Book Review

Design Expertise, Bryan Lawson and Kees

Dorst, Architectural Press, Oxford, UK (2009)

321 pp., ISBN 9781856176705, £29.99

There is an established history of work on under-

standing expertise in several fields and contexts,

including chess, music, problem-solving, science

and sports, extending over some fifty years or

more. Expertise in design has received only limited

attention in the design research community,

although just over five years ago therewas a special

issue of Design Studies on the topic (Volume 25,

Number5,September2004). Soabookon the topic

by two renowned design scholars and teachers,

sharing their respective specialisms of architectural

and industrial design, is very welcome.

These authors make it clear that they do not

adhere to a na€ıve view of ‘expertise’ as a kind of

innate ‘talent’. They set out explicitly to challenge

the notion that ‘some people have an innate abil-

ity to design and others do not and may as well

give up’ (p. 10). Instead of that notion, they argue

that the ability to design entails a collection of

cognitive skills, and that these skills can be iden-

tified, learned and taught. Their view is that

‘design is a special and highly developed form of

thinking, that thinking can be considered a skill

and that designers can learn to become more

expert at what they do’ (p. 88). In this respect,

they reflect an established view in the study of

expertise that expert performance is acquired

through dedicated application and deliberate,

guided practice. This view sets the agenda for

the book, which seeks to understand and expli-

cate the nature of the skills that constitute design

expertise and how design education attempts to

develop those skills. Thus, after an introductory

chapter, there are chapters on ‘Understanding

Design’ and ‘Design Expertise’ followed by

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chapters on ‘Starting Out as a Designer’, ‘Educat-

ing Designers’ and ‘Being Professional’, and

concluding with ‘The Continuing Journey’ which

acknowledges that the development of expertise

does not (indeed cannot) cease at graduation

but continues throughout professional practice.

In all studies of expertise there is a general view

that expert performance develops over time as

a person matures and absorbs experience. Nor-

mally, there comes a point when a peak of perfor-

mance is reached, and then an inevitable decline

begins. This performance peak will be reached at

different ages in different domains e for physical

sports, it may be around the age of middle-

twenties, whereas in mental activities it may not

be until much later in life: in the sciences, people

seem to produce their best work in their thirties,

whilst in the arts it may be in their forties. In this

book, the authors seem to suggest that in architec-

ture and design peak performance may not occur

until even later. Of course, some outstanding indi-

viduals seem to defy the general pattern of

improvement, peak and decline, and to continue

producing great workwell into their ‘senior’ years.

But one thing that seems agreed from studies of ex-

pertise is that it takes time: masterly performance

in anything requires aminimum period of practice

(at least 10 000 h) and sustained involvement of at

least 10 years before performance reaches an inter-

nationally-recognised level of achievement.

The development of expertise also passes through

different phases. We are all familiar with the con-

cepts of the novice and the expert, and that some-

thing happens in the development from one to the

other, involving a progression through different

levels of ability. In all fields, the accumulation

of experience is a vital part of the transformation

to expert. Thus a novice undergoes training

and education in their chosen field, enters into

n Studies 31 (2010) 203e205

203

practice, achieves some competence, and then at

some later point becomes regarded as an expert.

For some people, the ‘expert’ level of achievement

is where they remain, perhaps with some contin-

ued moderate improvement before reaching their

peak and beginning their decline. A few manage

to go beyond the level of their peers, into a further

phase of development, reaching outstanding

levels of achievement and eminence.

Lawson and Dorst adopt this phase model of the

development of expertise. In fact, they borrow

and adapt a model from Dreyfus (who uses evi-

dence of expertise to argue against the feasibility

of artificial intelligence ever being able to cope

with such high-level cognition), comprising

phases of: novice, advanced beginner, competent,

expert, master and visionary. This model fits well

with ideas of the development of expertise in de-

sign (although Lawson and Dorst insert a ‘begin-

ner’ phase between novice and advanced

beginner, acknowledging that most people can

be ‘novice designers’). Thus, the graduate student

may have reached a level of competence, but

probably is still an ‘advanced beginner’ and needs

much more practice and experience to become an

expert. At the high end of the scale, some

designers do manage to develop into ‘visionaries’

who introduce completely new concepts and

constructs to the profession.

Moving from one level of expertise to another is

not necessarily a smooth progression. As the

authors note, ‘The more sophisticated levels of

expertise are not simply the more na€ıve levels

done quicker, more accurately or more reliably;

they involve working in a different way’ (p. 92).

This shift to ‘working in a different way’ can

come almost un-noticed by the learner but can

mean shifts in level of attention that we all expe-

rience in learning a skill, as the fundamentals

become performed unconsciously. However, in

design there is still little real understanding of

the differences between novice and expert perfor-

mance (let alone between the several other levels),

204

and how to help students move from one to the

other. Education in design has well-established

practices that are assumed to help the progres-

sion, but these are not very well understood,

and certainly not well researched, documented

and explained. In fact, as the authors suggest,

there is a certain smugness in conventional design

education that assumes that the principles are

well-established, without reproach, and ‘ahead

of the game’. The authors attempt an analysis

of the features of design education that appear

to be fundamental; essentially, the studio, the de-

sign tutorial, and the crit. But there is a feeling

that, in the absence of much objective evidence

for their strengths, but with an awareness that

there are certainly many flaws in these ‘essentials’,

there is too much unquestioning acceptance of

traditional forms of design education.

We need rather better and more widespread

understanding of exactly what this book seeks

to address: what is the nature of design expertise

and how best might it be nurtured and developed.

The authors make a brave attempt at collecting

and ordering what evidence there is, but their

conclusions are too often underpinned by single

pieces of research. We need much more intense

research programmes and a continuity in studies

that will build a reliable knowledge base. Here

is an example: many of us have relied upon Bryan

Lawson’s ‘blocks puzzles’ experiments (from the

1970s) and his conclusion that scientists are

‘problem focused’ and designers are ‘solution

focused’. The study is referred to again in this

book. The conclusions of the study may have

been reinforced by other types of observations,

but, as far as I am aware, more than thirty years

later it remains a single study, that has not been

repeated, nor varied in its implementation. It pro-

vides a convenient piece of evidence for those of

us who support the notion of ‘designerly ways

of thinking’, but convenience is not enough.

What we have in this book is primarily an analy-

sis, a series of probing essays that interlink

Design Studies Vol 31 No. 2 March 2010

through recurring themes, a ‘rich picture’, but not

yet a synthesis or simplifying transformation of

the data. That is the state-of-the-art that we are

in at the moment, and it must be hoped that

a work such as this will be used as a stimulus by

others to deepen and reinforce (maybe even

refute) the viewpoints and interpretations that

are presented. Just how rich the picture is might

be illustrated by the variety of perspectives and

models that occur in the book: there are seven

views of the nature of design (‘design as . ’),

three models of designing (comprising five activi-

ties, four levels of application and three thinking

types), and the six- (or seven-) level model of

expertise development.

What is the reader to make of this richness?

Indeed, who is the intended reader? The authors

say, ‘This book is for design students and practic-

ing designers as well as for educators and

researchers’ (p. 18). Well, that’s just about every-

body in the design domain. It’s true that every-

body can get something from the book, but it

might have been better to have had a more

defined audience. The style of writing varies

between scholarly and colloquial; it reads mainly

as though intended for the ‘advanced beginner’,

but the concepts and constructs often sound too

complicated, and practical advice for the student

is very limited. Those who might benefit most

from it could be the educators, those tutors who

are embedded in the conventionalities of design

education, but who might be tempted into a wider

awareness of the scope of the job they take on and

the issues they need to address. Yet here again the

book demands a lot of the reader. Very often it

will be necessary to follow-up and find the origi-

nal sources in order fully to understand the argu-

ments. Sometimes that is not possible, because

Book review

the references are not given. For example, in

a passage on the benefits of mixing personality

types in design teams (p. 194) there are appeals

to unreferenced experiments and case studies

that apparently confirm these benefits. This is

where it would be a help to give real advice on

how to do what is advocated, or where to learn

it. Too often, ‘what is needed’ is called for but

not developed.

I am sorry to have to say that I think more exper-

tise could have been shown in the design of the

book itself. The authors have attempted to enrich

the presentation by restricting the main text to

left-hand pages only, and supplying on the

right-hand pages a number of ‘provocations’,

examples, amplifications and graphics. (Curi-

ously, this protocol is broken only once: across

the very two pages where it is introduced and

explained!) Sometimes the illustrations, etc. on

the right-hand pages are explicitly linked to

points in the text passages on the left-hand pages

by line arrows; but sometimes other illustrations

intervene and the two linked pages do not fall

side-by-side, and so the arrows clumsily fumble

across two or three pages. And sometimes there

is nothing on the right-hand page, it is blank ex-

cept for a large asterisk in the centre of the

page. This is an example of where the foresight

of expertise might have avoided infelicities in

execution. There is also a frequent devil in some

of the details of proof-reading: errors such as

several times printing the word ‘designs’ when

‘designers’ is meant, ‘Juicy Salif’ becoming ‘Juicy

Saleph’, and (p. 241) reporting that some experi-

mental results ‘spurned further analysis’ rather

than having spawned it.

Nigel Cross

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