Preparing Students for the Growing Context of Design Practice

Jonathan Cook | University of Washington | asbjorn@uw.edu

Jonathan Cook is graduate student in interaction design at the University of Washington.

Before returning to school he worked for Microsoft and CrashShop Design as a visual and

interaction designer on a range of different media. His academic interests involve designing

for complex problems in the domains of government and medicine. He recently presented a

civic media project with a group of his peers at the 2013 Microsoft Student Design Expo.

Abstract

Applications of design and interactive technologies are broader than in past decades and

now include larger, more complex problems in society. To prepare students to approach

larger issues that encompass multiple areas of study, I argue that educators should teach

students methods to facilitate collaborative work and the application of knowledge from

other disciplines into studio practice. Richard Buchanan’s perspective on design’s lack of

specific subject matter provides a theoretical foundation for bringing outside knowledge

into design practice. Synthesis methods, familiar in the field of interaction design, can

help foster communication with other disciplines by forcing designers to externalize

connections between proposed solutions and the outside knowledge surrounding a

problem space. Analyzing how some design studios are currently using these methods

in collaborative work can provide valuable lessons to guide how design educators should

prepare students for this new complexity of design practice.

Keywords

Multidisciplinary Collaboration, Studio Practice, Design Process, Synthesis, Complexity,

Abduction

New Contexts of Practice

Designers today are increasingly involved in responding to far reaching, complex

problems in expert domains like healthcare, business, and government. Some argue that

traditional Bauhaus derived educational methods that center on designing visual artifacts,

are insufficient to prepare students for these larger contexts and the higher stakes that

often accompany them (Kolko 2011: 88–91). Design educators like Meredith Davis have

also written about how changes in the subject matter of design, from creating isolated

objects to designing systems of interaction and user experiences, necessitate a shift in

the focus of design education from “know how” to “know what” (Davis 2000: 28). New

technologies that allow people to interact with information over time, and in varied

contexts, have brought new possibilities and a new complexity to the practice of design.

Davis writes in her paper, “Designing Experiences, Not Objects”

“While the physical and cognitive interactions of people with information and objects at the

time of use remains important, how these interactions are nested within the larger array of

human experiences becomes central to design.” (Davis 2000: 2)

Because of this shift, Davis advises that design educators focus on “the full ensemble of

issues that define project contexts (cognitive, physical, social, cultural, technological and

economic).” In a later paper on the new challenges of design education, she asserts:

“How we get students beyond the issues of cultural motifs or symbols and to the humbling

work of understanding contexts, values, and behaviors other than their own is the challenge

of designing for a global community.” (Davis 2008: 34)

Some, like Donald Norman, have acknowledged this new complexity in design practice

by advocating that designers learn theories and methods from other disciplines like the

social sciences, business, and engineering (Norman 2010). As the subject matter of design

continues to grow beyond static artifacts, it’s increasingly clear that a broad range of

disciplines can be relevant to design practice. It’s unrealistic however, to argue that design

students should be expected to become competent in all of these possible approaches in

the course of an undergraduate degree. Additionally, advising that design students spend

less time applying ideas in the studio to learn techniques from other disciplines begs the

question of whether such approaches would diminish the advantages that designers brings

to creatively approach problem solving in the first place.

Instead of advising that designers learn approaches from other disciplines, students

should be taught methods to explicitly incorporate outside research and knowledge

into studio practice in order to better facilitate multidisciplinary work. Design educator

Richard Buchanan’s perspective on the lack of specific subject matter in design provides

a theoretical foundation for approaching how outside knowledge can be brought into

design practice (Buchanan 1992: 5–21). By focusing on the indeterminacy, or lack of

specific subject matter in design, Buchanan emphasizes the importance of articulating

the connections between outside knowledge and application in a design process. Social

Scientist Donald Schön comes to a similar conclusion in The Design Studio, advising

that designers and architects learn to better reflect on and communicate the valuable

connections made in creative design processes to other disciplines. He writes in the book

about the difficulties of advising architects to better learn to integrate outside knowledge

and reflect on their practice:

“It seems worth asking whether it may be possible for architectural education to incorporate

new bodies of research-based theory and technique while retaining the traditions of the

studio at the heart of its curriculum.” (Schön 1998: 86)

Design educators today are also attempting to prepare students to respond to complex

problems that demand the application of a broad range of specialized knowledge.

Accomplishing this without compromising the unique creative approach that design can

bring to problem solving was a concern of Schön’s and is now something that educators

will have to grapple with as well. “Synthesis methods,” like those that interaction designer

and educator Jon Kolko have written about, provide one approach to teach students how

to transparently apply outside knowledge within the design process (Kolko 2010: 15-28).

These methods can help foster communication in multidisciplinary collaboration by

forcing designers to externalize their understanding of a problem space. Creating a visual

representation of this knowledge can provide a document of the logic behind a design

project that outside collaborators can critique and legitimize. Notable design studios

like IDEO and frog design are already using these types of methods to guide projects

that require research and multidisciplinary collaboration (Yale 2011). By advocating

that designers learn to collaborate and apply outside knowledge within studio practice,

educators will not compromise the unique approach that designers can offer complex

issues in society — the ability make new connections, reframe problems, and artistically

explore future possibilities by giving form to new ideas.

Reframing Design

While some educators have resisted changes to established design curricula, others have

gone as far as to advocate that designers adopt more positivist, scientific methods to

respond to the growing influence of design and technology in society. In “Why Design

Education Must Change” Donald Norman argues that design should become more

grounded in scientific methodologies:

“Design education has to move away from schools of art and architecture and move into

the schools of science and engineering… Today’s designers are poorly trained to meet today’s

demands: We need a new form of design education, one with more rigor, more science, and

more attention to the social and behavioral sciences, to modern technology, and to business.”

(Norman 2011)

Norman concludes the article by emphasizing that designers “must not lose the wonderful,

delightful components of design.” It seems relevant to ask whether a curriculum that

requires designers to learn methods from the social sciences, business, and engineering

would compromise the creative potential of design by reducing the amount of time

students have to develop ideas in studio practice. Along these lines, practicing design

directors Dan Saffer and Gadi Amit have written in separate articles on the frustration of

finding designers to hire with both the theory and the studio skills necessary to give form

to good ideas (Saffer 2007; Amit 2010). Further, one could argue that each of the relevant

fields Norman mentions require a specific knowledge base beyond what any design

student would have time to meaningfully develop in the course of an undergraduate

degree. How then can design students effectively incorporate outside knowledge into their

work and to approach complex problems in practice?

Richard Buchanan’s theory of design provides the basis for a different, perhaps more

effective, response to the growing complexity of design practice. In his essay “Wicked

Problems in Design Thinking” Buchanan builds on Horst Rittel’s famous definition of

“wicked” problems in “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” and reiterates how

designers must first define a problem before they can be attempt to solve it (Buchanan

1992: 14-19). One key component of Rittel’s definition of a wicked problems is, that

because complex problems in society lack clear definition and can be approached

from many different perspectives, a designer must first interpret and frame a problem

before attempting a solution (Rittel 1973: 161). Buchanan argues this indeterminacy

exists because the practice of design lacks specific subject matter apart from that which

a designer creates for a problem. This distinguishes design from the sciences, which

Buchanan says “are concerned with understanding the principles, laws, rules, or structures

that are necessarily embodied in existing subject matters.” Jon Kolko summarizes the

implications of Buchanan’s perspective well:

“This implies that it [design] cannot be broken into specializations, and by definition, that

designers bring only a generalizable process and series of methods to problems that are

uniquely specialized within other disciplines entirely.” (Kolko 2011: 88)

Buchanan emphasizes how this distinction between design and science calls for a different

approach to problem solving that acknowledges how designers create and define unique

problem situations. They do this, Buchanan says, by arguing for connections between

“signs, things, actions, and thoughts” — what he defines as the abstract material of

design. In this way Buchanan emphasizes how certain arguments are implicit in the

ways designers connect outside knowledge and their assumptions about the world in

their work. This broad perspective of design as a problem defining approach that can

be brought to other disciplines, begins to answer the earlier question of how best to

collaborate and bring knowledge into the design studio to tackle complex problems.

Teaching designers to better articulate the arguments and connections implicit in their

work would help provide a bridge to communicate and collaborate with other experts in

analyzing possible solutions.

A range of academic disciplines may offer relevant knowledge that can be applied to

large design projects. As Rittel articulates, complex problems require a broad range of

knowledge beyond that of any one person. Also, because the subject matter of design is

inherently indeterminate and without a specific subject of application, designers may find

themselves working with a variety of different issues in their careers. Learning methods

to collaborate with other experts and incorporate knowledge from other disciplines then

becomes key to dealing with the indeterminate and varied subject matter of complex

problems. By focusing on the thinking and argument behind design solutions, only

Buchanan’s prescription offers the kind of higher level understanding that can guide

collaboration and the integration of outside knowledge into the design process. In

what ways, then, can designers be taught to integrate knowledge from other domains

and communicate the connections and arguments within their work in order to foster

better collaboration? Donald Schön explored this question in regards to architecture

in The Design Studio, expressing concern about the difficulties of encouraging design

practitioners to be more reflective in their work:

“They must try to make systematic descriptions of their practice and coaching, and the

knowledge and appreciations embedded in them, in spite of the factors that work against

systematic self-reflection…. And finally, they may find it extraordinarily difficult to give

explicit, accurate, and useful accounts of the understandings implicit in gradually learned

competences that have become intuitive.” (Schön 1998: 7)

“Synthesis methods” that provide a framework for designers to externalize a design

problem, provide one possible approach to guide how designers can be encouraged to

become the “reflective practitioners” Schön had argued for.

Communicating Design Insight

In “Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking” Jon Kolko argues for integrating and

formalizing what he calls “synthesis methods” into design processes (Kolko 2010: 88–91).

Though Kolko is not the first designer to use these approaches, he’s written on the value

these “externalizing” methods can bring to design processes. The three methods he

describes in detail are reframing, concept mapping, and insight combination. While many

designers are familiar with activities like concept mapping and will benefit from reading

more about Kolko’s specific examples, his theoretical explanation of synthesis methods

underline that it’s not any one activity that matters as much as the process of physically

reflecting during the design process to better understand a problem space. Though the

methods are intended to help designers learn to apply primary research within the design

process, it’s also important to note that they could be used to apply knowledge from, and

guide collaboration with, other disciplines as well. Creating a visualization of arguments

or connections between the “signs, things, actions, and thoughts” of a problem space

can then make the logic of a design solution more transparent to outsiders as well as the

designer, in order to better facilitate collaboration.

In “Abductive Thinking” Kolko first draws on cognitive psychologists Klein, Moon,

and Hoffman to define sensemaking as: “a motivated, continuous effort to understand

connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their

trajectories and act effectively” (Kolko 2010: 18). Kolko here describes the synthesis

phase of a design process in which a designer defines and frames a problem. In this way,

synthesis methods could be seen as a concrete embodiment of Buchanan’s perspective of

design as fundamentally indeterminate and without specific subject matter. Abduction, as

described in the article, is the logic that a designer uses to make connections within the

synthesis phase. Kolko further defines it as “the argument to the best explanation,” or as

a creative inference based on experience and available knowledge (Kolko, 2010: 20). In

contrast to deductive and inductive logic, which deal with existing knowledge, abduction

attempts to explain phenomena based on new combinations of insights. Kolko references

philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce and cognitive scientist Phillip Johnson-Laird who

have both written on the relationship between abductive thinking, creativity, and problem

solving. He writes early in the article:

“These are the keys for relating research to design—synthesis methods are the ways in which

ethnographic insights lead to new, innovative, appropriate, or compelling ideas”

Kolko continues and emphasizes the physical nature of the methods:

“Once externalized, the ideas become “real”—they become something that can be discussed,

defined, embraced, or rejected by any number of people, and the ideas become part of a

larger process of synthesis. Essentially, sensemaking is an internal, personal process, while

synthesis can be a collaborative, external process.” (Kolko, 2010: 17-18)

Key to all of these methods, Kolko states, “are the acts of prioritizing, judging, and

forging connections.” (Kolko, 2010: 21) Externalizing the knowledge and assumptions

that make up a problem space into a visual form allows the designer, or group, to analyze

more information than what they could process at one time in their head. Information

in this visual form, once initiated, can be moved and modified to make connections and

establish a hierarchy of knowledge. The resulting map of information can then provoke

insights and act as an valuable document of the argument for a given understanding

of a problem space. It can also be adjusted based on input from multiple perspectives.

Documenting and formalizing this initially messy process can be done by reflecting

in writing or by refining the visualization into some other form. Requiring students to

tangibly reflect during this process would encourage them to articulate connections

between the background knowledge surrounding a design problem and their resulting

design. This would help to make their insights transparent and ease collaboration with

other disciplines on larger, more complex projects. Additionally, collaborating with others

during the activity could be a productive way to combine insights between disciplines

to synthesize new solutions. Project Masiluleke provides a few tangible examples of how

these types of activities can take form within a project.

Synthesis in Practice

Project Masiluleke (or Project M) is a collaborative project by frog design, design

incubator PopTech, and South African community health group iTeach that is responding

to the HIV epidemic in South Africa with the design of an at-home testing system that

people can request with a mobile phone text (Yale, 2011). The Yale School of Management

developed an online case study of the project that documents the process the three groups

went through before arriving at a viable and innovative solution. The video interviews

of the study provide valuable glimpses into how the collaboration played out, and the

role that frog design took to guide the process. While the study mentions the use of

externalizing, synthesis-like methods, Vice President and Creative Director Robert

Fabricant makes the case that the greatest value that frog brought to the collaboration

came from their ability to create prototype concepts to test based on their research. The

Project M case study highlights the value of synthesis activities in collaborative design

processes and the importance of moving forward to craft designs based on those insights.

Fabricant, in a video about the collaboration process with iTeach and PopTech, speaks

about the value frog brought to the project:

“In many ways probably the strongest thing Frog has provided has been a process for fitting

those pieces together and continuing to think about the overall system in which we’re trying

to, kind of, integrate a lot of different ideas and a lot of different concepts.” (Yale, 2011)

Earlier, in another video, Fabricant mentions how a contextual inquiry activity, similar

to the synthesis activities Kolko writes about, helped to confirm the collaborative group’s

decision to attempt the mobile phone initiated, self-testing idea. Principal Designer Ben

Fineman also describes the “journey maps” created by frog in order to “examine all of

the angles” of the complex project, and come “up with a solution that addresses as many

needs as possible.” (Yale, 2011) (Figures 1-3). The journey map of frog’s design concept

in Figure 3 shows a collaborative document that includes both the design proposals and

the feedback given by their South African partner, iTeach. This example clearly illustrates

how can creating visualizations of the knowledge and assumptions around a concept can

help designers communicate ideas and receive feedback while working to best respond

to complex problems. The three journey map images also show how frog progressively

formalized these documents to communicate contextual information throughout the

design process: from initial sketches (figure 2) to a co-edited electronic document (figure

3), and finally to more formal illustrations (figure 1).

Though it’s clear that frog made use of different types of synthesis methods in their design

process, Fabricant also emphasizes the limits of “thought exercises,” and the importance of

crafting solutions that reflect design thinking:

“Design thinking is mostly about design doing. You know, most of what we bring that shifts

the way people approach problems, whether it’s in a business or outside, is by doing different

things, not thinking different things. And by testing ideas by doing.”

The videos in the study highlight how frog helped to guide the design process between

the three groups, in part, through the use of synthesis methods used to align stakeholders

to the direction of the project. Fabricant’s comments also emphasize the importance of

creating and testing ideas and prototypes, based on synthesis insights, to materialize

conceptual thinking into tangible artifacts. Like design directors Saffer and Amit, it’s

clear that he thinks the greatest value designers can offer to complex problems is in the

application of ideas and knowledge onto the craft of new solutions. The success of Project

M in influencing over 150,000 to request HIV information, brings further evidence to

the argument that outside knowledge should be brought into the design studio in order

to tackle complex problems — instead of advising designers to approach these complex

issues with methods and approaches of other disciplines (frog design 2013).

Conclusion

In light of new complexities in the practice of architecture in the late nineties Donald

Schön advised practitioners to reflect and better communicate the value of their work:

“As the schools of architecture revise their own curricula in order to take account of the

changing nature of architectural practice… they will profit from a more reflective grasp of the

understandings and know-how embedded in their own traditions.” (Schön 1998: 8)

As educators respond to the growing complexity of design practice, they should similarly

be encouraging students to reflect during their work and equip them with methods to

bring outside knowledge from other disciplines into studio practice. Students should

learn to communicate the argument and perspective that Buchanan writes is inherent

in design practice — that connections between “signs, things, actions, and thoughts” are

materialized in the new ideas and conceptions created by designers. The collaborative

work done by frog on Project M is one example of this new, broader practice of design

that integrates larger contexts of human experience and outside, expert perspectives into

new innovations to serve people. Synthesis methods that force designers to externalize

and communicate their understanding of an problem, provide a tangible approach to

teach students how to better reflect and communicate the connections in their work.

Teaching these methods in studio practice will better prepare them to collaborate with

others when responding to complex problems in their careers. Donald Norman, as others

have also articulated, is accurate in connecting the challenges of today’s design problems

to a range of different disciplines like engineering, the social sciences, and business. This

new complexity of design practice, though, should be a call for designers to learn to better

collaborate with other disciplines, not attempt to redefine the practice of design to imitate

other, more scientific approaches. To do so would overlook and compromise the value

that designers can bring in responding to complex problems in the first place. Unlike the

sciences, designers are taught how to explore future possibilities by creating and giving

form to new ideas. Teaching students to better reflect and communicate the connections

inherent in their craft will help open up the practice of design to the outside knowledge

necessary to respond to significant problems in society today.

References

Amit, Gadi. (December 10, 2010). American design schools are a mess, and produce weak

graduates; http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662634/when-bad-design-education-

happens-to-good-students (Accessed August 31, 2013)

Buchanan, Richard. (April 01, 1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues,

8, 2, 5-21.

Davis, Meredith. (January 01, 2008). A Curriculum Statement :Designing Experiences,

Not Objects. LOOP November 2000 Number 1.

Davis, Meredith. (January 01, 2008). Old Models No Longer Suffice - Changes in culture

have led to changes in design; we explore the new models facing our creations and

their creators - Toto, I’ve Got a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. Interactions, 15,

5, 28.

Frog Design. (2013). “Mobile Health: Project Masiluleke”.

http://www.frogdesign.com/work/project-m.html

Kolko, Jon. (January 01, 2010). Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of

Design Synthesis. Design Issues, 26, 1.)

Kolko, Jon. (July 01, 2011). The conflicting rhetoric of design education. Interactions, 18,

4, 88-91.

Norman, Don. (November 26, 2010). Why Design Education Must Change. Core 77 Blog.

http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/why_design_education_must_change_17993.

asp (Accessed August 31, 2013)

Rittel, Horst W. J. & Webber, M. M. (June 01, 1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of

Planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 2.)

Saffer, Dan. (March 6, 2007). Design Schools: Please Start Teaching Design Again.

Adaptive Path Blog. http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/

design-schools-please-start-teaching-design-again (Accessed August 31, 2013)

Yale School of Management. Project Masiluleke: Texting and Testing to Fight HIV/AIDS

in South Africa. n.d. http://nexus.som.yale.edu/design-project-m/

(Accessed August 31, 2013)

Figure 1

Frog Senior Design Analyst Ben Fineman describing the “journey map” illustrations that

show how the Project M home testing kit would be used (Yale School of Management

2011).

Figure 2

Initial Project M journey map sketches (Yale School of Management 2011).

Figure 3

A formalized brainstorm of the Project M journey map with South African collaborator

iTeach’s feedback overlaid in yellow (Yale School of Management 2011).