Posts Tagged ‘Constructivism’
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
This is a fairly comprehensive presentation of the underlying philosophy and research behind my masters work in helping designers visualise and support motivation in the design of everyday products and services. I’ve obviously talked about the development of this work extensively on this blog so I’d like to take the chance to thank all of you who have visited and contributed comments and support – its helped me refine and adapt my ideas thus far and I really appreciate it!
I’m hoping to add an audio summary of the presentation at some point, but otherwise the presentation gives an overview of the foundations of my framework of motivation in design, the research behind it and then a few examples of products and services that have either been directed by this conceptualisation or whose success as ‘motivational platforms’ can be interpreted by using the framework.
People may also recognise a few of the case studies from the Nordic Service Design Conference – thanks to the presenters their for their explanations, this presentation also served as an opportunity for me to pass on what I’d learned and enjoyed from that conference to my colleagues at the HCDI at Brunel.
As ever comments and questions are gratefully appreciated and if you are interested in finding our more or understanding how this framework can be applied to your own design or service propositions then please get in touch.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy!
Tags: Cognitivism, Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Information, Intrinsic Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Motivation, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, rule based processes, Self Efficacy, Service Design, Socratic Methods, systems theory
Posted in Defining Service Design, Design Research, Design Thinking, Framework of Motivated Behaviour, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Service Design | View Comments
Monday, November 30th, 2009
Apologies for the recent blogging hiatus, in large part due to the launch last week of The Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition at the Design Museum which I have been working on over the last year and half. I’m also recently back from the excellent Nordic Service Design Conference in Oslo. I will post more on both of those things in due course. In the meantime, I’ve also been working on my MPhil in Intrinsically Motivating Design and recently developed a model that I hope to validate as a tool to help designers design Intrinsically Motivating and behaviourally self sustaining systems, services and products. I’ve posted this on Wenovski as well so apologies for the cross posting if you’ve already seen it there. I’d really welcome your feedback on this and if you have any questions or would be interested in offering me an opportunity to validate the model then give me shout either in the comments below or at hello@fergusbisset.com.
My research into Human Motivation and its relationship with design has seen me exploring a lot of organismic theories of human behaviour, those are the theories that suggest we are naturally predisposed or energised to grow or seek new challenges, affiliation or environments in order to remain healthy, happy and fulfilled.
Obviously not everyone is in agreement on the underlying mechanisms of human motivation and behaviour, there are many models, but these are issues that we as designers revisit often in the form of the well intentioned but hideously over-cited and rarely understood Maslow’s Hierarchy is based on such a humanist/organismic perspective.
My own research is exploring a newer an more updated model of which I attach an early draft below, one that also represents the iterative and dynamic nature of human behaviour – something that is overlooked in Maslow’s version.
My model and the research that underpins it (predominantly Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory) indicates that in order to remain psychologically fulfilled we need to balance three psychological needs for AUTONOMY (Self Reflection, Independence, Empowerment), RELATEDNESS (Socialisation, Care and Concern for and from others), COMPETENCE (Feelings of efficacy, self control and accomplishment).
Deci and Ryan’s premise (and mine) is that only by balancing and fulfilling these core psychological needs will we be truely HAPPY and HEALTHY. My model attempts to illustrate how these INTRINSIC (some might say INNATE) psychological needs are often balanced against EXTRINSIC design factors and criteria and just as with Maslow’s Hierarchy if we want as designers to design systems and services that leave us feeling fulfilled they will need to address all of these INNATE HUMAN with EXPLICIT DESIGN capabilities and specifications.
If an intentionally or accidentally designed system cannot SELF REGULATE, or as you say Arne, “balance” EXTRINSIC and INTRINSIC demands it ultimately will become unsustainable.
To help make this idea more explicit I will elaborate – much of industrial design is focussed on the SENSORY features of products, services and systems, whilst interaction design and ‘soft design disciplines’ are interested in COGNITIVE levels of interaction. Recently of course, as most of us here will be aware Design has begun to shift towards more ORGANISATIONAL or ‘Service’ perspectives in an attempt to satisfy the ‘NEEDS’ of its users and customers. Or perhaps if I put it more cynically – in an attempt to continue to generate value for stakeholders in the design process. This shift in the focus of design, as is well documented, has occurred as a result of technology that initially enable ‘interfaces’ and more recently high levels of social connectivity and networking.
With my model, I hope to help move design one step closer to exactly the call you’ve made here Arne, by helping designers to understand how their expertise in manipulation of SENSORY, COGNITIVE and ORGANISATIONAL affordances and data can be better focussed on meeting users genuine SOCIAL, COMPETENCE and AUTONOMY needs and in turn designing systems that are by consequence self motivating, sustaining and perhaps as you allude here ‘caring’.
What does everyone think?
Tags: Awareness, Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Dialectics, Human Centred Design, Intrinsic Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Motivation, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Self Determination Theory, Self Efficacy, Service Design, skill based processes, systems theory, User Empowerment, User Perceptions
Posted in Framework of Motivated Behaviour, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Thanks to Andy Polaine for sharing this tremendous insight in response to my post yesterday. It’s fair to say that those students studying Service Design at Luzern are in great hands. 
In his comments he wrapped up a lot of the wider tensions within the Service Design community about the relationship between academia and practice that I know are hot topics of discussion at London events such as Service Design drinks and Service Design thinks at the moment, as well as clearly the Service Design Network Conference held this week.
Indeed, a lot of the background to this post and my own work is fuelled by an urge to bridge some of this tension – between theory and practice as Andy put it – this is synthesis in the truest sense of the word.
For anyone interested further background to these issues can be found here and here.
If I created a strawman yesterday in my discussion of what was said at the Service Design Conference then I apologise. I suppose the essence of what I was attempting to highlight was that despite any personal philosophical or pragmatic differences of opinion that might exist within the community, there appears to be two prevalent ways in which designers classify users. One is to see users as reactive i.e. responsive to extrinsic constraints and the other is to see them as proactive i.e. energised by internal ideas and ambitions (goal oriented).
The reality seems to be that we as humans fluctuate between these states probably faster than we’ll ever be able to measure or generalise accurately (its not going to stop me trying ) and thus we as Service Designers rely on the ethnographic approaches Andy mentions or laboratory based scientific experiments that are well documented in scientific journals to attempt to understand behaviour.
Whether designers are fully concious of the fact that they are making these judgements about users is another issue open to debate and discussion. Indeed, the oft cited definition of Design Research is “to make explicit what is otherwise implicit in the everyday practice of design.” Thus by raising this discussion, I was simply attempting to raise this question within the minds of us designers about how we implicitly view the user we are designing for? As I mention above the answer appears to be as either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ depending on circumstance, context or which particular part of the design or use phase we might be referring to.
Education systems are interesting service examples themselves in how they attempt to balance between encouraging creativity and intrinsically motivated behaviour whilst also controlling these processes with structured curriculum and routines. Indeed, any service we can think of will attempt to strike a balance between generating and controlling value (or creativity, or energy, or money) for all the stakeholders involved.
As Andy clarified in his comment on the last post, Birgit Mager was talking at the Service Design Network Conference about users behaviour being a function of Attitude and The Environment. On further research this would appear to also share perspective with that of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1988) which is also based on Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).
This classifies user behaviour as a product of:
- Attitude (Autonomy)
- Social Pressure (Relatedness)
- Perceived Behavioural Control (Competence)
What I’m interested in as part of my masters is how we can design systems and services that enhance user perception of these three inherent human psychological capabilities. Doing so successfully or even unsuccessfully will result in behavioural change, but doing so successfully and encouraging users to reflect on these capabilities will result in sustainable behavioural change (at least that’s the theory).
I’m incredibly fortunate that through this platform and as a result of contributions such as Andy’s I can also modify my own attitude and perceived competence as a result of being able to relate my work to you all.
Andy is right though we need to do more to work together and bridge the gaps between academia and professional practice. I don’t plan to stay in academia forever but whilst I’m still here I’d be interested to hear from you all… do you have any questions about Motivation? Is there something that you as a practitioner are working on and feel like you could use a bit of academic insight or research on? Please get in touch here, via twitter or through the comments link below.
Tags: Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Dialectics, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Service Design, skill based processes, User Empowerment, User Perceptions
Posted in Communities of Practice, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Process, Design Research, Design Thinking, Dialectics, Framework of Motivated Behaviour, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Service Design | View Comments
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
As I’ve reported here before I’m in the middle of an MPhil researching the role of motivation in design and how designers can identify and design to encourage motivated behaviour of a suitable nature. I use the term ‘designer’ loosely as I’m not for one minute proposing that Motivation is something that can be prescribed or even should be. At this stage I am in the process of articulating and visualising from my research to date, what motivation looks like or how people might recognise motivation. Some of you may have seen the Motivational Personas I put up a week or so back – thank you so much to all who commented and contributed their thoughts ideas and experience – I’m very grateful! I’m continuing to develop those.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset (click for larger version)
In parallel to those personas, I’m also keen to develop a “Conceptual Framework of Motivation” and begin to elaborate the different levels on which motivation might be observed in oneself or in others. As most behavioural psychologists would doubtless testify, recognising one’s behaviour is the first step to modifying it.
There appears to be a bit of divide in the behavioural design community as to whether people need to recognise either their existing or desired behaviour in order to change it. Some designers and academics arguing that it may be more effective to change behaviour through design without the user having to be aware of it. I had an animated conversation about this over a beer with Frankie Roberto and Dan Lockton. Like I say this is contentious area, but I’m at this stage putting myself fairly firmly in the camp that believe that if behavioural change is to be sustainable, users have to be aware and undertake deliberate and conscious modification of it. Whilst there are doubtless good arguments for the designer as behavioural ‘god’, and I’m more than happy to hear them and discuss them if you wish to share. I find those arguments somewhat belittling of the people that they aim to ‘help’, the typical line in such circumstances being: “that users aren’t always capable of recognising or understanding their ‘needs’ or ‘capabilities’ “. There was a nice quote via Cassie Robinson on this today:
“Accept me as I am & you’ll make me worse. Treat me as what I’m capable of becoming & you’ll help me to become her”
That is not to say that designer’s should shirk all the responsibility onto the user, indeed with reference to the above it perhaps becomes the designer’s responsibility to help that self-reflective process and aid the user in realising their capabilities. The motivational state should be a shared and negotiated agreement between designer, artefact and user, not a diktat by any of those parties. This also means that the designer has an active role and isn’t just subservient to user demands or “lack of vision or creativity“.
Irrespective of this argument and whether user, designer, user-designer or any other stakeholder in the process you will still need to be able to identify, model and measure motivation or any other form of human behaviour for that matter, if you want to change it. I see my motivational personas as aiding identification, whereas I see the attached model, what I’m calling a Motivational Framework as the next step towards being able to model or synthesise motivated behaviour within the wider context of the product or service lifecycle. This understanding is perhaps fundamental to the process of increasing motivational awareness, capability and thereafter designing to empower users in their motivational capabilities.
I would really welcome any feedback you might have on this, particularly in relation to how this might fit into or overlap with your existing creative practice or world view – and I would especially like to hear from you if it seems incompatible with your own views or established methodology.
Tags: ARCS Model, Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Dialectics, Framework of Motivated Behaviour, Human Centred Design, Intrinsic Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Motivation, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Self Determination Theory, Service Design, skill based processes, thinking about thinking, User Empowerment, User Perceptions
Posted in ARCS Model, Awareness, Confidence, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Thinking, Framework of Motivated Behaviour, Motivational Design, Relevance, Satisfaction, Service Design | View Comments
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
In response to my last post, Jonathan Baldwin asked the following question:
The idea of designers who are interested in the ideas rather than the finished artefact raises interesting pedagogical issues. How are they encouraged and rewarded in current educational environments?
His own thoughts can be seen in the comments page and ask some probing questions of the way that design is currently taught and communicated. My own answer to this question is central to my current MPhil research and indeed current day job. Thus I’ve reposted and rephrased some of what I wrote by way of response. Having had my annual review this week it fits in quite nicely with an update on some of my latest thinking. Any feedback, correction or diversions much appreciated!
As a designer who evolved to be a ‘design thinker’ as much as a ‘design doer’ largely as a result of my parallel life as a ski racer and professional (yes honestly, professional) ski instructor, the issue Jonathan highlights is one of big personal interest to me.
The problem occurs I think in that education seems rather quick to push or support people people into either ‘doer’ or ‘thinker’ camp. Doers, learn CAD and workshop skills, manufacturing processes and off they go resigning themselves to never seeing an end user again. I jest, but purely to make my point!
Holistic thinkers, in my experience undernourished in many ‘product’ or ‘graphic’ courses procrastinate in the face of unfulfilling practical assignments or labour and over intellectualise their more fulfilling graphic and research/ethonographic oriented projects.
Either way both hop from lily pad to lily pad of academic requirements without necessarily reflecting on why or whether their current task is serving some wider (social or personal) goal.
Frog Flickr-CC by Rainforest_Harley
Often sold the idea that coming to university will guarantee them employment (and worse) that they deserve such employment by default and based on their perceived rather than actual skills and skillsets, the education system generally doesn’t seem to be good at opening us up to genuine self reflection.
That is self-reflection that occurs as a result of thinking you are good enough to win a competition and then finding out that actually you are not. Education as I see it should expose students to these real and yes sometimes brutal challenges, guiding them not towards ‘explicit solutions’ but rather the tools and mindset to reflect upon and redesign their approach. It is certainly something that any junior designer will experience as soon as they start working in the real world, or particularly at present, trying to find employment in the real world. For more on the ‘dark side of design’ see this post.
The parallel here, is the professional athlete (or serious amateur) for whom life is one big systematic and seriously demanding long term process. A process punctuated by a series of competitions (or perhaps design briefs) in which they have the chance to evaluate their performance against a set of defined rules or criteria. If they are successful there might be some prize money, a car or a free trip to Madeira. If they are not they instead go away with valuable feedback on their performance.
Educators and Designers should (from my perspective and as I am currently outlining in my my masters studies) be the coaches in this analogy. Helping and supporting the learners and users to reflect and re-evaluate their behaviour against long term behavioural, ecological, social and basic needs fulfilment. Providing them with proven tools and methods and analysing and experimenting with new innovative methods where appropriate to incrementally push the boundaries.
If I wanted to employ someone, I wouldn’t want to see their portfolio so much as I would want to see their ‘training plan’ and performance objectives for the duration of their employment (or study) with me. At present this seems to be something that only happens at a post-graduate or in research based education in this and to my knowledge any other country.
Such a strategic, performance oriented view would in my opinion also help overcome the whole Black Swan / ego / genius design problem of assuming that an individual’s past success guarantees future performance. Instead, allowing individuals to stagger their satisfaction and intrinsic reward for their pursuits in a much more incremental and balanced manner.
Originally posted as a comment by Ferg on Ferg’s Blog using Disqus.
Tags: Competition, Constructivism, Design Research, Dweck, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Product Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Self Determination Theory, Service Design, systems theory, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Awareness, Concrete Experience, Confidence, Defining Design, Design Process, Design Thinking, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments
Friday, August 7th, 2009
This weeks call to boycott the Service Design Network’s (SDN) recently announced competition and general grumblings within the service design community provide a fascinating insight into what makes service designers tick (and seemingly what doesn’t).
Rybinsk 2007 Podium - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - www.teamtoday.org
My initial reaction can be seen in the comments section in that last link, for the most part I am a little disappointed at the near unamimous and public way this competition appears to have been rejected by those who otherwise do so much to promote and positively communicate Service Design here in the UK and around the world.
What is it about this competition I wonder, and it seems competitions in general, that these service designers are opposed to? And from my perspective how much might service designers be distancing themselves from huge numbers of the population and public they claim to represent should they reject such ideas?
Jeff Howard and Jonathan Baldwin impressively and compellingly argue in the comments of that last post that such competive structure does not support the co-design process that is such a fundamental part of service design. But another post yesterday from Joel Bailey got me thinking perhaps its a bit deeper than that. Perhaps the very people (whether male or female as Joel contends) who are attracted to Service Design and it’s processes are those that generally speaking might not relish the idea of a competition.
Carol Dweck (2000) talks about Entity and Incremental ‘implict theories’. In otherwords, two distinct ways in which people percieve the world. There are those that believe that knowledge (or design) are static or intellectual entities and constructs. These constructs can be communicated by linear processes and static hierarchical diagrams. These would be ‘Entity‘ oriented individuals, who to generalise, are those more likely to prefer dealing in physical entities. In the case of design this would be the more traditional graphic or product ‘physically’ oriented design approaches.
According to Dweck the other sort of individuals consider Knowledge (and design) to be more fluid and incrementally elaborated and constructed, more open to debate and interpretation. These individuals are more likely to be interested in the process of design than they are in the final outcomes or physical representations of the design process. This is perhaps because they understand that these physical entities are fleeting representations or put another way simply the tip of the iceberg in the design process. I know for a fact I fall into this category, although I still see and have personally experienced huge value from participating in competitions and dealing and manufacturing in physical entities and constructs.
I don’t know about you, but I know which category I would place service designers (and systems thinkers) in. The latter Incremental category and this leads me to another difference that Dweck highlights, the difference in how these two individuals approach to challenges.
According to Dweck Entity Theorists relish competition, whilst Incremental Theorists (Service Designers) prefer collaboration. Dweck in fact places these two on a sliding scale – indicating that by her perception the two ideals are polar opposites. Perhaps, there are also correlations between males and females as to which gender is more likely to fall in which category. Personally I don’t see gender based distinctions as valuable and find Dweck’s a far more useful categorisation of characteristics of those by my interpretation more likely to engage with Service Design and it’s methods.
How are you being competitive? - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - Teamtoday.org
The one concern however that this insight highlights, and it echos my reservations about Service Designers seemingly being so quick to dismiss this competition this week is, that whilst Service Designers might be Incremental Thinkers and theorists I would bet the vast majority of the population at least in the ‘old world’ are not. This would explain why so many of us participate in competitive sport and value physical objects. Thus, whilst Jeff would still maintain that the service design community should not support this competition. I would encourage the community to do so, as a chance to better understand and resolve the challenges involved and of which we are all aware in communicating Service Design to those with different (Explicit) ideals and perspectives. After all, is holistic and flexible thinking not truely the purpose of co-design and the value that service designers are capable of offering?
Tags: Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Self Determination Theory, Service Design, systems theory, User Perceptions
Posted in Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Process, Design Thinking, Fergus Bisset, Persuasive Design, Service Design | View Comments
Monday, July 13th, 2009
“Design uses the whole person’s mind & body…”
This as I interpret it in my own recent contribution to the ‘Design Thinking debate is framing Design from a situated-cognition perspective. Again, saying that the activity of Design is inherently bound to it’s context of activity and therefore it is impossible to completely rely on empirical definitions of what design is or how to practice it. This is a controversial statement and one that can undoubtedly take a bit of time to come to terms with. I’d like to briefly use this post to elaborate how this idea has evolved in my mind and through my recent research into skill acquisition – as such it can be considered the full fat version of my previous post. It contains about 700 words and will therefore take about four minutes to read.
Concrete courtesy of Katorisi and Wikimedia Commons
‘Design Thinking’ of the sort discussed in the past months online debate and that first brought to our collective attention by IDEO represents “a community of practice” that is to say a socially mediated or mutually agreed definition of what design thinking is and how design thinkers should practice it. IDEO has very successfully wielded old media and more recently new media savvy to leverage it’s definition upon the world, thus increasing the awareness or ‘social definition’ or it’s Design Thinking ‘community of practice’. IDEO has done this so successfully in fact that like so many successful communities of practice the term ‘Design Thinking’ has become hugely widespread in its usage and definition, with the fringes of the community taking this definition and it’s processes and bending and moulding them to suit there own purposes and requirements. ‘Design Thinking’ has thus developed ‘social capital’ in terms of it’s ability to describe the tacit knowledge and processes of designers. A term that many people within the design and now business community understand and possess their own definition of.
What is clear however, is that the broader that ‘community of practice’ has become so to has the definition of ‘Design Thinking’. As I argued in my previous post it is now such a broad term that it is being rejected by aspects of the community it is supposed to represent. Indeed, judging by the comments to Collopy’s article it is being rejected by a large proportion of the design community, particularly those at fringes of the established design community in the evolving service design industry who are seeking at present to develop their own ‘community of practice’ and distinguish it from what has gone before.
The term ‘design thinking’ is not concrete. It therefore only exists as a social construct and it’s application is entirely dependent upon, influenced by and subject to its context.
This week I want to look at how then to develop ‘social capital’? Or more specifically how to teach or engage others with the essence or definition of what it is that you do as a service designer? How you become an Expert Design Thinker or Service Designer without an agreed definition of what that actually entails? More importantly, even if you or the institution that educates or employs you possesses such a definition, how do you communicate this to the rest of the world in terms that are meaningful and valuable to them? How do you interact with their “communities of practice”?
This is what might be referred to as establishing Legitimate Peripheral Participation, a process of individuals in this case entering the ‘design thinkers’ or ‘service design’ community and developing their skill gradually over time so as to become experts in the domain. In the terms of my recent research in Skill Acquisition and Public Engagement, this can be described as the transition from abstract observer to concrete experience. This process is perhaps better known as experiential learning.
I’m aware of a number of initiatives or individuals working on projects that are simultaneously attempting to develop ways of guiding people through this process towards concrete experience and education of ‘service design’ or design in general, I highlighted Participle’s Loops Initiative and Small Fish already. In the next few posts I plan to elaborate my own thoughts on how using the whole body and mind is key to developing ‘concrete experiences’ and key to successful engagement.
Tags: Community of Practice, Concrete Experience, Constructivism, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Research, Design Thinking, Experiential Learning, Human Centred Design, IDEO, Intrinsic Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Service Design, Social Capital, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Empowerment, User Perceptions
Posted in Communities of Practice, Concrete Experience, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Process, Fergus Bisset, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments
Friday, July 10th, 2009
For this title I have to credit Fred Collopy who’s excellent article this serves as a response to or perhaps continuation of.
For those who haven’t been following, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere recently about the term ‘design thinking’ and it’s relationship with systems thinking.
Collopy’s article on Fast Company and the largely positive responses it has received are leading to the consensus that to quote Bruce Nussbaum on Twitter:
[Just as] MIT [and] Harvard embrace Design Thinking…designers reject it. Wow. Is Design now too big for designers to handle? Do designers ” get” DT?
From the large number of service designers following this discussion and contributing to it, to name but a few Arne van Oosterom, Lucy Kimbell, Lauren Currie, Jonathan Baldwin my award for the best comment has to go to Lucy Kimbell:
“the problem with the phrase Design Thinking is the word design and the word thinking.”
![More Intellectual Gymnastics [Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/2563351997_9b1f91701a.jpg "More Intellectual Gymnastics Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr")
More Intellectual Gymnastics courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr
I’m opening the following idea up for discussion, but I think what we are seeing as design’s
Cartesian anxiety develops is a transition away from institutionalised definitions of design or it’s processes. A shift that exacerbates or only continues the long documented product-to-service shift that occured prior to the economic melt down. I’m willing to be wrong about this however and I certainly welcome comments or claims to the contrary.
Personally, I’m fascinated that in the same week as the Twittersphere alleged that IDEO (the original proponent of ‘design thinking’) had laid off half of it’s London office and open sourced it’s toolkits, we are seeing the cracks emerge or as Bruce ventures above, the outright rejection of institutionalised design practices. Maybe I’m getting carried away but it seems that even Harvard’s ever provocative Usman Haque was getting in on the act this week – denouncing the 20th century corporate mentality of ‘straight line thinking’.
To take Collopy’s argument a stage further, design is a process inseparable from action. In being inseparable from action, design as an activity becomes heavily influenced or equally inseparable from it’s environment or context of application. This is something that co-design activities and many service and participatory approaches to design appear to have recognised or at least responded to for some time.
However, if true this places us in the realm of design becoming an activity dependent on situated cognition a point I made indirectly in a previous post here and greater elaborated over the last month here and here. Designers becoming coaches or facilitators in design practice within a smaller, more limited and specialised context, as discussed here.
By further leaps and bound of intellectual gymnastics, and perhaps actual gymnastics if you take the whole mind-body thing too seriously, it’s not illogical to propose that the future of design education might in Haque’s ‘Capitalism 2.0 landscape’ come to rely on a more cognitive-apprenticeship approach of designer’s learning and practicing their craft just as traditional apprenticeships taught woodwork and mechanics.
Indeed in a week where there have been well articulated discussions about the large number of ‘surplus’ design graduates it is great to see Participle’s Loops Initiative and the fantastic Small Fish initiative (both via Redjotter). Design thinking might have died this week but as these two endeavours prove design is very much alive and designers can handle it very well thanks!
Tags: Constructivism, Design Research, Dialectics, Human Centred Design, Intrinsic Awareness, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, rule based processes, systems theory, User Perceptions
Posted in Design Thinking, Dialectics, Public Engagement | View Comments
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
Following on from recent posts on the nature of design thinking I want to clarify two things. I am not opposed to design thinking or even thinking about design as this blog demonstrates! Simply, my thoughts as expressed here were that if you want people to better understand design thinking, just get on with it an involve them in it or at the very least provide them with a concrete example rather than an abstract diagram of the process you are trying to sell them. This could perhaps be considered a Constructivist viewpoint as opposed to a Cognitivist world view.
Scenario modelling can also be considered a constructivist tool. As a designer you probably use scenario modelling to predict, impose or evaluate user behaviour by ‘constructing’ that world in some manner. This might be virtually or in the form of organised user testing and evaluation. Do you use scenario modelling to anticipate or communicate your own role within the design process?
Rules by Wm Yas on Flickr
The second issue I want to explore and it relates to this earlier post as well. Is the question of whether design is a skill or rule based process?
Systems and therefore ‘systems theory’ in it’s purest form requires human operators whether designer or user to follow a defined path or at least operate within a set of constraints. I interpret the ‘design thinking’ as practiced and encouraged by IDEO, with their method cards etc. as ‘rule based’ at least in the deductive phase (understanding the context) of the design process.
Do you follow a rule based or heuristic approach as part of your efforts to understand or predict the environment and users you are designing for? Does it work?
Other designers of course may rely simply on their own subjective or ‘skill based’ judgements about the environment or context as opposed to following a rule or heuristic approach to design. This is perhaps symptomatic of the ‘ego-design’ process that Molenbrook refers to here, in describing the differing approaches many designers have to ergonomics data.
Most importantly, which of these ways of conceptualising the design process are easier to engage clients, users and yourselves as designers with?
Tags: 'ego-design', Cognitivism, Constructivism, Design Research, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, rule based processes, scenario modelling, skill based processes, systems theory, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Cognitivism, Constructivism, Design Process, Design Thinking, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments
