How can we define design resources?

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‘..research should focus on how resources are configured, combined, and contextualized.’ (Woolrych, A. et al. 2011: 946)

Woolrych et al., have called for design research to focus attention at the level of resources, rather than at the level of methods. They advocate a change in focus from ‘monolithic methods to component resources’ (953), and for a need to support particular resource types; ‘Research needs to focus more on knowledge, perspectives, scopes and expressive resources’ (957). What the work lacks is a clear definition of what a resource is. In fact, a modest search of design literature reveals that the term “resource” is used freely without definition. If we attempt to rise to the challenge set by Woolrych et al., i.e. that of creating resources for design, we must first have a clear definition of what design resources are. A comparison with tools and methods will be attempted, beginning with observations concerning basic properties. What do resources look like? In their physical appearance, could they be taken for tools or methods? How do resources act? Do they act in the same way as tools and methods?

Analysis of the methods listed in ’100 Universal Methods of Design’ (Martin, B. & Hanington, B. (2012) lead me to question whether all are in fact methods. According to Merriem-Webster’s dictionary definition, a method is ‘a procedure or process for attaining an object’.

Picture Cards are described as a method used in interviews to evoke past experiences (Martin, B. & Hanington, B. 2012: 137). The activity, i.e. “procedure or process” involves the use of pictures. Cards may serve as a convenient vehicle for conveying imagery, for sorting and so on, but images can just as easily be printed on sheets of paper or browsed in an onscreen application and we might assume that this would have no significant effect in conducting the activities. So, the impression that one gets from the name, that this activity is centered around the use of picture cards, may be an unnecessarily narrow description. What is more troublesome is that the name does not describe the activity, i.e. the method, but merely attempts to represent it with a collection of objects that are central in it. Cards are not procedures or processes, but objects. Some procedures governing their use must be involved, but these are not highlighted in the name. The procedure for using picture cards is not unlike the one used in ”projective storytelling”, an assessment instrument used in clinical psychology to evoke deep seated memories around difficult subjects. Something of this order, that focuses attention on what the method achieves rather than what objects are used in it might convince us that this is, in fact, a method. Lest we confuse the objects with the activities, we should take greater care when naming and referring to methods. We might conclude that either this design activity has been inappropriately named, or, picture cards are worthy of belonging to a class of objects used in design and should be classed as either a tool or a resource.

In the book there are many other examples of this kind; stakeholder Maps, storyboards, design Workshops, focus groups, etc. All these are nouns i.e. objects, not activities, procedures or processes. Focus groups are what we test. The method used to test is focus testing. While concept mapping, experience prototyping, and ergonomic analysis correctly reference procedures, stakeholder maps, storyboards, and usability report reference objects that we might argue are either tools or resources used in the method, not the methods themselves.

At this point we may be able to venture the notion that resources are not processes or procedures. They may be a class of design object.

I would like to compare resources to tools. But, in order to do so, we need an appropriate metaphor.

Raw steel can be used to make the blade of a spade or the pick of an axe; tools used to do jobs of work. The metals and minerals used in the forge, the fuel and oxygen used to make the metal maleable, plus the knowledge of how to work with and shape the materials, in sum, constitute the resources necessary to make a spade or an axe. I argue that design resources hold a similar position with regard to design tools and methods. Design resources emerge from primary research and are refined only to a degree that makes them suitable for use in either supporting existing design tools and methods or as a base for creating new design tools and methods. As is the case with raw natural resources, designed resources are of little use when isolated from other resources and from the processes and knowledge needed to apply them. They are smaller, more numerous, and more adaptable elements of design work than tools and methods.

Design’s got rhythm

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The agenda of the workshop was to investigate a question; is it possible to design a boundary object? Our approach was pretty simple:

1. Put six researchers in a room.
2. Apply some standard design approaches.
3. Knead prepared Dutch dough until all questions answered.
4. Set aside to cool.
5. Meanwhile, take three designers and bring to a boil.
6. Stir-in some untested design resources.
7. Simmer gently while watching very carefully what is going on.
8. Place in academic format and serve.

…and quite tasty.

The activities that we were engaged in played out almost like we were participating in a rehearsal for a stage play or musical performance for which there is only a very crude script. Perhaps the playwright or conductor dropped dead before completing the script and we, as a troop of dedicated students, are keen to play it through and see if we can figure out what the maestro’s story is all about. As players we began by tentatively taking up roles that seemed to be partially scripted for us by the workshop agenda and by the academic and personal experience we brought with us in our La Malle Bernard, and Shwayder trunks. But these changed as the play got under way (the roles, not the theatrical trunks). The dialogue gets handed around like a hot potato, and people change their positions or change their minds (which can be messy). But it’s all done on the stage. It’s all make-believe. It’s all a scenario. So, when the curtain goes down we all scrape off the face paint and change back into street clothes. Nobody really died. The world didn’t nearly come to an end after all.

Helping us with the dialogue are a good selection of materials and resources that we use as props. These help us to express things. With them we can put ideas on paper and point to them and move them around. We can play with them so they make us laugh and forget our lines. But then, unexpectedly, they give someone else an idea and it doesn’t matter that we’ve forgotten our lines. The play goes on. For a moment we own the prop. It’s ours to wield for the audience and make them wonder how a stick becomes a sword, then here a snake and there a rolling pin.

But all this amounts to is a lot of clever play with stuff on a makeshift stage. What of the story? Where is the drama? How does this play move the audience? Who dunnit?

In a play or a novel you’ll find this kind of thing in the plot. Plot gives meaning to a story by shaping circumstances and ordering events into familiar and yet intriguing combinations. Many of the activities that we engaged in were familiar, but, although the ordering was somewhat scripted ahead of time, when they were acted out on stage they took on an order that was determined by the flow of dialogue and activities and by what was being done with the props. The order was, to some extent, improvised. After the first couple of scripted act(ivities), no one was sure what would come next.

‘Ordering’ suggests that clear distinctions can be made between the things that are being ordered. Examining videos of the workshop, it is surprising to me how clearly separate each phase of work or activity is. In the first day we clocked at least six distinct phases of work. We might think of them as scenes in a play. When one scene reached a resolution or an impasse, another began with a call to new action. Scenes typically follow recognised plot sequences of rising action, climax, falling action, and “I think we’ve exhausted that particular discussion, let’s move on”. In one scene, Michael and I, supported by a chorus, get into a long and heated exchange over the rough storyboard which unexpectedly seems to be acting either as a guiding map or a colossal folly, depending on your point of view. A lot of ideas are aired – swords drawn and all that. It’s as if we’re both reading from different pages of the script. When it’s clear that everyone’s been on the same page all along and we just need to all be wearing the same special 3D glasses, Lilian, very astutely suggests that we physically move the play to another part of the stage and begin a new scene or act. As mentioned, this rhythm of coming to an impasse, followed by rethinking and reframing the next act(ivity), happens at least six times on the first day. In the film arts these are called ‘plot points’, a point at which the action takes a significant turn in a new direction. For the audience, the play’s the thing. But for playwrights, composers and researchers who see the world behind the scenes, maybe it’s all got to do with the way things move and how these movements are contrasted by countermoves and lack of movement.

Although what designers do is interesting and worthy of research, what designers do NEXT may be even more interesting. Moments in between one move and the next (what designers do between scenes), appear to be typified by a lack of everything we are led to believe designers do all the time; think, design, act, reflect, make, plan, observe, and so on. These seem to be moments of complete nothingness. A vacuum. No conscious thought. No bright ideas. Design, it seems, takes a rest. It doesn’t last long because as the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. What comes rushing in to fill these moments are new ideas that act as triggers for new actions. I think understanding the way the design plot unfolds; the way scenes full of activity are interspersed with moments of inactivity (un-design) and how these both come about and push activities in a new direction may be worth investigating.

Boundary Interventions

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Last week I attended a workshop with some colleagues at TU Delft, Netherlands. The event focused on the use of Boundary Objects in design, objects that serve as shared artefacts between different communities of practice. Our hosts were Aaron Houssian, Lilian Henze and Ingrid Mulder. Aaron and Lilian are completing PhDs on the topic. Vicky Teinaki, Michael Leitner and I share common interests in the development of resources that support design activities. This workshop gave us the opportunity to put some of our ideas into practice and apply what we might tentatively call ‘resource theory’ to gain understandings about boundary objects.

First, Delft is a pretty special place. It’s a small, quiet town that, like other Netherlandish communities, has a strong sense of order and efficiency. The University is in the centre of town, surrounded by urban housing developments, canals and pedestrian ways that appear to cater to bicycles more than cars. The workshop was held in the Industrial Design building which, inside, opens on a vast agora that serves as meeting place, eating place, workplace and playground where people can be seriously creative.

Couldn’t avoid contrasting this with the space-shortages and office-like formality of the School of Design at Northumbria. Are there lessons to be learned here about how creative people need a supportive ‘built’ environment as well as intellectual environment? I’m not the only one who thinks so (see “creative labs“). Not only are the surroundings at Delft conducive to being creative, faculty and students are engaged in developing designs for workspaces and collaborative tools that support creative work.

Our first question of the day concerned whether or not it is possible to design a boundary object specifically for the design community with the aim of facilitating cohesion and productivity. Traditionally, it has been through the identification of the way preexisting objects function as shared objects between communities of practice that they have been identified as ‘boundary’ objects. In the literature, there’s no precedence for designing one, although the design of shared objects, such as tools, is commonplace. How are boundary objects different from other types of shared objects in design?

As we began to play with approaches to these questions and the sketches on the whiteboard walls began to talk back, I was struck by the similarities between the activity of designing a boundary object and storytelling. A successful story is one that engages both the teller(s) and the audience in its narrative re-presentation, i.e. storytelling is not a one-way communication of a story to an audience, it is a two-way co-production process that is renewed at every telling (see: Quesenbery and Brooks, 2010). Story is a ‘living’ thing that is created anew every time the author(s) and reader(s) re-experience events by reflecting on representations, i.e. narrative mental or material enactments of a story. Likewise, an object appears to take on boundary qualities only when those using it agree to enter into a kind of contractual arrangement with members of another community for the sake of shared common values. Just as a story only comes to life when it is being ‘relived’ by someone, we might suppose that the shared values of a boundary object only exist at the moment when the object is in use. If this is the case, then the ‘boundary’ aspect of objects only exist as an abstract concept in the minds of those who use them in that way. This raises questions of whether or how thought and action can be embodied in objects, and how these objects act on those who interact with them – questions general to almost all aspects of design (also see; Danny Miller’s “Stuff”). But, for the moment we might put these aside and simply consider that one approach to the design of boundary objects may be to model the way they function in the social contexts in which they are used on the principles of storytelling.

Although one community may introduce a boundary object to another community (in story-terms, a narrative), as much as it may tell the host’s story (of how they envision things), the object must also provide a means for the ‘guest’ community to tell their version of the story (this sentiment is mirrored by Bechky, B. A. 2003).

(Cockton’s Working-to-Choose framework and Abstract Design Situations (above; playfully Darwinised to illustrate the interdependence of design foci) were set beside Carlile’s 3T Model, the Boundary Communication Model and the Think-Act-Measure Model for Organizational Change)

As the workshop progressed, it became evident to everyone that although we were not sure about whether we would be successful in designing a boundary object, we were certainly viewing the subject through the lens of design and were applying standard design approaches. As designers, how else should we proceed? Cases were discussed, perspectives were brought to bear, groups formed to hash-out design concepts, and ideas flew around the room in greater abundance than Dutch chocolate sprinkles.

One of the key insights from the workshop was that, whether or not it is possible to design a boundary object, the object itself is only part of what facilitates boundary crossings, and a greater understanding of the topic must come from a broader perspective of the use of objects where they serve particular purposes across inter-community boundaries. This led to the notion of deemphasising the role of the object and renaming the design research phenomena ‘Boundary Interventions’.

 

Unravelling the “Message In A Bottle”

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‘..bridges from hermeneutic interpretation into design decision-making are essentially mystical. There is no systematic methodology, no conceptual framework, no explicit way to abstract from particular experiences.’ (Carroll, M. J. & Kellogg, A. W.  1989: 7).

This quote from Carroll & Kellogg is over twenty years old, yet the same issue still confronts us today. The topic was discussed at the DIS2012 workshop “The Message in the Bottle: Best Practices for Transferring the Knowledge from Qualitative User Studies” that Vicky Teinaki and I took part in a few weeks ago here in Newcastle.

The aim of the workshop was to first solicit then discuss ideas for new ways to approach the difficult problems that designers encounter in making sense of material generated through qualitative user studies. Finding ways for diferent groups to come to mutual understandings across domains, languages or disciplines is a well known problem area for design, although it may pose less of a problem for small design agencies than for large corporations where the size and complexity of the organisation introduces more and greater degrees of separation typically related to interpersonal and inter-disciplinary communications. At stake here is the preservation of mutual understandings within and between groups, where what is hoped for is agreement, or at laest fruitful discourse that will lead to agreement. The workshop brought some new perspectives from industry and academia to bear on the issue. > Full post here

Gaver and Martin’s ‘prayer device’ and madcap Victorian inventions

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In their paper; ‘Exploring Information Appliances through Conceptual Design Proposals‘ (2000), Gaver and Martin create a workbook to map out nine concepts that they claim embody values ‘apart from those traditionally associated with functionality and usefulness.’ (p.209). They are ‘sketches’, intended as experiments and probably as provocations. We can accept them on those terms. Rather than critique the concepts or question the judgement of respected authors, I invite you to make a simple comparison.

The concept (above) is the final offering in Gaver and Martin’s workbook. It is a proposal for a phone-booth-like ‘prayer device’ that stands in a public space so that the devout can practice sending messages to heaven. In their words: ‘

‘It is surprising [...] that technology has not been employed to support spiritual quests. The Prayer Device would be a first attempt to rectify this omission. Most likely deployed in public spaces, it would serve as a kind of telephone booth to heaven. People could speak privately into the mouthpiece, and their prayers, wishes, or confessions would be transmitted via a highly focused transmission to the skies.’ (p.214)

At this point in reading the paper, the following image came to mind.

Not a Victorian version of the prayer device, but one of many whacky inventions from that era. The self-tipping hat was patented by James Boyle of Washington State, 1896. In his words:

“Much valuable energy is utilized in tipping the hat repeatedly and my device will relieve one of it and at once cause the hat to be lifted from the head in a natural manner. It is a novel device, in other words, for effecting polite salutations by the elevation and rotation of the hat on the head of the saluting party, when said person bows to the person saluted, the actuation of the hat being produced by the mechanism within it and without the use of the hands in any manner.”

Need any more be said?
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Matchett’s concept of the design process

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If you’ve ever attended a presentation that has anything to do with the design process, you will be familiar with the “squiggly line” diagram; the one that starts off describing a ball of chaotic activity but ends up, after extricating itself from the ball, forming into a nice orderly straight line. This is the way some would like us to think design works at the fuzzy front end.

When I discovered Matchett’s concept of the design process in (Jones, C. J., 1970. Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures: John Wiley & Sons. p.181) it struck me that here was something that contrasts nicely with the bundle-of-squiggly-lines concept.

Matchett presents us with a concept of the design process that appeals directly to our intellect, to our sense of harmony and to our fascination with maps. It is a kind of visual puzzle. We can see by the fact that it is hand drawn that it is a sketch, suggesting, perhaps, that if it depicts a method it is not one that is highly formal. Yet, traditionally, architectural drawings had a similar type of line and similar conventions for showing measurements and for linking other notations to plans and elevations, and they were used as formal specifications for buildings. Matchett was no architect, but perhaps J.J.Foreman, the illustrator of the work, was. We do get the sense that we are looking at some kind of celestial sphere, a 3-dimensional space where significant things float about freely. Does it depict outer or inner space? Is it the ‘design space’ or a desgnerly frame of mind? Are these instructions for how a designer should construct his/her thoughts during the process of design?

Apparently, Matchett’s Fundamental Design Method, which he taught in a training camp in Bristol, UK over the course of a gruelling three-weeks, were more than a little controversial. His method of teaching included exposing students to the fringes of psychological distress induced by late nights, drug-taking, indoctrination techniques and insanity (p.189). This was the 60′s.

Before I read all this, I was quite prepared to accept the diagram at its face value, which I considered had something to do with it being hand-drawn and giving the appearance of a quasi-scientific map. Now the diagram seems rather sinister, an advertisement that promises design enlightenment but is in fact all about mind control.

In contrast to Matchett’s diagram, which tries very hard to be iconic, memorable and meaningful in an inspirational way, the squiggly line concept attempts to say one simple  thing – design is messy but it gets sorted out in the end. While this may be true, design is not an unstructured process, designers do not run around in aimless circles until inspiration hits. They do follow certain procedures for gaining understandings, for making choices and for completing designs. There is a kind of method to the madness. I’m not sure that when presenters use the squiggly line to represent the fuzzy from end of design, they are doing the profession a service. It perpetuates the myth that design is a mysterious art or some kind of magic, and so does it not in a very different way convey the same underlying message as Matchett’s diagram?
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you can’t do this with high-technology

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When you have an idea and you start putting it down on paper, the paper and the stylus take part in shaping the idea. It’s a delicate thing, an idea. A few marks on the paper begin to represent it and both the paper and the marks become valued allies in the part they play to help form the idea. With those marks, the page becomes precious. There is a sense that if you leave the page, you lose the idea. The paper and the marks literally stand-in for the idea. Indeed, the paper sacrifices itself for the idea because It will never be the same again. In the process, what was etherial (the idea) has become fixed, and this change from a free-floating, continuously shifting thought to an arrangement of marks on a flat plane that is not particularly editable, appears to be important in establishing its value. There is commitment to the materials and to whatever happens as a result of their use.

Despite the many claims that have been made about the power, efficiency and even intelligence of computers, I can honestly say that, when working with them, they have never once shown the kind of gracious self-sacrifice that I have come to rely on from a single piece of paper when an idea needs to be sketched. At the stage of sketching, when ideas are fragile, simple tools do more than just stay out of the way, they invite you to use them. They give themselves up to the task, and they are cheap enough to become talisman that go on to reflect a continuing experience. For me, paper is far more sentient and responsive to human thought and action than any electronic device ever could be. If materials do matter during ideation, then who would choose as their allies in shaping thoughts, a tool that separates the creative cycle of observing-making-reflecting over one that invites it?

The page of notes (above) could be visually simulated using technology. We can say that now that we see how the marks work. But, using a computer, the ideas could never have unfolded as they did with those marks on that piece of paper. The piece of paper and the thoughts associated with it are still ‘brewing’ in the air and will mature over time. Can we say the same for the electrical impulses in a hardDrive? The hardDrive may hold the image which may resonate with us intellectually, but it does not hold the moment for us because it does not exist in our everyday material world.