interested in reading the last 2 chapters of the book Persuasive Games. In the last 2 chapters the author (Ian Bogost) discusses the notion of evaluation, specifically critiquing both behaviorist and ethnographic perspectives and advancing the ways in which humanities perspectives could work in design assessment. Its probably one of the best such discussions I have read and skillfully addresses the exact issue you are concerned with.
I think what’s interesting here is that there seem to be two different layers going on and I think (*think*) you’re mixing the two. Hang with me, because I’m still working out the logic, but:
First, there is a qualitative rigor and logic that seems to primarily inform the design of products, artifacts, etc. This could be considered to be a part of the process of creating (discovery, generative, evaluative, affinity diagrams, concept validation, etc.)
Then, there is quantitative rigor seems to mostly examine artifacts, pulls them apart, and looks for whether a physical design has some underlying structure that helps a design to work cognitively.
I think quantifying aspects of design can increase understanding among those inside and outside of design and really, I don’t think quantifying aspects of design is altogether different than what we already do in studio class, it just adds a scientific layer to it.
Consider: If I make a design and put it up for critique, my classmates will discuss what is working well and what isn’t working well. We may not know why certain colors are working better, but the fact is we do know it, we just can’t quantify all the different variables. Imagine if we could begin to parse out the details of that—it would not only add to the field of knowledge and learning for all designers, it may create greater specialization (which may have some drawbacks) and in the process may create more respect for designers in the world at large. I’m not sure how this is a bad thing. I mean, if someone wants to do this sort of research, who am I to stop them? And why would I want to?
Personally, I am all for quantitative research of design, especially where design is born in artifact. I don’t think this threatens design in any meaningful way, it doesn’t mean that there will only be “one way to create”, and it doesn’t threaten the rightful place that ethnographic research has in increasing or decreasing the perceived value of design. It’s merely another layer to inform effective design and adds to the argument that design has value beyond aesthetics.
Lastly, quantifying design’s effects is not a whole lot different than studying music’s effect on the brain. I’m not exactly sure how much that knowledge helps musicians create new music, but studying it may help inform some decisions along the way. Hard to know for sure, but I don’t think it hurts at all.
I think Jeff has some interesting points. I definitely want to check out the book that Carl has suggested. Having had an engineering background in undergrad, I know the value of the scientific method. In some ways, what we do at the School of Design isn’t too different … and perhaps that’s a critique of our program. I didn’t realize it before, but taking Dick’s Emotion & Reason in Design class, there are some flags that go up when looking at our process and sometimes how “quantitative” it can be.
Of course, we also have qualitative approaches. My thoughts are that we can definitely dig deeper. For example, the notion of “emotion” in design, whether we’re talking about it’s capacity or how we would go about evaluating it, needs more discussion. Design has some valuable roots in its ties with emotion, but in many ways we’ve lost touch.
Can we bring a sophisticated discussion of “emotion” back on the table and include it in our design process?
This seems like an argument that a computer with the right algorithm could design the solution. (Nigel Cross talks a lot about artificial intelligence and design in Designerly Ways of Knowing.)
Again, I’m not saying there aren’t quantitative aspects to design, but saying what works well is in part a subjective endeavor. There are plenty of people, for instance, who hate the iPod or will disagree as to what color works best in the example above.
[…] like to continue a comment about bringing emotion into the design process because I think it’s a worth topic that deserves its own post. Kip said: Design has some […]
Hmm. I haven’t read “Designerly Ways of Knowing” and so, I’m not sure what’s there. But let’s play the opposite of what most people want to hear using an example of something relatively simple, like document design:
Maybe a computer with the right algorithm (understanding the content, context, and audience) could design an effective solution. Not the *only* solution, but an effective solution. This brings up a whole host of issues, but at first blush it makes me think that if a computer could do this, then maybe what we do isn’t all that grand and there is good reason that people don’t have great faith in “design”. Another issue this raises is that of automation of design. If we could automate certain aspects of design, would that be a bad thing? Maybe yes. But–maybe no. If design could be automated, we’d probably be critiquing the automated designs and trying to tweak the range of appropriate solutions more. I think that’s pretty fascinating.
But, that’s not really my point here. What I have learned from my thesis project is that there is a way to quantify design in some small way in something relatively simple like document design. Going in, I thought it would be impossible to quantify something that is generally taught in a studio “qualitative” manner, but I was wrong. While it was a little difficult, it was actually not quite as difficult as I think most people would imagine.
What people and designers seem to fear (which I encountered greatly at the thesis poster session), is the idea that quantifying design will:
A) Create an army of designers or computers all churning out the same design, or;
B) Quantifying design could put us all out of work.
Quite simply, this is wrong.
Quantifying design is not about saying that there is one solution, it’s saying that there are principles that more effective solutions have, and just as importantly, there are ways to design in a way that reduce effectiveness. To me, that’s what the head candidate was saying the other day: It’s not that there’s only one right way to do things, but when you have something that works, you have to pull it apart to understand why it worked. This way, you can repeat some of the principles to success again (or ignore the principles and do something different.)
An interesting aside: All the flak I’ve received over my thesis project has not been from the older staff, but rather from the younger or less-experienced design crowd. I see a good reason for this: Experience provides the older designers the insight that within certain constraints, there is a set of principles that can be quantified.
Ugh. This is a huge discussion. Thankfully, it’s Spring Break.
“Again, I’m not saying there aren’t quantitative aspects to design, but saying what works well is in part a subjective endeavor. There are plenty of people, for instance, who hate the iPod or will disagree as to what color works best in the example above.”
My question for you is: What are the quantitative aspects of design? Are there aspects of it that are worthwhile to research? If so, what is the usefulness of that knowledge? Conversely, what part is subjective/qualitative in design? Can some of the these be parsed out? If it’s not worthwhile, why?
Jeff, yes, this is a huge discussion. You ask some very good and challenging questions. ;)
It seems we interpreted the candidate’s remarks differently. Pulling the solution apart to understand why it worked makes me think of Schon’s reflection-in-action, which, he argues, provides a rigorousness to design practice. Reflection during or after design activity allows you to recognize the winning habits and repeat them. However, given that design situations are often divergent, you cannot simply repeat the winning habits. More reflective practice is required in the new situation. But I see this as different from what the candidate was saying, who seemed to have a more scientific slant. His research, after all, involved the quantifying of color palettes from a statistical analysis standpoint.
As for your other questions, I’m not sure I can divide the quantitative and qualitative aspects of design so easily. To me, they are parts of the whole. My main point, and perhaps I didn’t make it so clear, is that design has its own rigor that needs to be understood and communicated, and that its rigor is not based on the methods of scientific research and inquiry. Your questions seem relevant to this topic, but seem come from a different approach to understanding design.
Jamin,
Isn’t reflection a “winning habit?” It would seem that one way to interpret Schon is that we can and should repeat winning habits, these habits are the practices of reflection-in-action. What do you define as a habit?
Haha. Jamin, isn’t Carl’s question the exact same question that Dick asked you in January?
Dick asked me if knowledge embodied in the knower is a habit. Carl is just asking how I define habit. In Dick’s case, he introduced the word habit. In Carl’s case, Schon uses the words of a baseball pitcher who refers to “winning habits” during performance. In both cases, habit would not be my word of choice.
However, I don’t interpret Schon to mean that reflection is a habit. By habits, I think Schon means intuitive action. Reflection focuses on the “outcomes of action, the action itself, and the intuitive knowing implicit in the action.”
If a habit is intuitive action, then perhaps my answer to Dick would be yes (earlier I thought it was no). But design isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, about repeating habits, as each situation is different, making any habit only partially useful. Reflection-in-action is a conversation between action and situation. We might say that this yields better habits.
As for habits being practices of reflection-in-action, if Carl means that habits are developed through reflection-in-action, then it would seem we could interpret Schon as he suggests.
In case you were wondering the source of “habit” discussion:
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle
Sounds like what the lady martial artist says in the movie, “Best of the Best.” “Winning is not a sometime-thing – it’s an all-time thing.”
The first thing I thought when I read the post was John Maeda becoming the next president of RISD. He’s a computer scientist and it hardly gets any more quantified than that and he’s becoming the next president of a very well established design school. But then Maeda’s works can probably be considered “computational design” rather than quantifying design.
I have to say I agree with Jeff on almost all his points. You might remember me saying in class why we like certain colors and why some colors go well with others is a function of our biology. Consider this: when you turn a color picture into B&W, you actually have to change the RGB values according to the number of receptors for certain colors in your eyes. I’m pretty sure people found out about how to B&W a picture before they found out about color receptors but that’s still pretty interesting, to me at least.
Finding out what works best will not bring an end to creativity. It’s true that 6+4=10 but 5+5 is also 10. In fact, there are infinitely many ways to get 10 using two numbers. Taking things that work well apart will only mean that you’ll be able to get where you want faster and easier next time. It does not mean that you’ll actually come up with something along the design process.
It’s been a long night and it was hard for me to add anything to this already fruitful discussion but this is my two cents.