I HOW ONE SHOULD DESIGN. Form a list of potential Problems - Learn enough about the world to have issues or needs that draw your interest Try to outline problem definitions with initial research - Start with an idea of what is known about those needs and issues. Initiate a list of design solutions to those problems - Come up with as long a list of answers, things to do about that problem/need/issue as you can. Research - Find out all about that idea from other people, sources, perspectives - Consider which answers you hadn’t come up with can be added to that list, and which ones obviously can be dropped off the list Refine Lists - Now divide lists into likely and less likely Problems and Solutions to Refine the ideas about the problem. Iteration - Repeat each prior step, maintaining reflexivity about reasons, drawing in more collaborators and interlocutors, expand your knowledge through research, and bounce all this off that ever expanding list of potential, and an ever shortening list of likely directions for each problem. II KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO START WITH What are Design and Innovation? What is Creativity within Design and Innovation? 1) Stepping out of the expected, in a good way? 2) Coming up with something new, if it is desirable? 3) Creativity comes from Rearranging and seeing what is missing
a. See Systems and Patterns
b. See People and the social world
c. Take lessons where we can get them- Visual Arts/Criticism, Social Sciences, Philosophy, Science, fiction, your friends, newspapers.
All Design/Production/Research should start with two questions: 1) Why are you designing?
a. Who are you to be selecting subject/object of consideration, making choices?
b. Come up with the answer to three questions: What matters to you personally, what matters to the world as you see it, what do other people want/need?
2) What should your design/Innovation be?
a. Your design stems from certain ideas, values and commitments whether you recognize it or not, so what commitments and values would you choose for it to be about?
b. How can you be intentional in your design despite constraints?
c. How can your “intentional” design be responsive to the world in practice as well as in the intention?
III KNOW HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS AND LEARN How do you practice Creativity of design and aim towards innovation? 1) Creativity often comes from knowing about many different things, a creative process is one which steps outside of constraints from expectations and past experience, the simplest way to do this is to move something from one conceptual place to another. 2) To be creative you must learn about many things without losing a focus on the skills and knowledge of expertise in your intended specialty, otherwise you can not get away from the limitations of your position, expectations, experience. 3) There are no stupid questions because the answers will change how you think. Don’t be afraid of giving/saying wrong answers – an answer is a question to those you communicate with, it is your opportunity to get their answer, and check with you. Step away from thinking about creativity as for the arts and remember that creativity is important in science. Pair creativity with the peer review/collaboration and commitment to accuracy, and willingness to posit theories/hypotheses that can be wrong. Learning an answer is wrong is still important learning. You need to know how to answer questions with rigor and care so that you can fulfill your interests and make good designs. 2) Research Skills
a.Have a toolkit: Interviews/ Focus Groups/ Surveys/ Critical Reading/ ready access to references/ Strategic Observation/SWOT/Needs Assessment/ Willingness to talk to people/ open attitude/ cultivated empathy or sensitivity/ Observational Accuity
b.Take three lessons from ethnography: assume strangeness, deny similarity/familiarity, and consider telling details and small things as if they were big.
3) No assumption is correct, and we are never without assumptions, but we can work against this problem:
a.by looking at the edges we gain - Liminal Visibility- Divisions and Aggregation are not “natural” - Venn Diagrams as Heuristics - Boundaries as places of interest
b.Theories, you have them, and they offer lenses to see the world, useful if you know what that lens is good for: Social worlds/implicated actors/Fields/Arenas/Networks
c. Reflexivity and Self examination
d. Prototype/Portrayal/Simulation/Model/Design sketches show you the limits of the ideas at hand by materializing the object and allowing you to look at it away from your whole set of ideas about it.
IV YOU MUST BE ABLE TO SHARE IDEAS/ COLLABORATE/ ENROLL We can only know others or know about others through the processes of communication and Representation We gain by involving others because each one of them has different knowledge, assumptions, expectations, perspectives and the friction as well as consensus that can form in groups is the intelligence of collaboration. DESIGN IS ALWAYS ABOUT MORE THAN ONE PERSON 1) The best process of design is not solitary because no one knows everything 2) The innovative object of design is not only for your own use, therefore many users will have many ideas and conceptions that can be useful. 3) The Designer must be able to engage seriously and critically with many forms of communication. Textual via critical reading, interpersonal for pitches and presentations, material/Visual/Audial/Textual/Multimedia for demonstrations and the design process itself. 4) All Communication involves Argument/Pursuasion in some form to get the participants to understand the same meaning. This is particularly true of new ideas and designs.
a. The ways argument/persuasion is effective is in the forming of an idea about the person(s) communicated with, a story to respond to who they are, and a compelling start and finish for the story. This is essentially the making of Narrative/Story in Rhetoric
b. The problem is you want to be honest, both ethically and practically, because honesty is the only way your responses and feedback will help you continue the process for the better. Always communicate in Suggestion and not Deception.
c. Disciplinary culture /Style /Situation dictates what sort of story, what sort of meanings, what sort of endings will work.
V ITERATIVE PROCESS The process of repetition when intentional and with modification is iteration, iteration is how change happens with care, repetition without change without new perspective is a waste of time, but so is doing something only once with incomplete knowledge and a poor result. Organization and arrangement gives meaning and therefore function and efficacy, each time you look at things after more knowledge they will look different to you, the basic principle is familiar to everyone, you go back to a place later and it seems different though materially it is the same, you read a book you read before and it means something else, you drive over the same road and notice a sign you didn’t the first time because you don’t have to look at directions. Concept and Practice Iteration involves careful points of deciding how to continue, what you are achieving, who can determine success, and how you can see your own progress correctly- this is done through careful and intentional use of Assesment – Metrics - Evaluation Design Processes- are research processes and implementation practices at the same time, each step is learning more and doing at the same time, talking is thinking, building is thinking, thinking is designing, and even once a product/Design is out in the world it provides more information about what you could have done differently, could still do, may include in designs. The need to always remember that time doesn’t stop, the same questions, problems, ideas that led to investment and participation in a design process is still there, it is rare if it is possible to have the product of your design change the world enough to end this cycle. You must decide intentionally when to stop, you must decide intentionally when a new project or problem motivates you to change, you must make decisions with awareness and intention.
Form a list of potential Problems
- Learn enough about the world to have issues or needs that draw your interest
Try to outline problem definitions with initial research
- Start with an idea of what is known about those needs and issues.
Initiate a list of design solutions to those problems
- Come up with as long a list of answers, things to do about that problem/need/issue as you can.
Research
- Find out all about that idea from other people, sources, perspectives
- Consider which answers you hadn’t come up with can be added to that list, and which ones obviously can be dropped off the list
Refine Lists
- Now divide lists into likely and less likely Problems and Solutions to Refine the ideas about the problem.
Iteration
- Repeat each prior step, maintaining reflexivity about reasons, drawing in more collaborators and interlocutors, expand your knowledge through research, and bounce all this off that ever expanding list of potential, and an ever shortening list of likely directions for each problem.
II KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO START WITH
What are Design and Innovation?
What is Creativity within Design and Innovation?
1) Stepping out of the expected, in a good way?
2) Coming up with something new, if it is desirable?
3) Creativity comes from Rearranging and seeing what is missing
All Design/Production/Research should start with two questions:
1) Why are you designing?
- a. Who are you to be selecting subject/object of consideration, making choices?
- b. Come up with the answer to three questions: What matters to you personally, what matters to the world as you see it, what do other people want/need?
2) What should your design/Innovation be?- a. Your design stems from certain ideas, values and commitments whether you recognize it or not, so what commitments and values would you choose for it to be about?
- b. How can you be intentional in your design despite constraints?
- c. How can your “intentional” design be responsive to the world in practice as well as in the intention?
III KNOW HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS AND LEARNHow do you practice Creativity of design and aim towards innovation?
1) Creativity often comes from knowing about many different things, a creative process is one which steps outside of constraints from expectations and past experience, the simplest way to do this is to move something from one conceptual place to another.
2) To be creative you must learn about many things without losing a focus on the skills and knowledge of expertise in your intended specialty, otherwise you can not get away from the limitations of your position, expectations, experience.
3) There are no stupid questions because the answers will change how you think. Don’t be afraid of giving/saying wrong answers
– an answer is a question to those you communicate with, it is your opportunity to get their answer, and check with you. Step away from thinking about creativity as for the arts and remember that creativity is important in science. Pair creativity with the peer review/collaboration and commitment to accuracy, and willingness to posit theories/hypotheses that can be wrong. Learning an answer is wrong is still important learning.
You need to know how to answer questions with rigor and care so that you can fulfill your interests and make good designs.
2) Research Skills
3) No assumption is correct, and we are never without assumptions, but we can work against this problem:
- c. Reflexivity and Self examination
- d. Prototype/Portrayal/Simulation/Model/Design sketches show you the limits of the ideas at hand by materializing the object and allowing you to look at it away from your whole set of ideas about it.
IV YOU MUST BE ABLE TO SHARE IDEAS/ COLLABORATE/ ENROLLWe can only know others or know about others through the processes of communication and Representation
We gain by involving others because each one of them has different knowledge, assumptions, expectations, perspectives and the friction as well as consensus that can form in groups is the intelligence of collaboration.
DESIGN IS ALWAYS ABOUT MORE THAN ONE PERSON
1) The best process of design is not solitary because no one knows everything
2) The innovative object of design is not only for your own use, therefore many users will have many ideas and conceptions that can be useful.
3) The Designer must be able to engage seriously and critically with many forms of communication. Textual via critical reading, interpersonal for pitches and presentations, material/Visual/Audial/Textual/Multimedia for demonstrations and the design process itself.
4) All Communication involves Argument/Pursuasion in some form to get the participants to understand the same meaning. This is particularly true of new ideas and designs.
- a. The ways argument/persuasion is effective is in the forming of an idea about the person(s) communicated with, a story to respond to who they are, and a compelling start and finish for the story. This is essentially the making of Narrative/Story in Rhetoric
- b. The problem is you want to be honest, both ethically and practically, because honesty is the only way your responses and feedback will help you continue the process for the better. Always communicate in Suggestion and not Deception.
- c. Disciplinary culture /Style /Situation dictates what sort of story, what sort of meanings, what sort of endings will work.
V ITERATIVE PROCESSThe process of repetition when intentional and with modification is iteration, iteration is how change happens with care, repetition without change without new perspective is a waste of time, but so is doing something only once with incomplete knowledge and a poor result.
Organization and arrangement gives meaning and therefore function and efficacy, each time you look at things after more knowledge they will look different to you, the basic principle is familiar to everyone, you go back to a place later and it seems different though materially it is the same, you read a book you read before and it means something else, you drive over the same road and notice a sign you didn’t the first time because you don’t have to look at directions.
Concept and Practice Iteration involves careful points of deciding how to continue, what you are achieving, who can determine success, and how you can see your own progress correctly- this is done through careful and intentional use of Assesment – Metrics - Evaluation
Design Processes- are research processes and implementation practices at the same time, each step is learning more and doing at the same time, talking is thinking, building is thinking, thinking is designing, and even once a product/Design is out in the world it provides more information about what you could have done differently, could still do, may include in designs.
The need to always remember that time doesn’t stop, the same questions, problems, ideas that led to investment and participation in a design process is still there, it is rare if it is possible to have the product of your design change the world enough to end this cycle. You must decide intentionally when to stop, you must decide intentionally when a new project or problem motivates you to change, you must make decisions with awareness and intention.