My blog story so far (even if this sort of stuff isn't proper blogging), in eight moves:
(1) Any one centre for design is often going to be the wrong centre
(2) There are many ways to be human-centred, as three waves within HCI research have already shown (HCI = Human-Computer Interaction, the study of how Humans Interact with Computers, and how we can improve this). Claiming to have a world exclusive on the one true human-centred path is a mug's game (with no limit it appears to the teams of 1 that fill its leagues)
(3) Designers make choices, and we can associate these with types at different levels of abstraction
(4) Choices of type at one level of abstraction may become the same type at a level above
(5) there could be a hierarchy of design choice types here, but working out exactly what it is, and eliminating overlaps is a mug's game (see 2 above, there's no room left for more mugs)
(6) At the highest level of abstraction, choices about artefacts and choices about evaluations are very different things. After all, someone can choose to evaluate a designed artefact long after the designer has departed this mortal coil (e.g., the Snettisham torc is lovely, but we've no idea who designed it)
(7) I wonder if there are any other types of choice that are distinct at this highest level of abstraction
(8) I know the answer, so I'm not really wondering at all
OK, time for prose, it's beginning to look like Powerpoint up there (I'm so unbloggerly).
Artefacts, Evaluations - anything left? Well, I suppose we could try designers (in HCI actually, we regularly try designers, and they are generally found guilty). Seriously though, a designer's intent is something quite distinct from their designed artefact that (fails to) realise(s) their intent. Let's call this purpose.
That's now three distinct types of design choice: Artefacts, Evaluations, and Purposes. In design situations where there are clear choices of purpose (albeit ones that may evolve alongside artefacts and evaluations), it is much easier to focus evaluations. With just artefacts and evaluations, it's very easy to come up with arbitrary evaluation criteria (e.g., the Snettisham torc is too soft and pliable). But it's clear that you were never meant to chop wood with it on, so such an evaluation criterion ignores the likely original purpose of the torc, e.g., to communicate and confirm wealth and status in social gatherings, to be an object of awe and contemplation, to demonstrate the amazing skills of its designer maker, and perhaps more. As a further twist, the Snettisham torc is today associated with a different range of cultural and heritage purposes at the British Museum. Nothing appropriates as well as a national cultural institution.
Once we have more than one high level type of design choice, we have to connect between them to maintain design coherence and integrity. We can (and should) connect evaluation to purpose. Similarly, when reflecting in/on design, we can connect the artefact to its purpose: how do choices for the artefact relate to intended purpose? What is this feature or quality for? What does or can this feature or quality achieve?
So that's three types of highly abstract design choice, and two types of connection, which begs the question, what about connecting between the artefact and its evaluation? Can questions asked at this level of abstraction get us anywhere? For me, the answer has been yes. Digital artefacts in particular can be given self-instrumenting features. A web page counter is one simple example. It's not necessarily a good example, because it begs the question as to what the counter is actually evaluating, but it could nevertheless serve a useful evaluative function. However, there are also examples from the non-digital world, such as wear indicators on brake pads and electric toothheads, or power level indicators on dry cell batteries. What's intriguing here is how direct instrumentation can have a sort of Heisenburg effect and change the object, adding value through its own self measurement.
So that's three types of highly abstract design choice, and three types of connection, so let's make this Abstract Design Situation more complex by looking for a fourth type of (very abstract) design choice. Actually, we can get more complex without that. If we consider interaction as a connection between an artefact and one of its purposes, then we can evaluate the costs incurred in interacting relative to the benefits achieved (a.k.a. worth). If you thought things couldn't get more abstract, then tough. What we have here is evaluation connecting to a connection (interaction = artefact connected to purpose through use). Who would have thought we could have such fun with just three abstract design choice types?
For choice type three, we introduced a human, albeit a baddy, the designer (or design team) with their chosen purposes for making the world a better place, or so they think. We need some good guys to balance out designerly malfeasance. We're talking now about the people who are being designed for, as and when that is, speciific people are being designed for. Such lovely beneficiaries are clearly a further distinct type of design choice at the highest possible level of abstraction.
For doubting Thomases with a second hand philosophical vocabulary from wikipedia, artefacts, evaluations, purposes and beneficiaries are ontologically distinct. Artefacts and beneficiaries are corporeal, material, substantial, here in the now, and in this sense are ontologically similar. However, artefacts are manufactured, whereas beneficiaries are socially constructed, and in their role as beneficiaries rather than physical bodies, they are less substantial and incorporeal. They are selves and others overlaid over physical bodies. However, they also bind together many facts, things are true of both stuff and folk.
Evaluations and purposes are not bundles of facts, but respectively judgements and intents. The former are axiological rather than existential, that concern values and not facts of being. The latter are intentional, mental phenomena in the mind of a designer (or shared across the minds of a design team).
Further probing produces further ontological distinctions. Purposes refer to futures. Designing pulls conceived artefacts from the future into the present. Beneficiaries persist in the present, but have meaningful significant pasts and anticipated futures. Evaluations however are often one night stands: some forethought and planning, a lot of frenzied and sometimes anxious activities, a closing "how was it for you?" and suddenly it's all behind you. I could go on. You know I could go on. Kindly though, I won't.
Abstract Design Situations combine one or more highly abstract types of design choice, as many connections between them as are committed to, and any useful connections to connections, and connections to connections to connections, ad infinitum (unfortunately, closure will be forever elusive in the absence of designer assent - the situation's as big as you want it to be).
Try as I might, I can't get beyond (or below) four possible highly abstract types of design choice. There's a good home for any others that anyone else can identify, so do let me know if you encounter some massive overlooked generality on your design travels.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
What Types of Choices can (and must) Designers Make?
Everyone knows that designers make choices. They sketch out dozens of options, then they choose the best one(s) and refine it/them. Eventually, they end up with a detailed design that can be realised in some way.
This account of design makes sense for product design, graphic design, fashion, interiors and architecture, and most 'craft' disciplines within design. However, not all designers sketch. Many designer-makers work directly with their materials. They may well design (i.e., sketch and draw) before making, but they do not need to, and some prefer not to. Potters may play with clay, and wood turners literally have to go with the grain. Once the latter have cut into their wood, there is no going back, whereas a potter can collapse and squash their turned form into a lump of clay and start again. There is a sense in which any choices by wood turners are final, due to the resistant nature of their materials, whereas a potter's choices can be erased, due to the pliant nature of theirs.
When sketching, new options are simply added by sketching something else. Unlike a hands-on designer maker, sketchers must neither live with existing cuts into resistant materials, nor must they reform pliant ones to move onto the next option.
Designing is thus not just a process of choosing between options, it is also, sometimes predominantly, a question of choosing which options to explore. A wood turner quickly gets committed to a course of action, whereas a potter can erase history, and design sketchers simply add another sketch, often on the same sheet of paper. The question arises as to whether these designers are making different sorts of choices.
If we consider the end points of making and sketching, then there are different types of choices here. For the potter and the wood turner (and also the software hacker), the designer-maker is making choices about the final artefact, forming it directly, hands-on. For the sketcher (who may also be a potter or wood turner), the designer is making choices about a conceived artefact, which does not yet exist, and most probably never will, given the extent of options under consideration. However, these are still choices about artefacts, so types of design choices exist in some form of hierarchy.
Getting from a sketch to the final artefact may not be straightforward. A fashion designer has to cut patterns, which they or a supporting craft technician must then use to guide the process of fabric cutting and garment assembly. Similarly, product designers need to convert sketches into technical drawings (engineering/CAD) that represent the first step of a (increasingly automated) manufacturing process. No further design choices may be made at this point, since all materials and components may have been chosen and sourced. During manual garment assembly however, design decisions continue to be made, especially during the phases where a 2D drawing becomes a 3D assembly of a pattern on a tailor's dummy before reversion to a 2D patten on paper or in digital form. Again, the choices appear to be different here, but whether these are different types of choice depends on your level of abstraction. At the most abstract level, all the examples here are still choices about artefacts.
It is thus possible to conceive of design as a set of stages that begins with ideas and ends up with things. Some product design methodologies are clearly structured in this way, such as the Stage-Gate Model in product design and the Waterfall Model in engineering design, where initial divergent exploratory research and discovery stages (including conceptual design) are followed by scoping, requirements definition, detailed design, testing and launch stages. Such views of design are wholly artefact- or technology-centred. However, in choosing to test, design teams have to make choices that are not about what an artefact could or should be, but instead are about how the (finished) artefact performs in some way(s). It is very hard, if not impossible, to identify an abstract concept that can span both choices about artefacts and choices about how they will be tested. Put more briefly, what something is (essence) and what something does (performance) are hard to unify within the same category. If there were one, then there would be a word that spanned, e.g., both requirements/specifications and validation/verification, and to my knowledge, there isn't. This isn't to say however that the two are not linked: clearly what gets validated or verified should relate to some extent to the requirements or specifications, but these will not always be coterminous. Testing often reveals gaps and flaws in requirements or specifications, even when choices over validation/verification were determined primarily by feasibility or a range of cost considerations.
All designs get tested in some way. Even amateur designer makers who are not producing to sell will form their own judgements as to whether a design 'worked' or not. Commercial designer-makers can test their designs directly with gallery owners, retail outlets and consumers. Fashion designs may similarly be evaluated via orders from retailers and consumer sales figures, but these in turn may be influenced by press reviews. We can reasonably conclude that choices about artefacts and choices about evaluations are distinct types of design choice, and that there is no level of abstraction at which they could become instances of the same type of choice. Each type of activity can be carried out by different roles, often in different organisations (e.g., product designers/manufacturers and reviewers/consumer organisations or the press).
Artefact development and evaluation are separable. They can be independent activities, although when they are, evaluations may fail to deliver value for design, but in philosophy the latter is a pragmatic axiological question (i.e., about what is valuable), whereas the distinctions between choice types are conceptual ontological ones (i.e., about what exists). However, the issues here are not idle philosophical ones, since if there are distinct types of design choices at the highest possible levels of abstraction, then a comprehensive framework of approaches to design and evaluation would need to cover all such types of choice. Furthermore, in so far as the value of distinct design activities is increased by co-ordination with other activities (e.g., in engineering design between requirements specification and verification/validation), then approaches are not only required to generate options and to make different types of choices, but also to co-ordinate these different types of choices.
Choices about artefact features/qualities and choices about evaluation activities are thus distinct. The question arises as to whether there are further types of design choice at a similar highest level of abstraction, that is, choice types that can be shown to be ontologically distinct in a philosophical sense. A further question arises as to whether such abstract choice types can be arbitrarily combined in different design settings, or whether some combinations are specifically favoured within specific cultures of design's historically separate craft disciplines such as interior design or product design. My next post will offer some answers to both these questions.
This account of design makes sense for product design, graphic design, fashion, interiors and architecture, and most 'craft' disciplines within design. However, not all designers sketch. Many designer-makers work directly with their materials. They may well design (i.e., sketch and draw) before making, but they do not need to, and some prefer not to. Potters may play with clay, and wood turners literally have to go with the grain. Once the latter have cut into their wood, there is no going back, whereas a potter can collapse and squash their turned form into a lump of clay and start again. There is a sense in which any choices by wood turners are final, due to the resistant nature of their materials, whereas a potter's choices can be erased, due to the pliant nature of theirs.
When sketching, new options are simply added by sketching something else. Unlike a hands-on designer maker, sketchers must neither live with existing cuts into resistant materials, nor must they reform pliant ones to move onto the next option.
Designing is thus not just a process of choosing between options, it is also, sometimes predominantly, a question of choosing which options to explore. A wood turner quickly gets committed to a course of action, whereas a potter can erase history, and design sketchers simply add another sketch, often on the same sheet of paper. The question arises as to whether these designers are making different sorts of choices.
If we consider the end points of making and sketching, then there are different types of choices here. For the potter and the wood turner (and also the software hacker), the designer-maker is making choices about the final artefact, forming it directly, hands-on. For the sketcher (who may also be a potter or wood turner), the designer is making choices about a conceived artefact, which does not yet exist, and most probably never will, given the extent of options under consideration. However, these are still choices about artefacts, so types of design choices exist in some form of hierarchy.
Getting from a sketch to the final artefact may not be straightforward. A fashion designer has to cut patterns, which they or a supporting craft technician must then use to guide the process of fabric cutting and garment assembly. Similarly, product designers need to convert sketches into technical drawings (engineering/CAD) that represent the first step of a (increasingly automated) manufacturing process. No further design choices may be made at this point, since all materials and components may have been chosen and sourced. During manual garment assembly however, design decisions continue to be made, especially during the phases where a 2D drawing becomes a 3D assembly of a pattern on a tailor's dummy before reversion to a 2D patten on paper or in digital form. Again, the choices appear to be different here, but whether these are different types of choice depends on your level of abstraction. At the most abstract level, all the examples here are still choices about artefacts.
It is thus possible to conceive of design as a set of stages that begins with ideas and ends up with things. Some product design methodologies are clearly structured in this way, such as the Stage-Gate Model in product design and the Waterfall Model in engineering design, where initial divergent exploratory research and discovery stages (including conceptual design) are followed by scoping, requirements definition, detailed design, testing and launch stages. Such views of design are wholly artefact- or technology-centred. However, in choosing to test, design teams have to make choices that are not about what an artefact could or should be, but instead are about how the (finished) artefact performs in some way(s). It is very hard, if not impossible, to identify an abstract concept that can span both choices about artefacts and choices about how they will be tested. Put more briefly, what something is (essence) and what something does (performance) are hard to unify within the same category. If there were one, then there would be a word that spanned, e.g., both requirements/specifications and validation/verification, and to my knowledge, there isn't. This isn't to say however that the two are not linked: clearly what gets validated or verified should relate to some extent to the requirements or specifications, but these will not always be coterminous. Testing often reveals gaps and flaws in requirements or specifications, even when choices over validation/verification were determined primarily by feasibility or a range of cost considerations.
All designs get tested in some way. Even amateur designer makers who are not producing to sell will form their own judgements as to whether a design 'worked' or not. Commercial designer-makers can test their designs directly with gallery owners, retail outlets and consumers. Fashion designs may similarly be evaluated via orders from retailers and consumer sales figures, but these in turn may be influenced by press reviews. We can reasonably conclude that choices about artefacts and choices about evaluations are distinct types of design choice, and that there is no level of abstraction at which they could become instances of the same type of choice. Each type of activity can be carried out by different roles, often in different organisations (e.g., product designers/manufacturers and reviewers/consumer organisations or the press).
Artefact development and evaluation are separable. They can be independent activities, although when they are, evaluations may fail to deliver value for design, but in philosophy the latter is a pragmatic axiological question (i.e., about what is valuable), whereas the distinctions between choice types are conceptual ontological ones (i.e., about what exists). However, the issues here are not idle philosophical ones, since if there are distinct types of design choices at the highest possible levels of abstraction, then a comprehensive framework of approaches to design and evaluation would need to cover all such types of choice. Furthermore, in so far as the value of distinct design activities is increased by co-ordination with other activities (e.g., in engineering design between requirements specification and verification/validation), then approaches are not only required to generate options and to make different types of choices, but also to co-ordinate these different types of choices.
Choices about artefact features/qualities and choices about evaluation activities are thus distinct. The question arises as to whether there are further types of design choice at a similar highest level of abstraction, that is, choice types that can be shown to be ontologically distinct in a philosophical sense. A further question arises as to whether such abstract choice types can be arbitrarily combined in different design settings, or whether some combinations are specifically favoured within specific cultures of design's historically separate craft disciplines such as interior design or product design. My next post will offer some answers to both these questions.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Beyond the Demonisation of Design and Narrow Arrogant Human-Centredness
Design, as we all know, is responsible for rampant consumerism, all the landfill in the world, and riding roughshod over the needs and wants of users and other stakeholders, and all because Designers™ focus on their creative muse or technical curiosity to the exclusion of all other considerations. Don't worry though, there's a whole queue of movements lined up to sort these designers out, who are no match at all for the massed forces of design activitism, responsible design, sustainable design, value-sensitive design, human-centred design and all future humane centrings and sensitivities.
Advocacy and demonisation appear to go hand in hand. Advocates draw attention to the dire state of the world, which fails to live up to their ideals, by pointing the finger at blame at those responsible. A zero sum game can operate whereby WE make ourselves better by showing how bad THEY are.
In the 1980s, software developers took a beating from self-appointed user-centred design specialists, who were rarely designers or developers themselves, and often knew very little about people either. Users were model information processors with mechanical behaviours for perception, cognition and motor skills. Humanity was reduced to a mirror image of the input-processing-output model of the digital computer. Emotion, meaning, values, choice, motivation and other defining facets of what it is to be human were rarely addressed. Social factors were given more attention in the 1990s as sociologists joined cognitive psychologists to extend the theoretical bases for human-centred design. The input to design from narrow human-science specialists was essentially descriptive: this is how people are, design for that, and your design will fit its human context.
In the 1990s, the dotcom boom allowed human-centred design advocates to beat up visual designers as well as engineering designers. While the latter focused on technical opportunities with no thought for human activities and capabilities, the former focused on eye candy with no thought for interaction or navigation. Both groups produced bad designs because they didn't understand people, or take them into account when designing.
The 2000s witnessed an interesting cross-over. Human-centred philosophies spread out from Interaction Design, leveraging earlier human factors traditions in product design and interior design. However, Interaction Design, which had experienced the most intense focus on user-centred design practices, rediscovered life beyond the user. A human-centred focus has been balanced by foci on creative design practices, on sustainable, inclusive and responsible design, and on the benefits and the harms experienced by stakeholders beyond immediate users of designs. So, while some areas of design were playing catch up on the human-centred front (even Engineering Design!), critical researchers and practitioners within Interaction Design rendezvoused with those in sustainable/responsible design to develop a critique of narrowly conceived user- and human-centred design philosophies.
In Interaction Design, these developments are often referred to as Third Wave HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Overall, these developments are characterised by a move away from humanity being little more than cognitive psychology or the ethnomethodology of human activities. As design foci have expanded beyond these two anthills of human science, Third Wave HCI has found itself rediscovering concerns that established design disciplines have considered for millenia.
As someone whose interest in REAL design has increased over the last six years, and who has spent his first year in a Design department with a 150+ year tradition of Applied Arts and much more, there is a risible irony in the 'discoveries' of Third Wave HCI (of which I have been a hopefully worthy part), since they relate to design perspectives that were always present in the applied arts and engineering design practices that user-centred zealots initially demonised.
The idea that Fashion, Visual, Interior or Transport Design must embrace human science inputs and evaluation practices to enable human-centred design is grossly misinformed. All of these craft disciplines span back into pre-history and have profoundly human practices, both in drawing on the humanity of designers, and in deep understandings of human needs, wants, aspirations, dreams, experiences and the creative responses to these embodied in millenia of material culture.
All design is human-centred. It is practised by humans for humans, albeit with different degrees of success. What differs is the way in which designers and design practices construct users, consumers, clients and other stakeholders. As such, it is close to meaningless to state that design is human-centred. If design is not centred on people, then what is it centred on? The answer here is often the creative or technical object, an artefact-centred characterisation of design that is just a vehicle for demonising designers who do not apply disciplinary knowledge or evaluation methods from the human sciences.
Dividing the design world into the truly human-centred and the negligently artefact-centred is a pointless waste of time that quickly degenerates into a ping pong game of ungrounded ignorant accusations and weary corrections. The reality of design practices is that they have multiple foci: some have a few, others have several. As extra foci are added, design becomes more complicated and requires increasingly sophisticated management of ever larger multi-discipinary teams. While design foci are kept simple, masterly design practices remain within reach of the solo designer-maker.
My interest in Design Situations stems from an interest in the variety of design settings and my need to understand and respect different settings without prejudice. No doubt some design settings are better than others for specific design needs and contexts, but the dynamics of each extend far beyond whether design practices are human-centred or not.
I am currently developing a framework (or Non-Philosophy in the style of François Laruelle) that can identify and explain differences in design settings on the basis of the types of design choices that are explictly made, and the work that is required from design and evaluation approaches in these settings. I have explored the latter through meta-principles for designing (committedness, receptiveness, expressivity, credibility, inclusiveness, improvability). For the former, I began with John Heskett's account of the determinants of design outcomes (choices about artefacts, purposes, beneficiaries and evaluations), but I am currently expanding beyond these four types of design choice to cover simpler design situations in Engineering Design and millenia old Applied Arts practices.
I'll be using this blog to provide updates on the development of my Non-Philosophy of Design, with the hope that this will trigger discussions of the adequacy and attractiveness of the evolving conceptual framework. My forthcoming posts will explore design choice types and how meta-principles interact with these in design work to create a wide range of requirements for design and evaluation approaches.
Advocacy and demonisation appear to go hand in hand. Advocates draw attention to the dire state of the world, which fails to live up to their ideals, by pointing the finger at blame at those responsible. A zero sum game can operate whereby WE make ourselves better by showing how bad THEY are.
In the 1980s, software developers took a beating from self-appointed user-centred design specialists, who were rarely designers or developers themselves, and often knew very little about people either. Users were model information processors with mechanical behaviours for perception, cognition and motor skills. Humanity was reduced to a mirror image of the input-processing-output model of the digital computer. Emotion, meaning, values, choice, motivation and other defining facets of what it is to be human were rarely addressed. Social factors were given more attention in the 1990s as sociologists joined cognitive psychologists to extend the theoretical bases for human-centred design. The input to design from narrow human-science specialists was essentially descriptive: this is how people are, design for that, and your design will fit its human context.
In the 1990s, the dotcom boom allowed human-centred design advocates to beat up visual designers as well as engineering designers. While the latter focused on technical opportunities with no thought for human activities and capabilities, the former focused on eye candy with no thought for interaction or navigation. Both groups produced bad designs because they didn't understand people, or take them into account when designing.
The 2000s witnessed an interesting cross-over. Human-centred philosophies spread out from Interaction Design, leveraging earlier human factors traditions in product design and interior design. However, Interaction Design, which had experienced the most intense focus on user-centred design practices, rediscovered life beyond the user. A human-centred focus has been balanced by foci on creative design practices, on sustainable, inclusive and responsible design, and on the benefits and the harms experienced by stakeholders beyond immediate users of designs. So, while some areas of design were playing catch up on the human-centred front (even Engineering Design!), critical researchers and practitioners within Interaction Design rendezvoused with those in sustainable/responsible design to develop a critique of narrowly conceived user- and human-centred design philosophies.
In Interaction Design, these developments are often referred to as Third Wave HCI (Human-Computer Interaction). Overall, these developments are characterised by a move away from humanity being little more than cognitive psychology or the ethnomethodology of human activities. As design foci have expanded beyond these two anthills of human science, Third Wave HCI has found itself rediscovering concerns that established design disciplines have considered for millenia.
As someone whose interest in REAL design has increased over the last six years, and who has spent his first year in a Design department with a 150+ year tradition of Applied Arts and much more, there is a risible irony in the 'discoveries' of Third Wave HCI (of which I have been a hopefully worthy part), since they relate to design perspectives that were always present in the applied arts and engineering design practices that user-centred zealots initially demonised.
The idea that Fashion, Visual, Interior or Transport Design must embrace human science inputs and evaluation practices to enable human-centred design is grossly misinformed. All of these craft disciplines span back into pre-history and have profoundly human practices, both in drawing on the humanity of designers, and in deep understandings of human needs, wants, aspirations, dreams, experiences and the creative responses to these embodied in millenia of material culture.
All design is human-centred. It is practised by humans for humans, albeit with different degrees of success. What differs is the way in which designers and design practices construct users, consumers, clients and other stakeholders. As such, it is close to meaningless to state that design is human-centred. If design is not centred on people, then what is it centred on? The answer here is often the creative or technical object, an artefact-centred characterisation of design that is just a vehicle for demonising designers who do not apply disciplinary knowledge or evaluation methods from the human sciences.
Dividing the design world into the truly human-centred and the negligently artefact-centred is a pointless waste of time that quickly degenerates into a ping pong game of ungrounded ignorant accusations and weary corrections. The reality of design practices is that they have multiple foci: some have a few, others have several. As extra foci are added, design becomes more complicated and requires increasingly sophisticated management of ever larger multi-discipinary teams. While design foci are kept simple, masterly design practices remain within reach of the solo designer-maker.
My interest in Design Situations stems from an interest in the variety of design settings and my need to understand and respect different settings without prejudice. No doubt some design settings are better than others for specific design needs and contexts, but the dynamics of each extend far beyond whether design practices are human-centred or not.
I am currently developing a framework (or Non-Philosophy in the style of François Laruelle) that can identify and explain differences in design settings on the basis of the types of design choices that are explictly made, and the work that is required from design and evaluation approaches in these settings. I have explored the latter through meta-principles for designing (committedness, receptiveness, expressivity, credibility, inclusiveness, improvability). For the former, I began with John Heskett's account of the determinants of design outcomes (choices about artefacts, purposes, beneficiaries and evaluations), but I am currently expanding beyond these four types of design choice to cover simpler design situations in Engineering Design and millenia old Applied Arts practices.
I'll be using this blog to provide updates on the development of my Non-Philosophy of Design, with the hope that this will trigger discussions of the adequacy and attractiveness of the evolving conceptual framework. My forthcoming posts will explore design choice types and how meta-principles interact with these in design work to create a wide range of requirements for design and evaluation approaches.
Monday, 16 August 2010
Abstract Design Situations - Design isn't a Shape and it can't have a Centre
Willy the web designer decides to place the main navigation menu on the left side of a web page. He decides on the names of the navigation links and their order. He next decides to test out this menu design with a range of colleagues spanning a range of job roles. He prints out a wireframe and ask colleagues about their expectations about each link: what would selecting this link do?
Willy has made several choices here, but are they the same type of choice, or is there something that distinguishes choices about a web page menu from choice about its evaluation? There do appear to be two types of distinct choice here: one concerns choices about a design, the other concerns choices about its evaluation. The former choices are made within a craft space defined by the possible layout and content of a web page. The latter choices are made within an investigative human space defined by a range of evaluation practices, scoped out in part by choices of evaluation tasks, participants and materials (i.e., paper). We can thus regard choices about designed artefacts and choices about design evaluations as distinct. There is no overlap between the craft space of web page layout and context, on the one hand, and the investigative space of evaluation study design on the other.
Even though the above is most probably blindingly obvious, it draws attention to different types of design choice. Many people may tend to think of design choices as only relating to designed artefacts, when in fact they relate to a wide range of design activities, such as evaluation.
Willy chose to use an opportunity sample for hallway testing. One of the participants is an accessibility expert. She immediately points out that the menu contains many links, which could cause difficulties for visually impaired site visitors who use a screen reader. Willy asks her to read the menu, which is for a van hire web site. He argues that few visually impaired users would be using a van hire website, and that the broad shallow navigation structure enabled by a large top level menu would favour a range of site visitors, especially regular users who would appreciate short click paths. Here (rightly or wrongly), Willy has made a further type of design choice, in this case, a choice of beneficiaries. He has decided to give limited consideration to the needs of visually impaired users, preferring to optimise the site for sighted regular customers.
Another participant is a security guard, who was happy to spend time discussing van hire web-sites at great length. He told the story of a friend who had great difficulty finding the depot to pick up a van from. He was delayed and had to rush to complete his pick up and delivery and return the van to the depot. The van was too short for his load, and he had to tie the rear doors together with his trouser belt. Willy realised how stressfull this must have been, which got him thinking about the capabilities of the web site. If he had good directions for getting to each depot, and clear indications of the loads that each type of van could carry, then this should avoid the poor experience of the security guard's friend. We could regard these choices as ones about the designed artefact, and indeed they are, but they are very different to the location, order and content of a navigation menu. Willy has begun to reflect on the purpose of the web-site: is the purpose simply to provide features for hiring a van, or should it do all it can to ensure a comfortable driver experience from getting to the depot to returning the van?
There are pros and cons of treating design purpose as a distinct type of design choice from choices about artefact features. I feel strongly that it is a distinct type of choice, as it can be made without reference to any details at all of web site features. However, even if it is not, we can see that there are different types of design choice.
I have developed the concept of Abstract Design Situations (ADS) to move beyond normative one-size-fits-all constructions of design, e.g., user-centred, value-sensitive, human-centred, universal, or sustainable. Such positions on design tend to be formulted for specific craft practices, e.g., interaction design, product design, service design. For example, fashion is clearly human-centred, but so obviously so that it adds no value at all to parade or advocate its human-centredness.
The overuse of 'centred' is unfortunate because design isn't a shape and it can't have a centre. Design is a co-ordinated set of human activities, and far from being centred on anything, it is more like plate spinning. As design situations become more complicated, design teams have to keep more plates spinning. Choosing a centre and standing there is a guaranteed way to stand and watch most of the plates fall and break. Design doesn't need a centre. Instead it needs the agility to shift focus without losing the connections between ever shifting foci.
An ADS is abstract because it is distinguished solely by the types of choice that are made within it, and the connections between these choices. ADSs are intended to be a neutral 'post-centric' concept that can span all craft practices (e.g., graphic, furniture, moving image, textiles) and all design value systems. Thus as long as graphic designers and textile designers are committed to making the same types of choice, and the same types of connections between choices, then they are working within equivalent ADSs, even though their craft practices are distinct, as may be their choices of beneficiaries, evaluations or purpose. They are the same ADS when the types of design choices and interconnections are the same.
ADSs focus on choices within design. All design involves choices, whether explicit or tacit. Design Situations differ in the types of choices that are made. Simple design situations may only involve two types of choice. One type here will always relate to the features of the artefact being designed (e.g., consumer electronics, garment, public service, chair). The second type may relate to design principles, a design brief, a specification, or a designer's judgement. In each case, a different design situation results, because different types of choices are being made, e.g., choice of which principles to design to, choice of the scope and content of a brief of specification, or choice of which of their own feelings to respond to as designers.
More complex ADSs arise as further types of design choice are considered, e.g., choices of beneficiaries, choices of evaluation approaches and choices of design purpose. It is relatively straighforward to co-ordinate two types of design choice, but this becomes more challenging when three or more types of design choice are simultaneously under consideration. The ability to successfully and effectively connect between design options and choices becomes a major determinant of design success as design situations increase in complexity. The range of possible connections can become infinite (because we can connect to connections, as well as to choices), and thus only some connections can be given explicit attention within a design setting.
The ADS concept provides partial support for assessing the coverage of design and evaluation approaches, which can support one or more types of design choices in one or more ways. At a very general level, the abstract work that design and evaluation approaches support corresponds to a set of meta-principles. These are 'meta-' in the sense that they are too abstract to guide design in specific contexts. Instead, they scope out the kinds of work supported by design and evaluation approaches, for example, generating options for any type of design choice, providing ways to sketch or otherwise communicate options, or establishing the credibility, feasbility or viability of specific options.
The advantage of a high level of abstraction is that it can support a wide range of analyses while using a relative small set of concepts. Currently, I have identified six meta-principles that scope out the kinds of work that frameworks of design and evaluation approaches need to support. The first is receptiveness, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to generate options. The second is expressivity, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to communicate options to project stakeholders. The third is credibility, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to identifiy valid options and choices. Within a specific Design Situation, these three meta-principles apply to every type of design choice that has been committed to, and every connection type that has been committed to (a connection type connects two or more types of design choices).
A fourth meta-principle of committedness relates to the types of design choice and connections that are explicitly committed to for a design setting. This meta-principle is the easiest to satisfy, since the choices required are very abstract. A design team may commit to make choices about features and purpose, but not about evaluations and beneficiaries. While this may appear negligent to self-proclaimed human-centred interaction designers, who feel obliged to make choices about beneficiaries and evaluations, product design companies such as Alessi and Apple do not depend on extensive market and user research (beneficiaries) or formal investigations on design quality (evaluations). The ADS concept makes it clear that not all design situations will involve the same types of choices. The meta-principle of committedness makes it clear that types of design choices are chosen. We'll ignore any resulting logical quandaries here, and observe that satisfaction of all other meta-principles is constrained out by committedness. Receptiveness, expressivity and credibility must all be focused on specific types of design choice and the connections between them.
ADSs thus result from strategic design choices arising from committedness. Two further meta-principles relate to the inclusiveness and improvability of a proposed design. The former is specifically focused on choices of beneficiaries and connections to these choices. The latter is dependent on choices of evaluations and the ability to understand and respond to evaluation outcomes.
This is all very complex, and very abstract too. Its value lies in the support it can provide (trust me!) for understanding, assessing and improving design settings on the basis of the six meta-principles and the types of design choice under consideration. For the latter, I currently consider only four types of design choices: artefacts, purpose, beneficiaries and evaluations. As a result, the scope and effectiveness of a design setting can be audited with recourse to only ten generic concepts (four choice types, six meta-principles). Similarly, frameworks of design and evaluation approaches can be audited in terms of the work that they support (e.g., expressivity, inclusiveness) for one or more types of design choices and/or the connections between them.
You can read a range of papers on my evolving ideas on meta-principles and Abstract Design Situations. However, many of these papers are experimental, exploratory, or both, and are thus often dense, abstract or both. The aim of this blog is to take time and make all of the above intelligible and concrete. This may take some time, so don't hold your breath.
I'm also hoping that this blog can become a resource for discussions on Design Situations and Meta-Principles for Designing that can refine, clarify and exemplify a high level framework for thinking about design practices and outcomes. In the meantime, you may find videos of presentations more accessible, two of my 2009 keynote at the Dutch HCI Conference, and one of my talk at Thinking Digital 2010 are available on vimeo. NB - there are two Part 2s for my Dutch keynote, the first one is Part 1! (the one with the slide of the Mac Airs).
Willy has made several choices here, but are they the same type of choice, or is there something that distinguishes choices about a web page menu from choice about its evaluation? There do appear to be two types of distinct choice here: one concerns choices about a design, the other concerns choices about its evaluation. The former choices are made within a craft space defined by the possible layout and content of a web page. The latter choices are made within an investigative human space defined by a range of evaluation practices, scoped out in part by choices of evaluation tasks, participants and materials (i.e., paper). We can thus regard choices about designed artefacts and choices about design evaluations as distinct. There is no overlap between the craft space of web page layout and context, on the one hand, and the investigative space of evaluation study design on the other.
Even though the above is most probably blindingly obvious, it draws attention to different types of design choice. Many people may tend to think of design choices as only relating to designed artefacts, when in fact they relate to a wide range of design activities, such as evaluation.
Willy chose to use an opportunity sample for hallway testing. One of the participants is an accessibility expert. She immediately points out that the menu contains many links, which could cause difficulties for visually impaired site visitors who use a screen reader. Willy asks her to read the menu, which is for a van hire web site. He argues that few visually impaired users would be using a van hire website, and that the broad shallow navigation structure enabled by a large top level menu would favour a range of site visitors, especially regular users who would appreciate short click paths. Here (rightly or wrongly), Willy has made a further type of design choice, in this case, a choice of beneficiaries. He has decided to give limited consideration to the needs of visually impaired users, preferring to optimise the site for sighted regular customers.
Another participant is a security guard, who was happy to spend time discussing van hire web-sites at great length. He told the story of a friend who had great difficulty finding the depot to pick up a van from. He was delayed and had to rush to complete his pick up and delivery and return the van to the depot. The van was too short for his load, and he had to tie the rear doors together with his trouser belt. Willy realised how stressfull this must have been, which got him thinking about the capabilities of the web site. If he had good directions for getting to each depot, and clear indications of the loads that each type of van could carry, then this should avoid the poor experience of the security guard's friend. We could regard these choices as ones about the designed artefact, and indeed they are, but they are very different to the location, order and content of a navigation menu. Willy has begun to reflect on the purpose of the web-site: is the purpose simply to provide features for hiring a van, or should it do all it can to ensure a comfortable driver experience from getting to the depot to returning the van?
There are pros and cons of treating design purpose as a distinct type of design choice from choices about artefact features. I feel strongly that it is a distinct type of choice, as it can be made without reference to any details at all of web site features. However, even if it is not, we can see that there are different types of design choice.
I have developed the concept of Abstract Design Situations (ADS) to move beyond normative one-size-fits-all constructions of design, e.g., user-centred, value-sensitive, human-centred, universal, or sustainable. Such positions on design tend to be formulted for specific craft practices, e.g., interaction design, product design, service design. For example, fashion is clearly human-centred, but so obviously so that it adds no value at all to parade or advocate its human-centredness.
The overuse of 'centred' is unfortunate because design isn't a shape and it can't have a centre. Design is a co-ordinated set of human activities, and far from being centred on anything, it is more like plate spinning. As design situations become more complicated, design teams have to keep more plates spinning. Choosing a centre and standing there is a guaranteed way to stand and watch most of the plates fall and break. Design doesn't need a centre. Instead it needs the agility to shift focus without losing the connections between ever shifting foci.
An ADS is abstract because it is distinguished solely by the types of choice that are made within it, and the connections between these choices. ADSs are intended to be a neutral 'post-centric' concept that can span all craft practices (e.g., graphic, furniture, moving image, textiles) and all design value systems. Thus as long as graphic designers and textile designers are committed to making the same types of choice, and the same types of connections between choices, then they are working within equivalent ADSs, even though their craft practices are distinct, as may be their choices of beneficiaries, evaluations or purpose. They are the same ADS when the types of design choices and interconnections are the same.
ADSs focus on choices within design. All design involves choices, whether explicit or tacit. Design Situations differ in the types of choices that are made. Simple design situations may only involve two types of choice. One type here will always relate to the features of the artefact being designed (e.g., consumer electronics, garment, public service, chair). The second type may relate to design principles, a design brief, a specification, or a designer's judgement. In each case, a different design situation results, because different types of choices are being made, e.g., choice of which principles to design to, choice of the scope and content of a brief of specification, or choice of which of their own feelings to respond to as designers.
More complex ADSs arise as further types of design choice are considered, e.g., choices of beneficiaries, choices of evaluation approaches and choices of design purpose. It is relatively straighforward to co-ordinate two types of design choice, but this becomes more challenging when three or more types of design choice are simultaneously under consideration. The ability to successfully and effectively connect between design options and choices becomes a major determinant of design success as design situations increase in complexity. The range of possible connections can become infinite (because we can connect to connections, as well as to choices), and thus only some connections can be given explicit attention within a design setting.
The ADS concept provides partial support for assessing the coverage of design and evaluation approaches, which can support one or more types of design choices in one or more ways. At a very general level, the abstract work that design and evaluation approaches support corresponds to a set of meta-principles. These are 'meta-' in the sense that they are too abstract to guide design in specific contexts. Instead, they scope out the kinds of work supported by design and evaluation approaches, for example, generating options for any type of design choice, providing ways to sketch or otherwise communicate options, or establishing the credibility, feasbility or viability of specific options.
The advantage of a high level of abstraction is that it can support a wide range of analyses while using a relative small set of concepts. Currently, I have identified six meta-principles that scope out the kinds of work that frameworks of design and evaluation approaches need to support. The first is receptiveness, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to generate options. The second is expressivity, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to communicate options to project stakeholders. The third is credibility, which relates to the ability of a design or evaluation approach to identifiy valid options and choices. Within a specific Design Situation, these three meta-principles apply to every type of design choice that has been committed to, and every connection type that has been committed to (a connection type connects two or more types of design choices).
A fourth meta-principle of committedness relates to the types of design choice and connections that are explicitly committed to for a design setting. This meta-principle is the easiest to satisfy, since the choices required are very abstract. A design team may commit to make choices about features and purpose, but not about evaluations and beneficiaries. While this may appear negligent to self-proclaimed human-centred interaction designers, who feel obliged to make choices about beneficiaries and evaluations, product design companies such as Alessi and Apple do not depend on extensive market and user research (beneficiaries) or formal investigations on design quality (evaluations). The ADS concept makes it clear that not all design situations will involve the same types of choices. The meta-principle of committedness makes it clear that types of design choices are chosen. We'll ignore any resulting logical quandaries here, and observe that satisfaction of all other meta-principles is constrained out by committedness. Receptiveness, expressivity and credibility must all be focused on specific types of design choice and the connections between them.
ADSs thus result from strategic design choices arising from committedness. Two further meta-principles relate to the inclusiveness and improvability of a proposed design. The former is specifically focused on choices of beneficiaries and connections to these choices. The latter is dependent on choices of evaluations and the ability to understand and respond to evaluation outcomes.
This is all very complex, and very abstract too. Its value lies in the support it can provide (trust me!) for understanding, assessing and improving design settings on the basis of the six meta-principles and the types of design choice under consideration. For the latter, I currently consider only four types of design choices: artefacts, purpose, beneficiaries and evaluations. As a result, the scope and effectiveness of a design setting can be audited with recourse to only ten generic concepts (four choice types, six meta-principles). Similarly, frameworks of design and evaluation approaches can be audited in terms of the work that they support (e.g., expressivity, inclusiveness) for one or more types of design choices and/or the connections between them.
You can read a range of papers on my evolving ideas on meta-principles and Abstract Design Situations. However, many of these papers are experimental, exploratory, or both, and are thus often dense, abstract or both. The aim of this blog is to take time and make all of the above intelligible and concrete. This may take some time, so don't hold your breath.
I'm also hoping that this blog can become a resource for discussions on Design Situations and Meta-Principles for Designing that can refine, clarify and exemplify a high level framework for thinking about design practices and outcomes. In the meantime, you may find videos of presentations more accessible, two of my 2009 keynote at the Dutch HCI Conference, and one of my talk at Thinking Digital 2010 are available on vimeo. NB - there are two Part 2s for my Dutch keynote, the first one is Part 1! (the one with the slide of the Mac Airs).
Usability, User Experience and Accessibility at CHI 2011
David Gilmore (Logitech) and I are subcommittee chairs for CHI 2011 (more information) for usability, user experience and accessibility (U+UX+AX).
I am in-between web-pages at the moment, having moved from Sunderland to Northumbria last year, where the School of Design is preparing new home pages for research staff, so for now, I've written this blog post to let CHI authors know something about me.
My main research interest is innovation and assessment of design and evaluation approaches. I am Scientific Co-ordinator for a 25 country European network of researchers with similar interests (find out more about the TwinTide project). I was the lead for Working Group 2 in the MAUSE project, and co-authored the final report on comparing usability evaluation methods.
I have published on evaluation methods and practice, with a focus on the mix of resources that are provided on the one hand by specific approaches such as Heurstic Evaliation and Usability Testing, and on the other by the project contexts (including the evaluators themselves) where methods are developed and applied. Almost all of this research was in collaboration with Alan Woolrych and/or Darryn Lavery. Two key methodological innovations from this research were the SUPEX method for extracting usability problems from test data, and structured problem report formats. Relevant publications can be found on the ACM Digital Library and via the HCI Bibliography.
My accessibility research has focused on brain-body interfaces for traumatic brain-injury and accessibility of public terminals such as ATMs. All of this research is in collaboration with Eamon Doherty, Paul Gnanayutham or Brendan Cassidy, and can be found via the ACM and hcibib links above.
I have also published extensively on worth- and value-based design approaches, but this work is more relevant to the Design subcommittee. However, my work on user experience frames (Kansei 2009 keynote) is relevant to research within the scope of the U+UX+AX SC.
As SC co-chair with David Gilmore, we will be delegating almost all of the reviewing to our Associate Chairs (ACs), so the brief survey of my own research here is provided to give you a feel for my research interests. However, to form a proper understanding of the focus of the U+UX+AX SC, you should look at AC's web pages, which can be reached via the relevant CHI 2011 web page.
I am in-between web-pages at the moment, having moved from Sunderland to Northumbria last year, where the School of Design is preparing new home pages for research staff, so for now, I've written this blog post to let CHI authors know something about me.
My main research interest is innovation and assessment of design and evaluation approaches. I am Scientific Co-ordinator for a 25 country European network of researchers with similar interests (find out more about the TwinTide project). I was the lead for Working Group 2 in the MAUSE project, and co-authored the final report on comparing usability evaluation methods.
I have published on evaluation methods and practice, with a focus on the mix of resources that are provided on the one hand by specific approaches such as Heurstic Evaliation and Usability Testing, and on the other by the project contexts (including the evaluators themselves) where methods are developed and applied. Almost all of this research was in collaboration with Alan Woolrych and/or Darryn Lavery. Two key methodological innovations from this research were the SUPEX method for extracting usability problems from test data, and structured problem report formats. Relevant publications can be found on the ACM Digital Library and via the HCI Bibliography.
My accessibility research has focused on brain-body interfaces for traumatic brain-injury and accessibility of public terminals such as ATMs. All of this research is in collaboration with Eamon Doherty, Paul Gnanayutham or Brendan Cassidy, and can be found via the ACM and hcibib links above.
I have also published extensively on worth- and value-based design approaches, but this work is more relevant to the Design subcommittee. However, my work on user experience frames (Kansei 2009 keynote) is relevant to research within the scope of the U+UX+AX SC.
As SC co-chair with David Gilmore, we will be delegating almost all of the reviewing to our Associate Chairs (ACs), so the brief survey of my own research here is provided to give you a feel for my research interests. However, to form a proper understanding of the focus of the U+UX+AX SC, you should look at AC's web pages, which can be reached via the relevant CHI 2011 web page.
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