On the two skills design method
Working paper version 1.0
Walter Dejonghe
Industrial Design Center, HOWEST - University College West Flanders,
Associated member of University Ghent.
Graaf Karel de Goedelaan 5, B-8500 Kortrijk, Belgium
Purposeful agents need two distinctive skills: the ability to create/recognize an endless variety of aspects and the ability to choose some aspects versus to let happen something else, thus the ability not only to imagine the aspects but to act with the chosen aspects as focus. A fundamental and powerful design method to tackle every challenge is operationally defined and can be based on both skills only. Purposeful agents thus are not different from “designers”. We focus on industrial designers because typically they have to interact with more stakeholders than other type of designers. Stakeholders are agents in the design process.
Purposeful agents design for new experiences. A design cannot be experienced until it is realized. Realization means that the very experience in and with the (partly designed) material and virtual environment changes something, makes a trace in that environment. This is the inevitable consequence of making things happen: it is impossible to do only what was intended. Thus to realize a preferred design is to let it happen in time. When an agent chooses to experience something, this is possible only when it lets also happen “something different” than that what was chosen to experience. To perform the action of experiencing the agent has to let happen also something different than the focus chosen, otherwise the agent only imagined the action. This easily can be demonstrated by throwing a die: if the distinctions judged relevant for the observation of the status of the die after throwing are not given before the action of throwing the die, the probability of the result only can be defined after the experiment, because only then can be defined which aspects should be observed of all the different aspects that really happened in the action according to the different stakeholders (or observers) that were part of the context. Acting is to make no difference between the realization of the focus of action and the acceptance of what happens in that focus.
This basic insight has two major aspects:
one needs to make a distinction between something (whatever it may be) and something else (different from something whatever it may be)
a stakeholder (or observer) could recognize, using its own skills, “something” as “some thing related to other things” and to give it accordingly a precise symbol so that it could be communicated, the same applies for “something else”
These two aspects are related to the mastering of two distinctive skills:
selecting (obvious meaning) versus “something different than selecting” (this means: “letting something happen”, “letting organize something by itself”, randomizing, being open, ...)
diverging (obvious meaning) versus “something different than diverging” (this means: “converging”)
Both skills thus can be described by distinguishing two attitudes as the two sides of the same coin. Both skills can function as a goal for each other (for example: agents can select with the aim to diverge etc...). The logical conjunction of the attitudes results in four combined attitudes. These are used to operationally define the following concepts in the two skills design method:
|
Concept name |
Conjunction of distinctions |
|
Challenge (problem/opportunity) definition |
Selecting AND diverging |
|
Ideation (Idea exploration) |
Letting happen “something else than selected” AND diverging |
|
Realization (Decision, preparation of context) |
Selecting AND converging |
|
Activation of behavior (Validation, test, feedback) |
Letting happen what was selected AND converging |
These four attitudes describe very well the base competences of a (industrial) designer as a typical purposeful agent. Because these four attitudes can be formulated by a conjunction (for the scientific way of thinking a unproblematic relation), their formal meaning is not problematic and operationally well defined.
(Industrial) designers are trained to take into account the demands and wishes of all parties involved in a design (these parties are called stakeholders). A (industrial) designer must learn the reality of each stakeholder, and this is the reality as it is experienced from the perspective of the stakeholder. This multidimensional skill is the hallmark of (industrial) designers. Not in all cases this is explicit knowledge. Designers can handle explicit requirements and tacit wishes. Therefore the designer looks for traces of existing behavior with products and environments to learn what aspects are implicitly (unconsciously) relevant for the stakeholder. These are used as benchmarks. The designer thus selects aspects presented by stakeholders with the aim to diverge his understanding. This can be expressed differently: the designer diverges his understanding with the aim to select aspects relevant to stakeholders. Typically in this phase the designer observes that the behavior of products and contexts are not what he expected based on generally accepted knowledge. The stakeholder/context system frequently did self-organize differently based on the stakeholders particular awareness in his particular context. Traces of real behavior are thus used by the designer to structure observations, to order idea's, to leave partly interpreted traces of observations that could get a different meaning only later when more information on relevance is available. Designers need those external traces because their (internal) skills proceed differently than what could be expected from a reliable memory. Indeed: (industrial) designers are trained to do something new, not to repeat something from memory.
An assignment for a design typically cannot be experienced, it just is an idea, full of potentially conflicting requirements. Thus “a priori” there cannot be a right or wrong solution to the assignment. The designer will have to find “something different”, other ways to approach that reality and to make the relevant aspects available for the experience of every stakeholder. The ability to come up with various and different ideas or embodiments for an idea is called creativity. Creativity is a skill transcending the dichotomy of good and wrong. It creates and explores different possibilities, long before the problem or opportunity is understood, and in the interaction only (and thus not a priori) these could be categorized as fit or not fit to a particular context. Usually the result of creativity is a multitude of interactions that fit somehow. More creativity results in more emergent aspects that can re-activate a locked-in situation. Creativity can be trained and has not to wait for the emergence of a random variation in a material realization to come up with something new that could be brought in interaction with the context. The (industrial) designer has to create something new, this is something else than what already exists. The (industrial) designer thus has to let happen aspects with the aim to diverge, expressed differently: the (industrial) designer diverges his understanding using a random idea with the aim to let self-organize other aspects around this idea without realizing (interacting with the context) what did self-organize in his mind.
(Industrial) designers always have deadlines. During product development (s)he cannot avoid to make decisions based on existing information but with a potentially high impact (positive or negative) on the variety of future behavior. The (industrial) designer thus has to select aspects with the aim to converge, expressed differently: the designer has to converge with the aim to select relevant aspects only. This selection process should prepare a context different from the existing context. Prototypes are constructed with the aim to communicate/persuade some of the selected aspects. A lot of aspects are suppressed in a prototype that is meant to be tested, a prototype is unavoidably simplified, a selection of relevant aspects only. The designer has to interact (not only through prototypes but usually also socially) with decision makers to reveal their tacit behavior that otherwise could not be understood or even not revealed. Focus is laid on expected/desirable features. The most powerful documentation of the presuppositions is by leaving material traces (stigmergic prototypes) that could be used later on to reconstruct the path that was followed, but also to (re)construct the nodes where a different direction could now be followed that was not obvious at the first time (this is the so called “design paradox” Ullman D.G. 1992). Going further, some (industrial) designers deliberately create novel situations that force their stakeholders to change their behavior and reveal new possibilities or needs to the (industrial) designer (Rust, C. 2007).
Influenced by prototypes, reality will organize by itself: something will happen, what implies that something else will be excluded for the experience (it cannot be chosen to experience, it can happen only). The (industrial) designer thus let happen aspects with the aim to converge to a relevant interaction, expressed differently: the (industrial) designer converges his understanding with the aim to let happen unexpected aspects but aspects relevant for the stakeholders involved in the validation. Typically, prototypes are made with the goal to be tested double-blind in the intended environment, with the intended stakeholders, those only will determine what is relevant in that context when they show spontaneous behavior. That means that both will influence each other during interaction (what could be both positive and negative), and only because of the interaction, and that the traces left by this spontaneous interaction will be used for further development. Doing so the (industrial) designer, with its limited understanding of reality, does not force reality in his own limited world-view. By his multidimensional skills (s)he provides a leverage for self-organization in partly predictable and continuously evolving interactions. This entails also that the experienced time by the stakeholder will get a different shape: what was impossible previously (because the states were mutually excluding) now becomes possible and what was possible previously (freedom to choose) now becomes impossible. Prototypes are thus used as objects that interact with agents in their context resulting in expected but also unexpected new aspects.
Because reality always will self-organize, the process of designing using the two skills design method will never stop until the agreed deadline is reached. Learning indeed never stops. Designers are trained to navigate in uncertain contexts and are maximally aware of theirs and others presuppositions and the volatility of their decisions. This allows them to revisit the decisions based on newly created evidence, created later than the decisions that evoked them. This is called the iterating design process, or the design paradox. In the very action of designing the four attitudes emerging from the two skills continuously change and interact. Indeed, after letting happen something where the designer focused on, usually also something else will happen that could not be expected by the designer. If this is judged relevant by one of the stakeholders, this should become part of the challenge definition. Doing so, the four attitude design method is fed with new information and can start again. This is also called the spiraling action of designing or the iterating design process, where evolving interactions with reality are instrumental for understanding and carrying forward the design challenge ... as long as the deadline is not reached.