Dear Chuck,
Thanks for this reply. I did not miss the point of your earlier post. I have a different view. As you explain it here, I generally agree. At the same time, I am aware of how many designers and design firms “fail fast” and “learn by doing” at the client’s expense. There are also many designers who fail and never learn. For that matter, many design school projects would fail if they were an attempt at creating a real product, process, or service.
What makes an IDEO or an ARUP what they are is a rich range of experiences that create the expertise for specific practices without losing too much of the client’s money. Of course, IDEO and ARUP charge for that expertise. The people I know who work successfully at this kind of thing earn a great deal of money, and they charge high fees.
I’ve changed the subject header to this reply, as it focuses specifically on the quality and attributes of expertise rather than the issue of evidence-based practice.
I agree with you that it doesn’t always make sense to collect too evidence in advance. One of the best and most successful designers I know personally is now retired, but when I worked with him he had three decades of experience under his belt following successful careers in publishing and in statistics. His experience allowed him to sketch things out while sorting through options rapidly, and his analytical skills meant relatively few mistakes. He had a high enough level of expertise to “fail fast” and “learn by doing.”
Beneficial failure requires expertise and learning capacity.
I once spent a year inside a major graphic design firm. The high-level expertise visible in this firm was sales, followed by a high level of technical expertise in technical design skills. While the senior partners were expert graphic designers, they based their sales pitches on clever but insubstantial research claims. I saw a significant number of failures during my year — including failures that only became visible to the client following the sale. I saw relatively little capacity for learning in the firm. In several cases, I saw design solutions that the firm prepared for one client and failed to sell repurposed with nearly no change for sale to another client. These folks managed to “fail fast,” but they did not “learn by doing.”
I agree with your conclusion: “Success at IDEO or for any other designer involves imagination, experience, and evidence but how well they are contextualized, orchestrated, and synthesized are issues that should be central to this discussion.”
In essence, you are describing expertise and mastery of the kind Nigel Cross (2011) describes in his case studies on expert design practice. The post-graduation career attrition rates among design graduates have held relatively steady for several decades. This suggests that expertise and mastery are not common among designers, and it suggests that design education and design research have not yet managed to provide a strong enough foundation for design practice.
No one in the thread on evidence-based practice argued for a specific, single, systematic approach. There is no such approach. What we need to do is to find ways to contextualise, orchestrate, and synthesise the different aspects of imagination, experience, and evidence. Most designers fail to recognise those instances in which research and evidence can advance their imagination in cases where they lack the appropriate experience and expertise.
Where we may disagree, and where I seem to disagree with Ranjan and Birger, is this: While I agree with the three of you about the nature of expert design practice, I am probably less optimistic than any of you may be about the number of practicing designers that possess the attributes of expert practice.
Birger describes these attributes as the “crown jewels” of design (copied below). This is a good list. It describes expert practice well.
How many expert practitioners do you know who possess the majority of these attributes? What proportion of designers at work today would you describe as expert?
Yours,
Ken
p.s. There really is a Museum of Failed Products (see Miller 2010 and Sherry 2014, below.). Robert McMath founded the museum, and he once estimated that over 80% of all new products fail on launch with another 10% failing within five years (McMath 1998). Other agree (Edwards 1999, Lukas 1998). Mansfield, et al. (1971: 57) determined that of new product ideas that move beyond the proposal stage, only 57% achieve technical objectives. Among those that move beyond proposal stage, 31% enter full-scale marketing and only 12% earn a profit. I have not studied this issue for some time so my references are out of date. Perhaps things have changed for the better. Then again, if you consider the new products and services involved in the dot.com crash, the GFC, and the astonishing failure rate of highly innovative new industry sectors, perhaps the figures are worse. The current owner of the Museum of Failed Products prefers to put a positive spin on what they now title the Newproductworks ® Product Collection. It helps them to sell their expertise, and this may be an equally valid view (see GFK 2015, below).
—
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 | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
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
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References
Cross, Nigel. 2011. Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work. Oxford: Berg.
Edwards, Cliff. 1999. “Many products have gone the way of the Edsel.” Johnson City Press, 23 May 1999, 28, 30.
GFK. 2015. New Product Works Product Collection. URL:
https://www.gfk.com/us/Solutions/product-design-and-optimization/Pages/NPW-New-Product-Works.aspx
Accessed 2015 July 16.
Lukas, Paul. 1998. “The Ghastliest Product Launches.” Fortune, 16 March 1998, 44.
Mansfield, Edwin, J. Rapaport, J. Schnee, S. Wagner and M. Hamburger. 1971. Research and Innovation in Modern Corporations. New York: Norton.
McMath, Robert. 1998. What Were They Thinking? Marketing Lessons I’ve Learned from Over 80,000 New Product Innovations and Idiocies. New York: Times Business.
Miller, Janet. 2010. “Ann Arbor 'product museum' showcases consumer items from around globe - and drives innovation.” Ann Arbor News, November 14, 2010. URL:
http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/newproductworks-helps-companies-innovate-with-a-collection-of-consumer-products-from-around-the-worl/
Accessed 2015 July 16.
Sherry, Carol. 2014. "Conversations in Management: Museum of Failed Products.” The Houston Pilgrim, 2014 August 10. URL:
http://www.thehoustonpilgrim.com/conversations-management-museum-failed-products/
Accessed 2015 July 16.
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Chuck Burnette wrote:
—snip—
Ken, I think you missed the main point I was making (along with Birger and Ranjan). As Hillier previously noted, designers acquire and marshal useful knowledge (presuppose was Hillier’s term) from many sources including their own education and experiences, as well as from information they can acquire. They need help in this, but too much effort can be wasted collecting information before starting to assess and apply it. Too much focus on getting evidence up front can distort and mislead the problem seeking process as much as help inform it. "Fail fast" and “learn by doing”are evidence gathering processes too. Evidence gathering needs a focused context to be of value during design even of complex systems (moon shots). Success at IDEO or for any other designer involves imagination, experience, and evidence but how well they are contextualized, orchestrated, and synthesized are issues that should be central to this discussion.
—snip—
—
Birger Sevaldson wrote:
—snip—
The core notions and the “jewels in the crown” of design are to my mind the following:
• The notion of composition. Composition of space (like in a painting or an object or building) or time (like an interaction, a service, an experience). The composition of a process, a co-design workshop, an organization, a policy etc. Composition is relating and arranging things in a way that goes far beyond sheer assembly. I suggest this to be the most important notion of design.
• The notions of visual thinking, reflexive practice and design thinking
• The notion of creativity. To imagine and envisioning what could be.
• The notion of wholeness or Gestalt. To understand whole systems as figures rather than rigorous models.
• The notion of wholeness across systems or the notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk
• The notion of expression or the poetic dimension of design. Symbols metaphors, analogies, semantics.
• The notion of thrownness (Geworfenheit). Being thrown into a situation where one cannot oversee the consequences of one’s action. Not acting has also its consequences.
• The notion of Fronesis, the experience and intellectual capacity acquired over time, how to judge and react and practice in relation to unique real life situations.
• The notion of the wicked problem
• The notion of dynamics, the moving target. While we plan, things change.
• The notion of adaptive expertise
• The notion of expert intuition (Dreyfus model)
• The notions of ethics, empathy, dialogue, values and politics
—snip—
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