Dear All,

When Mark Evans posted his note launching this thread [1, below], I found myself agreeing. I did not think that I had much to say, but Mike Zender’s elegant note [2, below] made me realise just why I agree so strongly.

Good workshops are necessary to the appropriate combination of pragmatic inquiry, iterative development, rich evidence, and sound theory for design in a robust cycle for generative action. This action takes place in the real world of human engagement. While this often functions on the case-by-case basis that Mike describes, these cases are also fundamental to real conceptual progress. This enables us to fill in many minor gaps in what we think, what we know, what we understand, and what we can do, bridging those gaps for effective design activity. It is also the pathway to new insights and significant growth.

Larry Leifer gave a talk once in which he argued that any serious design program requires a workshop where people are within 10 seconds of the tools they need for swift, effective prototyping. That is the key to Stanford’s ME310 program, a program that now functions worldwide through the SUGAR network. Access to appropriate tools — that is, a workshop — is the key to the success of the Design Factory model.  

Miyamoto Musashi ended many passages in his Book of Five Rings with phrases encouraging deep reflection linked with repeated practice. In his book, Musashi moved beyond reflection to a theory that constitutes a way of martial arts practice (bushido) and a way of life. The requirement of practice linked to thought and feeling both is the key to understanding how a practice works to develop activated skills in the practitioner while generating a theory of how things work and why.

Like Mike, I did not intend to write this much. Mark and Mike — thank you. These fine posts require deep thought.

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia

Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 

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[1]

Mark Evans wrote:

—snip—

Providing there’s a sound methodological case for it, I like to get my researchers designing and making things whenever possible and, because of our undergraduate facilities, we’re fortunate to have the resources to enable this. However, two interesting comments on the contribution and demise of design school workshops have been made by leading designers in the last few weeks. 
 
Bemoaning the experience of his son when he was not allowed to make a prototype at college, in the Sunday Times Magazine of 30 November, James Dyson reported that, “It was an industrial design course, where you weren’t allowed to make what you designed! I never understood that: if you have an idea you need to make a version of it to see if it works. That’s why I built 5127 prototypes of my vacuum cleaner – only then was I happy with it”.

There were parallels with this position when Jonathan Ive, speaking at the Design Museum in London on 12 November, was less than happy with the capabilities of design graduates, commenting that, "So many of the designers that we interview don't know how to make stuff, because workshops in design schools are expensive and computers are cheaper. That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one."

Whilst I accept that not all design schools engage in the design of artefacts, many do, all the way from undergraduate to PhD. In fact, evidence in the UK indicates that graduate design capability combined with a hands-on skill set is not only valued by employers but is increasing in demand as manufacturing and associated R&D continues to go through somewhat of a renaissance. Maybe it’s time to start trading-in rooms full of computers for more benches, band-saws and 3D printers?

—snip—

[2]

Mike Zender wrote:

—snip—

I believe a key feature of design is making an object(s) and 'seeing' the result. 

Design does not work on the 'think system' = all in your head. 

The role of making objects and testing them in a world guided by the recent "Design X" manifesto with its embrace of design for larger problems and complex systems is yet to be determined. But here's one thought:

On a current project designing an intervention for maintaining proper O2 levels for pre-term infants and children with breathing problems, I (a designer) am completely incapable/unqualified to design the whole medical system comprised of nurses, doctors, changing shifts, handoffs, rounds, EPIC data entry, alarms, etc. etc.. This is just way beyond my expertise, even my ability to understand at a nuanced level.  But I am ABLE to contribute to this complex problem as part of a team that analyzes/designs a model of the whole system (15 multiple-hour each observations thus far leading to a preliminary flow model) and then identifies specific intervention points where I/we (the design part of the research team) make prototypes and test them to see their impact on the whole system. Simultaneously changing multiple parts of a whole complex system is filled with unpredictability and can hardly be called design if reaching a preferred state is part of the definition. And our preferred state is an outcome: improved maintenance of O2 level in the target (prescribed by the doctor) range. Design often changes more than one variable in prototyping/making objects for testing but in a system (particularly a medical system where a high O2 level causes blindness and a low O2 level causes death) this is dangerous. We will have design sessions that specifically address other possible interventions at other points in the system where our intervention is not active, but we will be quite careful about implementing more than one design change at a time. 

I think (and this is preliminary based only on experience), making objects will still happen when designing whole systems but the objects will be identified to address specific identified problem points in the system that the design object is designed to change and tested one-at-a-time (or using common sense, with very limited and carefully selected other change(s) to the system) to gauge impact. Understand context/system; design system; identify intervention points; design objects for intervention points; test.

To systems people this probably all sounds quite elementary, but it keeps "making things" in a good place I think.

—snip—


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