design as an academic discipline

Ontwerptheorie, ontwerpkritiek

Het is al vaak opgemerkt, maar het blijft een ding dat er zo weinig van ontwerptheorie door ontwerpers in de praktijk als relevant ervaren wordt. Een manier om dit voor nieuw werk te voorkomen, kan zijn om iets aan te pakken dat daadwerkelijk als een probleem of open vraag beleefd wordt.

Ik denk dat de vraag wat het betekent om universitair, academisch bezig te zijn als ontwerper hier een aardige kandidaat voor blijft. Hoewel het er wel op lijkt dat best veel mensen hier vrij concrete –eigen– ideeën over hebben. Dus misschien wordt het wel als relevante vraag ervaren, maar niet zozeer als probleem. In ieder geval niet door degenen met hun eigen pet theory.

Iets dat in ieder geval voor studenten een relevante vraag lijkt –een zeer zeker als probleem ervaren wordt!– is hoe ontwerpvoorstellen beoordeeld worden. Wat voor soort kritiek kun je verwachten? En hoe verdedig je je voorstel?

Vandaag bij de presentaties waar studenten met ontwerpvoorstellen kwamen, kwamen er een paar mooie langs.

“Ik denk niet dat het mechanisme gaat werken zoals jullie denken dat het werkt,” gebaseerd op natuurkundige en mechanische kennis en redenatie.

“OK, ik geloof dat het zou doen wat jullie denken, maar treedt er daarnaast niet ook dit effect op, dat ongewenst is?,” op basis van simulerend denken.

“Wat is nu eigenlijk het waardevoorstel? Ja, het doet wat jullie denken, maar oplossing X zou toch met minder kosten een veel beter resultaat opleveren?!”, op basis van kennis van alternatieven en kritisch denken over de probleem- en doelstelling.

“Oe, gaaf, maar waarom hebben jullie onderdeel Y niet op manier Z gemaakt, dan wordt het effectiever/goedkoper/sterker/…,” op basis van creatief mee-ontwerpen en kennis van alternatieve deeloplossingen.

Dit zijn:

kritiek dat het gedrag incorrect voorspeld is
kritiek dat het gedrag onvolledig voorspeld is
kritiek op de waarde van het ontwerp
kritiek dat het ontwerp niet optimaal is

Wat ook leidt tot kritiek…

… dat het ontwerp onvolledig is
… dat het ontwerp incorrect (onmogelijk is)

Er kan kritiek zijn op minstens 3 niveau’s:

op de probleemstelling (niet duidelijk/volledig/concreet/specifiek)
op het concept (niet de beste aanpak, inherente nadelen/conflicten)
op de uitvoering (niet volledig, optimaal, goed voorspeld)

Of anders gezegd, op 3 aspecten:

functie
concept
optimalisatie

What Designers Know Depends on What They Want to Do

Designers’ knowledge is organized around typological models. But each discipline has their own way of modelling their subject. In fact, each discipline has a set of modelling languages in which they work.

Not only the kind of modelling is different, the breadth or level of abstraction is, too. Designers’ model knowledge serves not just to understand the world, but it is a tool for creating new artefacts and systems. So the way a designer models the world (relevant precedent) depends on their goal and professional context.

On Design as Research

Designing a building or product forces you to solve a range of problems, to answer a set of questions. A car needs an engine cover, doors, a trunk that opens, openings in the body for headlights, etcetera. A building needs a stable structure, doors, windows, insolation, waterproofing, perhaps floor levels, it should provide functional spaces, etcetera. There are issues to deal with at the level of the whole design, and there are parts, fragments, and details to work out.

Dealing with such a set of issues, and their interactions, conflicts, and overlap, leads to a thorough interrogation of the material or technology you’re working with. Some of the answers will be specific to this one design. But a few of them will be of more general value. They could become a standard component, technique, or pattern. A standardized detail, combination of techniques, or construction method, for instance.

Such experiments can test and/or explore. They can ask, does it work? Or they can ask, what if?

Paul’s “Designing Scientist”

Paul thinks that the modelling step is essential for someone to be a “scientist”. Why? Is it because it’s mathematical? Not quite, I’d say. More important is that a model is a system where the meaning of each and every part is made explicit. It makes it possible to communicate what you’ve constructed to others, and for them to understand it in the same way as you, to check the results’ validity.

The step of publishing, and having others check your work, Paul doesn’t feel is necessary. Someone working intelligently and rigorously in their back-garden shed could also count as doing science. I disagree. It is exactly the collective aspect that makes the whole endeavour reliable. And it is the possibility of building on others’ work that makes it productive.

In design and engineering, however, the universe can take the place of peers in reviewing your work. When you build something in the belief that it will work a certain way, that belief has little influence on wheter it will actually work in the way you expected it to. When you’ve made a fundamental error somewhere, or you were unaware of some phenomenon that has an effect on your device or machine, nature will tell you so. It won’t work. Or it will do something you didn’t see coming. Nature will prove you wrong much more unequivocably and persuasively than you peers could have.

Law and Order in the Studio

Or: Due Process for Design Criticism

At the end of one of the design courses I used to teach, students presented to tutors that had never seen their work, and their presentations were graded by those tutors. I’ve always found this an interesting exercise; students are forced to present a coherent case because they can’t rely on the shared understanding they’ve built up with their regular tutor during the project, and tutors aren’t tempted to let that same shared understanding influence what is supposed to be an assessment of what’s presented – and only what’s presented.

The whole thing is tricky business, though.

Design, Not As “Research”

I’m interested in how creative design can be research. Or rather, how designing develops knowledge. Developing “Design as Research” feels like a dead end to me.

Asking how design can be research assumes that there is something called “research” that design processes can qualify for under certain circumstances. The term invites comparisons to scientific research, and the question how design is or can be similar. But design is not the same as research, scientific or otherwise. What’s interesting is how designing teaches us new things, what sorts of things we learn from it, and how this knowledge can develop from project to project.

Study / Practice / Read

I studied design at university. Or did I? You don’t really “study” design. You practice it. So perhaps I should say that I trained as a designer. Or even that I was trained in design.

Is this analogous to how the British say that they “read” philosophy or history at university? Reading history, learning its contents, is different from training to become a historian, able to add something to the field.

Come to think of it, is this what is happening in the master “Design Curating & Writing” at the design academy in Eindhoven, and at the MFA “Products of design” in New York? These students seem more to “read” design than to practice design ability.