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
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud
0142-694X $ - see front matter Desig
doi:10.1016/j.destud.2009.12.001
� 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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
205