Industrial design is a process of design applied to products that are to be manufactured through techniques of mass production. Its key characteristic is that design is separated from manufacture: the creative act of determining and defining a product's form takes place in advance of the physical act of making a product, which consists purely of repeated, often automated, replication. This distinguishes industrial design from craft-based design, where the form of the product is determined by the product's creator at the time of its creation.
All industrial products are the result of a design process, but the nature of this process can take many forms: it can be conducted by an individual or a large team; it can emphasize intuitive creativity or calculated scientific decision-making; and it can be influenced by factors as varied as materials, production processes, business strategy and prevailing social, commercial or aesthetic attitudes. The role of an industrial designer is to create and execute design solutions for problems of form, function, usability, physical ergonomics, marketing, brand development, and sales.
Explain the different definitions of design and the differences and similarities between design and product development
A Professional Approach to Product Development
Product development is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. In the document title, Design refers to those activities involved in creating the styling, look and feel of the product, deciding on the product's mechanical architecture, selecting materials and processes, and engineering the various components necessary to make the product work. Development refers collectively to the entire process of identifying a market opportunity, creating a product to appeal to the identified market, and finally, testing, modifying and refining the product until it is ready for production. A product can be any item from a book, musical composition, or information service, to an engineered product such as a computer, hair dryer, or washing machine. This document is focused on the process of developing discrete engineered products, rather than works of art or informational products.
The task of developing outstanding new products is difficult, time-consuming, and costly. People who have never been involved in a development effort are astounded by the amount of time and money that goes into a new product. Great products are not simply designed, but instead they evolve over time through countless hours of research, analysis, design studies, engineering and prototyping efforts, and finally, testing, modifying, and re-testing until the design has been perfected.
Few products are developed by a single individual working alone. It is unlikely that one individual will have the necessary skills in marketing, industrial design, mechanical and electronic engineering, manufacturing processes and materials, tool-making, packaging design, graphic art, and project management, just to name the primary areas of expertise. Development is normally done by a project team, and the team leader draws on talent in a variety of disciplines, often from both outside and inside the company. As a general rule, the cost of a development effort is a factor of the number of people involved and the time required to nurture the initial concept into a fully-refined product. Rarely can a production-ready product be developed in less than one year, and some projects can take three to five years to complete.
The impetus for a new product normally comes from a perceived market opportunity or from the development of a new technology. Consequently, new products are broadly categorized as either market-pull products or technology-push products. With a market-pull product, the marketing centre of the company first determines that sales could be increased if a new product were designed to appeal to a particular segment of its customers. Engineering is then asked to determine the technical feasibility of the new product idea. This interaction is reversed with a technology-push product. When a technical breakthrough opens the way for a new product, marketing then attempts to determine the idea's prospects in the marketplace. In many cases, the technology itself may not actually point to a particular product, but instead, to new capabilities and benefits that could be packaged in a variety of ways to create a number of different products. Marketing would have the responsibility of determining how the technology should be packaged to have the greatest appeal to its customers. With either scenario, manufacturing is responsible for estimating the cost of building the prospective new product, and their estimations are used to project a selling price and estimate the potential profit for the company.
The process of developing new products varies between companies, and even between products within the same company. Regardless of organizational differences, a good new product is the result a methodical development effort with well defined product specifications and project goals. A development project for a market-pull product is generally organized along the lines shown in Figure 1.
Concept Development
Good concept development is crucial. During this stage, the needs of the target market are identified, competitive products are reviewed, product specifications are defined, a product concept is selected, an economic analysis is done, and the development project is outlined. This stage provides the foundation for the development effort, and if poorly done can undermine the entire effort. Concept development activities are normally organized according to Figure 2.
Identify Customer Needs: Through interviews with potential purchasers, focus groups, and by observing similar products in use, researchers identify customer needs. The list of needs will include hidden needs, needs that customers may not be aware of or problems they simply accept without question, as well as explicit needs, or needs that will most likely be reported by potential purchasers. Researchers develop the necessary information on which to base the performance, size, weight, service life, and other specifications of the product. Customer needs and product specifications are organized into a hierarchical list with a comparative rating value given to each need and specification.
Establish Target Specifications: Based on customers' needs and reviews of competitive products, the team establishes the target specifications of the prospective new product. While the process of identifying customer needs is entirely a function of marketing, designers and engineers become involved in establishing target specifications. Target specifications are essentially a wish-list tempered by known technical constraints. Later, after designers have generated preliminary products concepts, the target specifications are refined to account for technical, manufacturing and economic realities.
Analyze Competitive Products: An analysis of competitive products is part of the process of establishing target specifications. Other products may exhibit successful design attributes that should be emulated or improved upon in the new product. And by understanding the shortfalls of competitive products, a list of improvements can be developed that will make the new product clearly superior to those of others. In a broader sense, analyzing competitive products can help orient designers and provide a starting point for design efforts. Rather than beginning from scratch and re-inventing the wheel with each new project, traditionally, the evolution of design builds on the successes and failures of prior work.
Generate Product Concepts: Designers and engineers develop a number of product concepts to illustrate what types of products are both technically feasible and would best meets the requirements of the target specifications. Engineers develop preliminary concepts for the architecture of the product, and industrial designers develop renderings to show styling and layout alternatives. After narrowing the selection, non-functional appearance models are built of candidate designs.
Select a Product Concept: Through the process of evaluation and trade-offs between attributes, a final concept is selected. The selection process may be confined to the team and key executives within the company, or customers may be polled for their input. Candidate appearance models are often used for additional market research; to obtain feedback from certain key customers, or as a centre piece of focus groups.
Refine Product Specifications: In this stage, product specifications are refined on the basis of input from the foregoing activities. Final specifications are the result of trade offs made between technical feasibility, expected service life, projected selling price, and the financial limitations of the development project. With a new luggage product, for example, consumers may want a product that is lightweight, inexpensive, attractive, and with the ability to expand to carry varying amounts of luggage. Unfortunately, the mechanism needed for the expandable feature will increase the selling price, add weight to the product, and introduce a mechanism that has the potential for failure. Consequently, the team must choose between a heavier, more costly product, or one that does not have the expandable feature. When product attributes are in conflict, or when the technical challenge or higher selling price of a particular feature outweighs its benefits, the specification may be dropped or modified in favor of other benefits.
Perform Economic Analysis: Throughout the foregoing activities, important economic implications regarding development expenses, manufacturing costs, and selling price have been estimated. A thorough economic analysis of the product and the required development effort is necessary in order to define the remainder of the development project. An economic model of the product and a review of anticipated development expenses in relation to expected benefits is now developed.
Plan the Remaining Development Project: In this final stage of concept development, the team prepares a detailed development plan which includes a list of activities, the necessary resources and expenses, and a development schedule with milestones for tracking progress.
System Level Design
System-level design, or the task of designing the architecture of the product, is the subject of this stage. In prior stages, the team was focused on the core product idea, and the prospective design was largely based on overviews rather than in-depth design and engineering. Once the development plan is approved, marketing may begin to develop ideas for additional product options and add-ons, or perhaps an extended product family. Designers and engineers develop the product architecture in detail, and manufacturing determines which components should be made and which should be purchased, and identifies the necessary suppliers.
The product architecture defines the product in chunks, or the primary functional systems and subsystems, and how these systems are arranged to work as a unit. For example, an auto-mobile is comprised of a body and a chassis with an engine, a transmission, final drive, frame, suspension and braking system. The architecture of an auto mobile design determines the platform layout, whether the vehicle is front-wheel-drive or rear-wheel-drive, the size and location of the engine, transmission and final drive, the overall design of suspension system, and the layout and type of other necessary subsystems such as brakes, wheels, and steering. The architecture may determine the layout of the exhaust system, but it would not provide the detailed engineering needed to determine the diameter and thickness of the exhaust pipe, the detailed design of mufflers, nor the engineering of motor mounts and exhaust hangers needed to isolate vibrations from the passenger compartment.
The architecture of the product, how it is divided into chunks and how the chunks are integrated into the total product, impacts a number of important attributes such as standardization of components, modularity, options for change later on, ease of manufacture, and how the development project is divided into manageable tasks and expenses. If a family of products or upgrades and add-ons are planned, the architecture of the product would determine the commonality of components and the ease with which upgrades and add-ons can be installed. A system or subsystem borrowed from another product within the company's line will economize on development, tooling and manufacturing costs. With outsourced components, the supplier may contribute much of the associated design and engineering.
Detail Design
Detail design, or design-for-manufacture, is the stage wherein the necessary engineering is done for every component of the product. During this phase, each part is identified and engineered. Tolerances, materials, and finishes are defined, and the design is documented with drawings or computer files. Increasingly, manufacturers and developers are turning to three-dimensional solid modeling using programs such as Pro-Engineer. Three-dimensional computer models form the core of today's rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing technologies. Once the database has been developed, prototype components can be rapidly built on computerized machines such as CNC mills, fused deposition modeling devices, or stereo lithography systems.
Testing and Refinement
During the testing and refinement stage, a number of prototypes are built and tested. Even though they are not made from production components, prototypes emulate production products as closely as possible. These alpha prototypes are necessary to determine whether the performance of the product matches the specifications, and to uncover design shortfalls and gain in-the-field experience with the product in use. Later, beta prototypes are built from the first production components received from suppliers.
Production Ramp-up
During production ramp-up, the work force is trained as the first products are being assembled. The comparatively slow product build provides time to work out any remaining problems with supplier components, fabrication, and assembly procedures. The staff and supervisory team is organized, beginning with a core team, and line workers are trained by assembling production units.
Technology-Push Products
The generic development process is used with technology-push products, but with slight modification. With technology-push products, the company acquires or develops a new technology and then looks for appropriate markets in which to apply the technology. Consequently, an extra phase is added at the beginning during which the new technology is matched to an appropriate market opportunity. When the match has been made, the generic development process is carried out as described.
Models and Prototypes
The terms prototype and model are often used interchangeably to mean any full-scale pre-production representation of a design, whether functional or not. I prefer to use the term model to describe a non-functional representation and the term prototype to describe a functional item. Anappearance model is a full-scale, non-functional representation that looks, as closely as possible, identical to the prospective new product. Modeling and prototyping serve a variety of purposes throughout the development effort.
Early on, engineering prototypes may be built of systems and subsystems to bench-test performance and debug the system before proceeding with the design. Appearance models prove out styling and ergonomics. A full-scale mockup of an automobile interior, for example, provides a real-world test of ease of ingress, seating position, access to controls, visibility and appearance. Models and prototypes are necessary because of the limitations of theoretical work and artificial mediums. A product can be designed and put into simulated use on computer, but one doesn't really know how it will work until the item is built and tested in its intended environment. Prototyping and modeling efforts begin virtually at the inception of the project and continue into production ramp-up.
The Role of Industrial Design
According to the definition given by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), industrial design (ID) is the "professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer." An industrial designer combines artistic form with engineering necessities. The ID practitioner blends the human meanings expressed through form, colour, and texture with the mechanical realities of function in a way that broadcasts a coherent and purposeful message to those who experience the product. Good industrial design can create additional product benefits through the selection of materials and the architecture of the design. Industrial designers have extensive training in art, as well as training in basic engineering, manufacturing and fabrication processes, and marketing practices. Dreyfuss (1967) lists five critical goals that industrial designers bring to a team when developing new products:
Utility: The product's human interfaces should be safe, easy to use, and intuitive. Each feature should be shaped so that it communicates its function to the user.
Appearance: Form, line, proportion, and colour are used to integrate the product into a pleasing whole.
Ease of Maintenance: Products must also be designed to communicate how they are to be maintained and repaired.
Low Costs: Form and features have a large impact on tooling and production costs, so they must be considered jointly by the team.
Communication: Product designs should communicate the corporate design philosophy and mission through the visual qualities of the products.
Industrial design is costly and the value per dollar spent is often difficult to quantity. The value becomes obvious, however, when one experiences the results. When the purchaser intuitively understands a product's function, and senses the quality of its construction and the integrity of the company that produced it, these subliminal messages are normally the result of good industrial design.
Industrial designers usually become involved in a development project almost at the outset. Enthusiasm within the development team increases when industrial designers develop an attractive concept early in the project. When members have a real concept to work towards, the effort ceases to be a purely cerebral exercise, and instead, comes alive with personal meaning.
Nature , history , role and importance of design may relate to:
- changing nature of consumer expectations
- design and the role it plays in overall industry development, both locally and overseas
- design as competitive edge for individual organisations
- historical development of design in the industry
- important design influences in the industry
- links between design and legislation (e.g. specific requirements such as emission controls for vehicles, safety features of buildings, solar protection for clothing)
- marketing
- operations
- product development
- production
- changes in work structures
- changing staff demographics
- different relationships with other industries (e.g. information technology)
- different staff requirements
- location changes to accommodate different technologies
- cost structures and resulting work practices
- equipment
- materials
- own roles and responsibilities
- procedures
- skill requirements
- adapting processes for greater efficiency
- developing design ideas based on operational knowledge and experience
- pro-actively making suggestions about new ways of doing things
- providing feedback on design concepts
- attendance at seminars or other professional development opportunities
- conferences
- exhibitions and trade shows
- formal training
- industry associations or organisations
- industry social functions
- master classes
- media (including internet)
- reference manuals
- unions or employer bodies
Explain the impact of current and emerging technologies on design in the industry
these are the current trend arising in the next ten years of sooner
1. Cloud Computing (12 Months or Less)
In 2011, cloud computing was listed in the 12-month-or-less category of the report, primarily because of the way it had become an essential part of collaboration in both schools and the workplace. This year, the placement of cloud computing on the near-term horizon for a second time underscores the fact that the impact of this technology continues to unfold in new and expanding ways.
Language: The cloud-based Brazilian Electroni c Learning Organizerhelps language teachers produce and share digital learning objects and activities for their students. The learning objects are created by the teacher or assembled from a resource repository created by other teachers in the network.
Science: California State University Northridge launched the Computer Supported Collaborative Science initiative to help science teachers in high-need Los Angeles-area schools to engage students in authentic research experiences through the use of cloud-based tools.
Social Studies: Powered by cloud computing, the Global Curriculum Project allows students to participate in a virtual exchange program with school across five different countries. Students select and explore their own topics, including cuisine and ambitions.
2. Mobile Learning (12 Months or Less)
By the end of this year, the mobile market is expected to consist of over 7 billion accounts (equating to about 3.4 billion users, or one in every two people on the planet); mobile traffic on the Internet is expected to surpass desktop traffic; and mobile users will have downloaded 70 billion apps across smartphones and tablets. Educational apps are the second-most downloaded in iTunes of all categories, surpassing both entertainment and business apps in popularity.
Mathematics: Year four students at St. Leonard’s College, a primary school in Australia, are using tablets loaded with math apps and e-textbooks to access information, receive instruction, record measurements, and conduct research.
Music: Students at Institut International de Lancy in Switzerland use their tablets to create music in the school’s first iPad Orchestra. The iPads have provided opportunities for students with little to no training to create their own music with classmates.
Storytelling: Ringwood North Primary School in Australia participated in “The Epic Citadel Challenge,” wherein students and teachers collaborated to write a digital story based on the Epic Citadel environment and turn it into an app accessible via iOS mobile devices.
3. Tablet Computing (12 Months or Less)
It is so easy for students to carry tablets from class to class, using them to seamlessly access textbook and other course material as needed, that schools and universities are rethinking the need for computer labs or even personal laptops. A student’s choice of apps makes it easy to build a personalized learning environment, with all the resources and tools they need on a single device. With their growing number of features, tablets give traction to other educational technologies— from facilitating the real-time data mining needed to support learning analytics to offering a plethora of game-based learning apps.
Art: At Plymouth University in the UK, students working toward their Illustration degree are using iPads with an illustration app called Brushes to produce drawings that can be played back as video. This activity is encouraging reflection and discussion on the drawing process and enabling students to contrast techniques and highlight and correct any bad habits.
Science: Students at Redlands College in Australia are using tablets to collect and share data on indigenous rocks; geology majors at the College of Wooster in Ohio are using them to take and annotate photos of Icelandic terrain; and instructors at Yale University are sharing images from their digital microscopes with students’ iPads through mobile apps so that they can annotate and capture images for future use.
Journalism: Professor Messner at Virginia Commonwealth University secured iPads for his students so they could create multimedia news stories from happenings on campus and in the surrounding community. The students learned the importance of social media in journalism and found the iPad useful for gathering news and sources.
Special Needs: Vanderbilt University graduate students are designing an Android app that enables visually impaired students to learn math. Using haptic technology integrated into new touchscreen devices, the vibrations and audio feedback help students feel and hear shapes and diagrams.
4. MOOCs (12 Months or Less)
A number of respected thought leaders believe that the current MOOC model has deviated significantly from the initial premise outlined by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in 2008, emphasizing lecture over connectivity, but either way, educators across the globe are doing some amazing things with MOOCs. The hope is that they will eventually strike a balance between automating the assessment process while delivering personalized, authentic learning opportunities.
Music: This spring, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Purdue University Department of Music and Arts Technology began offering their first MOOC, “Music for the Listener” that can be converted into credit. The learning environment is being delivered through Course Networking, with full translation features, rich media, and social networking tools.
Physics: An MOOC called “Landmarks in Physics,” pioneered by an MIT graduate and delivered through Udacity, takes students on a virtual tour through Italy, the Netherlands, and England while explaining the basic concepts of physics at the sites of important discoveries in world history.
Writing: Ohio State University has partnered with Coursera to create a course that engages participants as writers, reviewers, and editors in a series of interactive reading, composition, and research activities with assignments designed to help them become more efficient consumers and producers of alphabetic, visual, and multimodal texts.
5. Open Content (2-3 Years)
While open content has been available for a long time, the topic has received increased attention in recent years. The use of open content promotes a skill set that is critical in maintaining currency in any area of study—the ability to find, evaluate, and put new information to use. The same cannot be said for many textbooks, which can be cumbersome, slow to update, and particularly costly for K-12 schools. More educators are tapping into the wealth of content within open repositories and familiarizing themselves with the Creative Commons protocol.
History:
Learn NC is a program developed by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education to make resources and best practices in K-12 freely and widely available. Their digital textbook for eighth grade history contains a collection of primary sources, readings, and multimedia that can be searched and rearranged.
Mathematics: Arizona instructor James Sousa, who has been teaching math for 15 years at both the community college and K-12 levels, developed more than 2,600on video tutorials topics from arithmetic to calculus, all of which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution.
Science: A partnership between Bringham Young University’s David Wiley and the Hewlett Foundation sparked a project in which teachers from 18 districts and four charter schools across Utah pulled together science resources to create free digital textbooks.
6. Learning Analytics (2-3 Years)
While analyzing student data is not a new practice, the field of learning analytics has only recently gained wide support among data scientists and education professionals. In the coming years, as learning analytics platforms become increasingly complex and effective, outcomes of learning analytics will have a significant impact on the evolution and refinement of both K-12 and higher education, especially in the design of personalized and online learning platforms.
Mathematics: Developed by a group of educators, programmers, and data scientists Mathspace is an online program that meets the demands of the NSW syllabus and Australian National Curriculum for students aged seven to ten. The platform monitors how students reason through math problems and provides personalized feedback as well as analytics reports for teachers.
Reading: Kno, an e-textbook company, launched the “Kno Me” tool, which provides students with insights into their study habits and behaviors while using e-textbooks. Students can also better pace themselves by looking at data that shows them how much time they spent working through specific texts, and where they are in relation to their goals.
Writing: The University of North Carolina Greensboro uses the Mobius Social Learning Information Platform to create intensive writing courses which facilitate anonymous, peer-to-peer feedback and grading. When students submit an essay, it is automatically distributed to the rest of their randomly chosen peer group, and an algorithm turns their feedback into statistics and performance reports.
Special Education: Constant Therapy is a mobile platform that leverages data analytics and mobile technology to provide personalized therapy for people with cognitive, language, communication, and learning disorders. With 15 years’ worth of content developed by Boston University, Constant Therapy’s lessons adapt to meet the needs of learners while allowing language educators to monitor their progress via an analytics dashboard.
7. Games and Gamification (2-3 Years)
Game play has traversed the realm of recreation and infiltrated commerce, productivity, and education, proving to be a useful training and motivation tool. Referred to as “Game-Based Learning” in previous NMC Horizon reports, this field of practice has expanded far beyond integrating digital and online games into the curriculum. The updated category title reflects the perspective that while games are effective tools for scaffolding concepts and simulating real world experiences, it should also include the larger canvas of gamer culture and game design.
Architecture: SimArchitect is a simulation game and social connection site for architects developed by IBM Center for Advanced Learning. Players are issued a request for proposal by a fictitious client and must respond, conducting meetings with the client and team and then proposing a solution. IBM created a performance scorecard that evaluates the player’s communication, architectural methods, and more.
History: The Historical Williamsburg Living Narrative project at the University of Florida is an effort to create an interactive fictional game in which the geography, culture, and characters of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia will be brought to life. Functional maps show the early architecture of the buildings, and interactive scenarios with characters like George Washington and Patrick Henry allow students to participate in discussions of the times.
Nursing: The University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing has partnered with the Minnesota Hospital Association and the technology firm, VitalSims, to develop web-based interactive games that engage nursing students with real-life scenarios. With initial versions of the game already completed, health care educators are expecting to launch these digital learning tools later in 2013.
8. 3D Printing (4-5 Years)
While 3D printing is four to five years away from widespread adoption in schools, it is easy to pinpoint the practical applications that will take hold. Geology and anthropology students, for instance, can make and interact with models of fossils and other artifacts, and organic chemistry students can print out models of complex proteins and other molecules through rapid prototyping and production tools. Even more compelling are institutions that are using 3D technology to develop brand new tools.
Archaeology: Harvard University’s Semitic Museum uses 3D printing technology to restore damaged artifacts from its collection. For example, by 3D scanning existing fragments of an Egyptian lion’s legs, researchers can create computer models that will be used to print a scale foam replica of the complete structure, even though it was originally missing its body and head.
Astronomy: In an effort to engage inner-city students in STEM-related fields, Minnesota non-profit STARBASE has created an aerospace-themed curriculum where students plan a mission to Mars. A highlight of the project is the use of 3D printing technology to create a working rocket that students launch on the final day of the program.
Business: In early 2013, Darwin High School in Australia initiated a project
intended to expose students to micro-business concepts through product development and workflow analysis. Using 3D printers, students rapidly prototype ideas, explore product design, and learn how to market their goods.
intended to expose students to micro-business concepts through product development and workflow analysis. Using 3D printers, students rapidly prototype ideas, explore product design, and learn how to market their goods.
Computer Science: Students at Glacier Peak High School in Washington can receive college credit for taking computer-aided design classes featuring the incorporation of 3D printers for rapid prototype development. The courses include modeling and design, tolerance specification, documentation drawing, and assembly modeling.
9. Virtual and Remote Laboratories (4-5 Years)
Virtual and remote laboratories reflect the current trend in K-12 education toward more authentic online education. Though technology is four to five years away from mainstream use in schools, the benefits of implementation are already clear. Virtual and remote labs offer flexibility, as students can run experiments as many times as they like, both in and out of school. Because these labs are designed to allow for easy repetition of experiments, students feel less pressure to execute perfectly the first time. In the controlled environments of these labs, students are safe, even if they make an error.
Chemistry: Dr. David Yaron, Associate Professor Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, developed ChemCollective, a project of the National Science Digital Library, to create flexible interactive learning environments in which high school students can approach chemistry more like practicing scientists.
Marine Biology: In Lysekil, Sweden, high school students use virtual tools to explore the marine environment of Gullmar Fjord on the Swedish west coast, learning in the process how scientific knowledge is created. The students use a virtual ocean acidification laboratory to conduct studies on the acidification of the marine environment.
Mathematics: High School students in North Carolina are using Geometer’s Sketchpad to understand how theorems are developed. The software is accessed through North Carolina State University’s virtual computing lab, a cloud-based learning environment with an interactive online community where teachers share tips on the software used as well as the projects undertaken.
10. Wearable Technology (4-5 Years)
Perhaps the least educationally applicable but most complex technology of the NMC report is wearable technology. Google’s “Project Glass” is one of the most talked-about current examples. One of the most promising potential outcomes of wearable technology in higher education is productivity: tools that could automatically send information via text, e-mail, and social networks on behalf of the user—based on voice commands, gestures, and other indicators— that would help students and educators communicate with one another, keep track of updates, and better organize notifications.
Chemistry: A team from the Centre for Sensor Web Technologies at Dublin City University is building a wearable sensor that detects hazardous gases and immediately alerts the user of these conditions.
Geology: Wearable cameras like Memoto, a tiny GPS-enabled camera that clips to a user’s shirt collar or button and takes two five-megapixel shots per minute, could benefit geologists or archaeologists in the field, capturing hundreds of photographs or data about a user’s surroundings on an offsite dig which can later be accessed via e-mail or social media.
Neuroscience: A new brain-sensing headband called Muse displays a user’s brain activity directly onto their smartphone or tablet, in effect making it possible to control actions with one’s thoughts and to collect data about the brain’s reaction to various stimuli.
| Describe the ethical issues and regulations that impact on the design industry |
| Explain current thinking, attitudes and approaches to key issues about professional design practice |
The notion of design as a "way of thinking" in the sciences can be traced to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial, and in design engineering to Robert McKim's 1973 book Experiences in Visual Thinking. Peter Rowe's 1987 book Design Thinking, which described methods and approaches used by architects and urban planners, was a significant early usage of the term in the design research literature. Rolf Faste expanded on McKim's work at Stanford University in the 1980s and 1990s,teaching "design thinking as a method of creative action."
Design thinking was adapted for business purposes by Faste's Stanford colleague David M. Kelley, who founded IDEO in 1991. Richard Buchanan's 1992 article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" expressed a broader view of design thinking as addressing intractable human concerns through design.
Design thinking is a formal method for practical, creative resolution of problems and creation of solutions, with the intent of an improved future result. In this regard it is a form of solution-based, or solution-focused thinking – starting with a goal (a better future situation) instead of solving a specific problem. By considering both present and future conditions and parameters of the problem, alternative solutions may be explored simultaneously. Nigel Cross asserted that this type of thinking most often happens in the built, or artificial, environment (as in artifacts).
Solution-based thinking
This approach differs from the analytical scientific method, which begins with thoroughly defining all the parameters of the problem in order to create a solution. Design thinking identifies and investigates with both known and ambiguous aspects of the current situation in order to discover hidden parameters and open alternative paths which may lead to the goal. Because design thinking is iterative, intermediate "solutions" are also potential starting points of alternative paths, including redefining of the initial problem.
Bryan Lawson – architects vs. scientists
In 1972 psychologist, architect and design researcher Bryan Lawson conducted an empirical study to investigate the difference between problem-focused solvers and solution-focused solvers. He took two groups of students – final year students in architecture and post-graduate science students – and asked them to create one-layer structures from a set of coloured blocks. The perimeter of the structure had to optimize either the red or the blue colour; however, there were unspecified rules governing the placement and relationship of some of the blocks. Lawson found that:
Nigel Cross concluded that Lawson's studies suggested that scientists problem solve by analysis, while designers problem solve by synthesis. Kelley and Brown argue that design thinking uses both analysis and synthesis.
Analysis and synthesis
The terms analysis and synthesis come from (classical) Greek and mean literally "to loosen up" and "to put together" respectively. In general, analysis is defined as the procedure by which we break down an intellectual or substantial whole into parts or components. Synthesis is defined as the opposite procedure: to combine separate elements or components in order to form a coherent whole. However, analysis and synthesis, as scientific methods, always go hand in hand; they complement one another. Every synthesis is built upon the results of a preceding analysis, and every analysis requires a subsequent synthesis in order to verify and correct its results.
Divergent thinking versus convergent thinking
Design thinking employs divergent thinking as a way to ensure that many possible solutions are explored in the first instance, and then convergent thinking as a way to narrow these down to a final solution. Divergent thinking is the ability to offer different, unique or variant ideas adherent to one theme while convergent thinking is the ability to find the "correct" solution to the given problem. Design thinking encourages divergent thinking to idea many solutions (possible or impossible) and then uses convergent thinking to prefer and realize the best resolution.
Design thinking as a process for problem-solving
Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a process which includes the "building up" of ideas, with few, or no, limits on breadth during a "brainstorming" phase. This helps reduce fear of failure in the participant(s) and encourages input and participation from a wide variety of sources in the ideation phases. The phrase "thinking outside the box" has been coined to describe one goal of the brainstorming phase and is encouraged, since this can aid in the discovery of hidden elements and ambiguities in the situation and discovering potentially faulty assumptions.
One version of the design thinking process has seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn. Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen. The steps aren't linear; can occur simultaneously and be repeated. A simpler expression of the process is Robert McKim's phrase "Express–Test–Cycle". An alternative five-phase description of the process is described by Christoph Meinel and Larry Leifer: (re)defining the problem, need finding and benchmarking, ideating, building, testing. Yet another way to look at it is Shewart's "Plan-Do-Study-Act" PDSA cycle.
Although design is always influenced by individual preferences, the design thinking method shares a common set of traits, mainly: creativity, ambidextrous thinking, teamwork,user-centeredness (empathy), curiosity and optimism.
The path through these process steps is not strictly circular. Meinel and Leifer state: "While the stages are simple enough, the adaptive expertise required to choose the right inflection points and appropriate next stage is a high order intellectual activity that requires practice and is learnable.
Design methods
Design methods is a broad area that focuses on:
- Divergence – Exploring possibilities and constraints of inherited situations by applying critical thinking through qualitative and quantitative research methods to create new understanding (problem space) toward better design solutions
- Transformation – Redefining specifications of design solutions which can lead to better guidelines for traditional and contemporary design activities (architecture, graphic, industrial, information, interaction, et al.) and/or multidisciplinary response
- Convergence – Prototyping possible scenarios for better design solutions that incrementally or significantly improve the originally inherited situation
- Sustainability – Managing the process of exploring, redefining and prototyping of design solutions continually over time
- Articulation - the visual relationship between the parts and the whole.
The role of design methods is to support design work, the aims of which can be varied, though they may include gaining key insights or unique essential truths resulting in more holistic solutions in order to achieve better experiences for users with products, services, environments and systems they rely upon. Insight, in this case, is clear and deep investigation of a situation through design methods, thereby grasping the inner nature of things intuitively.
Background
From 1958 to 1963 Horst Rittel was a pioneer in articulating the relationship between science and design, specifically the limitations of design processes based on the 19th century rational view of science, in his courses at Ulm School of Design in Germany (Hochschule für Gestaltung - HfG Ulm: 1953–1968). Rittel proposed principles for dealing with these limitations through his seminal HfG design methods courses:cybernetics, operational analysis and communication theory. In 1963 he was recruited to Berkeley to teach design methods courses and helped found the Design Methods Group (DMG) and the DMG Journal.
Social, political and economic developments of the late 19th and first half of the 20th century put into motion modern benefits and constraints for living and working. Industrial and technological breakthroughs associated with this period created social and economic complexities for people and their environment. Disciplines such as architecture, urban planning, engineering and product development began to tackle new types of problem-solving past traditional artifact making. More informed and methodical approaches to designing were required.
Design methods in England originally drew from a 1962 conference called "The Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications." This event was organized by John Chris Jones, and Peter Slann who, with conference invitees, were driven by concerns about how their modern industrialized world was being manifested.
Conference participants countered the craftsman model of design which was rooted in turning raw materials through tried and true craft-based knowledge into finished products. They believed that a single craft-based designer producing design solutions was not compatible with addressing the evolving complexity of post-industrial societies. They stressed that designers needed to work in cross-disciplinary teams where each participant brings his/her specific body of skills, language and experiences to defining and solving problems in whatever context.
The key benefit was to find a method that suits a particular design situation. Christopher Alexander went on to write his seminal books Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building.
Where process meets method
When process and method are discussed, they tend to be used interchangeably. However, while they are two sides to the same coin, they are different. Process (lat. processes–movement) is a naturally occurring or designed sequence of operations or events over time which produce desired outcomes. Process contains a series of actions, events, mechanisms, or steps, which contain methods. Method is a way of doing something, especially a systematic way through an orderly arrangement of specific techniques. Each method has a process.
From a pragmatic standpoint, design methods is concerned with the “how” and defining “when” things happen, and in what desired order. Design Methods is challenging to implement since there are not enough agreed-upon tools, techniques and language for consistent knowledge transfer. While there are many conceptual models and frameworks, there needs to be more granularity of tools and techniques. There are also many variables that affect outcomes since logic and intuition interplay with one another. Two people can therefore use the same method and arrive at different outcomes.
Expansion of design methods
Different groups took John Chris Jones's book Design Methods, with its alternative message of using design as a framework for exploration and improvement, in different directions.
Emergence of design research and design studies
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, graduates of the Ulm School of Design in Germany (Hochschule für Gestaltung - HfG Ulm: 1953–1968). began to spread Horst Rittel's approach of design methodology across Europe and the United States in context of their professional work and teaching what became known as the 'Ulm Model'.
Likewise, after the 1962 conference in England, many of the participants began to publish and to define an area of research that focused on design. Three "camps" seemed to emerge to integrate the initial work in Design Methods:
- Behaviorism interpreted Design Methods as a way to describe human behaviour in relation to the built environment. Its clinical approach tended to rely on human behavior processes (taxonomic activities).
- Reductivism broke Design Methods down into small constituent parts. This scientific approach tended to rely on rationalism and objectified processes such asepistemological activities.
- Phenomenology approached design methods from an experiential approach (human experience and perception.)
The Design Research Society was founded in 1967 with many participants from the Conference on Design Methods in 1962. The purpose of the Society is to promote "the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields" and is an interdisciplinary group with many professions represented, but all bound by the conviction of the benefits of design research.
The Environmental Design and Research Association is one of the best-known entities that strive to integrate designers and social science professionals for better built environments. EDRA was founded by Henry Sanoff in 1969. Both John Chris Jones and Christopher Alexander interacted with EDRA and other camps; both seemed at a certain point to reject their interpretations. Jones and Christopher also questioned their original thesis about design methods.
An interesting shift that affected design methods and design studies was the 1968 lecture from Herbert A. Simon, the Nobel laureate, who presented "The Sciences of the Artificial." He proposed using scientific methods to explore the world of man-made things (hence artificial). He discussed the role of analysis (observation) and synthesis (making) as a process of creating man-made responses to the world he/she interacted with. Important to Simon's contribution were his notions of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing." Simon's concept had a profound impact on the discourse in both design methods, and the newly emerging design studies communities in two ways. It provided an entry of using scientific ideas to overlay on design, and it also created an internal debate whether design could/should be expressed and practiced as a type of science with the reduction of emphasis on intuition.
Nigel Cross has been prolific in articulating the issues of design methods and design research. The discussion of the ongoing debate of what is design research and design science was, and continues to be articulated by Cross. His thesis is that design is not a science, but is an area that is searching for "intellectual independence." He views the original design methods discussions of the 1960s as a way to integrate objective and rational methods in practicing design. Scientific method was borrowed as one framework, and the term "design science" was coined in 1966 at the Second Conference on the Design Method focusing on a systematic approach to practicing design. Cross defined the "science of design" as a way to create a body of work to improve the understanding of design methods—and more importantly that design methods does not need to be a binary choice between science and art.
Nigan Bayazit, professor at the Istanbul Technical University, published an overview of the history of design methods. She stated that "Design methods people were looking at rational methods of incorporating scientific techniques and knowledge into the design process to make rational decisions to adapt to the prevailing values, something that was not always easy to achieve." The following is what design research is concerned with:
- The physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how their users perceive and employ them
- Construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity, and how non-designers participate in the process
- What is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means
- Embodiment of configurations
- Systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity
Significance of emergence of design research and design studies
Both research and design studies made design more visible and accountable. Research was recognized at the outset by design methods as a type of leg-work to
The eventual debate about design methods and whether design is an art or science is not a new. Partisans on both sides of the issue have framed it as a binary choice of something to lose or gain. However, this false argument was viewed by John Chris Jones, who recognized the "logical, systematic, behavioristic, operational aspects of new methods" (which could be viewed as science) might be seen as "anti-life" which treat people as "instruments." On the other side, another group may define design with "animism, vitalism and naturalism" as a language (which could be viewed as art). Jones sought to bring both together and act as checks-and-balances for design methods.
Jones viewed methodology as "mere symbolic contrivances" and "would lose its value" if it did not reflect "the personal issues which matter most to the people who will take decisions."
Professional design practice
Conversations about design methods and a more systematic approach to design was not isolated to Europe. America was also a magnet for practicing design professionals to codify their successes in design practice and backing into larger theories about the dynamics of design methods.
American designers were much more pragmatic at articulating design methods and creating an underlying language about the practice of industrial and graphic design. They were tied to economic systems that supported design practice and therefore focused on the way design could be managed as an extension of business, rather than the European approach to design methods based on transforming engineering by design.
Industrial design was the first area that made inroads into systematizing knowledge through practice. Raymond Loewy was instrumental at elevating the visibility of industrial design through cult of personality (appearing three times on front cover of Time Magazine). Henry Dreyfuss had a profound impact on the practice of industrial design by developing a systematic process used to shape environments, transportation, products and packaging. His focus on the needs of the average consumer was most celebrated in his book Designing for People, an extensive exploration of ergonomics.
Jay Doblin one of America's foremost industrial designers, worked for Raymond Loewy and was later an employee of Unimark International, the world’s largest global design firm during the 1960s with offices in seven countries. In 1972, Doblin formed Chicago-based Jay Doblin & Associates, a firm which managed innovative programs for Xerox Corporation and General Electric.[9] Doblin was prolific at developing a language to describe design. One of his best articles was "A Short, Grandiose Theory of Design", published in the 1987 Society of Typographic Arts Design Journal. In seven pages, Doblin presents a straightforward and persuasive argument for design as a systematic process. He described the emerging landscape of systematic design:
- For large complex projects, it "would be irresponsible to attempt them without analytical methods" and rallied against an "adolescent reliance on overly intuitive practices."
- He separated "direct design" in which a craftsperson works on the artifact to "indirect design" in which a design first creates a representation of the artifact, separating design from production in more complex situations.
Doblin and others were responding to the increased specialization of design and the complexity of managing large design programs for corporations. It was a natural process to begin to discuss how design should move upstream to be involved with the specifications of problems, not only in the traditional mode of production which design had been practiced. Particularly since 2000, design methods and its intersection with business development have been visibly championed by numerous consultancies within design industry.
The continuity of approaches to design projects by such representative firms is the generation of inputs incited by the human condition in varied contexts. These approaches utilize a sustainable methods-based mode of making that takes into account critical analytic and synthetic skills toward more informed and inspired specifications grounded in:
- Direct investigation of human circumstances to draw out impressions
- Engagement by client-side and end-user participants in design process
- Open articulation by practitioners of multiple disciplines facilitated by design
Significance of role of professional design practice
Practitioners approached design methods from a different angle than John Christopher Jones and the group of engineers and designers who convened in 1962. Many practitioners, through actual design opportunities, began to confront the complexities of the market and clients. They began to address issues of specifications, users, distribution and innovation. Since there were no established methods, each practitioner began to develop frameworks and languages to describe a new way to design. Like any market-based model, there were many competing ideas about these new methods and their basis. Many of these designers may have been aware of the design methods movement, but many were not. Yet all their ideas were aligned to many of the basic tenets of the 1962 conference which advocated a more rigorous way of doing design. However, the social perspectives and criticisms of mediocre products of 1962 participants may not have been shared or agreed with.
Design management
An area of study and application that either raises the awareness of business professionals how to integrate and manage design, and/or the integration of business issues, systems and methods and managing their interdependency with design activities and outcomes that support the economic systems which benefit from a designers vision, skills and deliverables.
While this relationship has been identified, it has not been universally recognized or accepted by diverse design communities. Designers have strong connection not only to clients but also to end users who consume products and services. One of the strongest early advocates was Peter Gorb, former Director of London Business School's Centre for Design Management.
Design as a function within corporations, or as independent consultancies, have not always collaborated well with business. Clients and the market have traditionally viewed design as an expressive and production function, rather than as a strategic asset. Designers have focused their skills and knowledge in creating designed artifacts, and indirectly addressed larger issues within this creative process. They have been uneasy about articulating their value to business in terms that business executives could understand.
There were moves to bridge this gap. In England, the British Design Council (now called the Design Council) was founded in 1944 by the British wartime government as the Council of Industrial Design with the objective "to promote by all practicable means the improvement of design in the products of British industry". The Design Management Institute is an international nonprofit organization that seeks to heighten awareness of design as an essential part of business strategy. Founded in 1975, DMI has become the leading resource and international authority on design management.
Alternative view
Some designers and design historians have challenged, even rejected, the idea that design supports the goals and objectives of the economic systems they find themselves in.Victor Papanek (1925–1998) was a trail blazer in the definition of sustainable design and addressing social issues through design. His book Design for the Real World in the late 1960s articulated a world for design to use less resources and address local social issues for ecologically sound design to serve the poor, the disabled and the elderly. The disciplines of sustainable design and universal design are echoed here.
Professor of design history at the University of Illinois at Chicago Victor Margolin addressed the inherent role of design communities supporting an economic system, which he called the "expansion model", where "the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. They attract capital which is either recycled back into more production or becomes part of the accumulation of private or corporate wealth." Margolin describes a "sustainable model" as having "ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and will possibly collapse."
Significance of design management
Design methods initially was focused on how design could be integrated into engineering and grew to recognize the multidisciplinary nature of solving contemporary complexity in all its forms. John Chris Jones recognized the role of business, as one stakeholder among many, but did not view design methods as a business management tool. Design management focuses on how to define design as a business function and provides a language and method of how to effectively manage it.
Proliferation of information technologies
Internet businesses realized early that technologists alone were not going to create "killer apps" that would win customers. Companies such as Scient, Viant, Sapient, RazorFish and USWeb/CKS began to hire a wide variety of professionals to collaborate in three broad groups:
- Business consulting to address business models and front-end research of markets;
- Software designers that knit together legacy systems with internet-based technologies; and
- Brand/creative professionals that would create a seamless customer experience.
Customer relationship management (CRM), Supply Chain, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) professionals belonged to any of these groups. Together they had to rapidly accelerate time-to-value and learn how to do things that had little precedent. This context was an amplification of Donald Schon's theories of unstable knowledge bases developing new ideas by a phenomenological approach of direct application and experience.
Strategy began to be redefined from an MBA-focused domain into an area both technology and brand/creative professionals moved upstream and engaged as up-front strategy. Other professionals were incorporated from cognitive science, ethnography, and library science (to name a few). Inherent in these groups were rigorous research-based methods which were overlaid onto business, technology and brand/creative. User-centric approaches were developed resulting in the creation of whole workflow systems to accommodate diversity in skills and tools. These diverse groups brought markedly different languages and models native to their disciplines which posed significant integration-challenges, including hours, in determining how to work together.
Clement Mok, founder of Studio Archetype (acquired by Sapient), recognized this trend and began to articulate the new professional design situation being agitated by new information technologies marked by the Internet and advancements in computing media. He described a multi-media landscape that was converging into an integrated digital space. Adjacent to this was the redefinition of skills and roles that would create, build, sustain, and innovate this dynamic environment. He called for graphic/visual designers to broaden their perspective, beyond traditional artifacts and methods, and immerse themselves in a collaborative workspace. In his book, Designing Business, Mok emphasized redefinition of design practice dramatically affected by technological change: "Designers are in a position to promulgate new values and to define and quantify the effects of those values, and over the next ten years, their optimum role will be to design 'understanding.' The age we're living now is an incredible time because of the extent to which designers, business people, engineers, and technologists can redefine their roles."
Significance of proliferation of information technologies
John Chris Jones and many original participants knew that computer technology would transform and automate human actions. They were 30 years ahead of the expansion of the Internet and explained the basic premise of its value by stating:
- "The ideal picture of a man-machine symbosis is . . .one in which machine and human intelligences are linked into a quickly responding network that permits rapid access to all published information . . .The nett (sic) effect is expected to be one of mutual stimulation in which open minded people and progammes nudge each other into unpredictable, novel but realistic explorations . . .".
Current state of design methods
There is no one way to practice design methods. John Chris Jones recognized this by stating:
- "Methodology should not be a fixed track to a fixed destination, but a conversation about everything that could be made to happen. The language of the conversation must bridge the logical gap between past and future, but in doing so it should not limit the variety of possible futures that are discussed nor should it force the choice of a future that is unfree."
The focus of most post-1962 enhancements to design methods has been on developing a series of relevant, sound, humanistic problem-solving procedures and techniques to reduce avoidable errors and oversights that can adversely affect design solutions. The key benefit is to find a method that suits a particular design situation.
The benefits of their original work has been abstracted many times over; but in today's design environment, several of their main ideas have been integrated into contemporary design methods:
- Emphasis on the user
- Use of basic research methods to validate convictions with fact
- Use of brainstorming and other related means to break mental patterns and precedent
- Increased collaborative nature of design with other disciplines
A large challenge for design as a discipline, its use of methods and an endeavor to create shared values, is its inherent synthetic nature as an area of study and action. This allows design to be extremely malleable in nature, borrowing ideas and concepts from a wide variety of professions to suit the ends of individual practitioners. It also makes design vulnerable since these very activities make design a discipline unextensible as a shared body of knowledge.
In 1983, Donald Schon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published The Reflective Practitioner.[14] He saw traditional professions with stable knowledge bases, such as law and medicine, becoming unstable due to outdated notions of 'technical-rationality' as the grounding of professional knowledge. Practitioners were able to describe how they 'think on their feet', and how they make use of a standard set of frameworks and techniques. Schon foresaw the increasing instability of traditional knowledge and how to achieve it. This is in line with the original founders of design methods who wanted to break with an unimaginative and static technical society and unify exploration, collaboration and intuition.
Design methods has influenced design practice and design education. It has benefited the design community by helping to create introductions that would never have happened if traditional professions remained stable, which did not necessarily allow collaboration due to gate keeping of areas of knowledge and expertise. Design has been by nature an interloper activity, with individuals that have crossed disciplines to question and innovate.
The challenge is to transform individual experiences, frameworks and perspectives into a shared, understandable, and, most importantly, a transmittable area of knowledge. Victor Margolin states three reasons why this will prove difficult:
- Domain knowledge is a mixture of vocation (discipline) and avocation (interest) creating hybrid definitions that degrade shared knowledge
- Intellectual capital of design and wider scholarly pluralism has diluted focus and shared language which has led to ungovernable laissez-faire values
- Individual explorations of design discourse focuses too much on individual narratives leading to personal point of view rather than a critical mass of shared values
In the end, design methods is a term that is widely used. Though conducive to interpretations, it is a shared belief in an exploratory and rigorous method to solve problems through design, an act which is part and parcel of what designers aim to accomplish in today's complex world.
