design your process, process your design

Design Your Process,

Process Your Design.

Introduction A brief description of our project.

Ideally in our education a student develops awareness and experience about his/her design process.

Given a situation, user, client and a context, what should be my approach? A stu-dent could work throughout his Bachelor and/or Master towards a design toolkit with adapted insights from design methodology.

Comparable with the notion in the field of communication ‘the medium is the message’ students could raise a central question related to their own design process and then design an intelligent solution. All separate contributions of students should lead to a TU/e Indus-trial Design Intelligent Interaction Methodology Toolkit.

An sample question from a student could be “How could I collect and share multiple stakeholder requirements and prioritize them with these stakeholders and my fellow team members’? A support decision tool so to speak. Another question could be “I want to de-velop ideas based on emotion and on ratio. How can I measure what ideas are more appeal-ing to emotion and what ideas are more appealing to ratio.”

Next step would be to explore, design and built a system that grasps requirements and facili-tates a user to prioritize. The amount of intelligence and emergent behavior could be varied.

What we understood of this project is as following

Our project is named ‘design your process, process your design. Our goal is to make a toolkit for the design process that gives for example bachelor or master students another approach to the design process; a toolkit that helps them to develop awareness and experience about their design process or that will help them with a part of the design process.

Because this was our first project the whole design process was new for us and we didn’t have any experience with it. So we really needed to empathize into the design process and into designers thinking. How do they get inspiration? How do they come up with ideas? What is their approach?

We needed to dive into the design world.

Vivian van der burgt Floris Heyne Davey van der Heijden Teunis van Schijndel DSB11 Project b11 DPE04 Design your process, process your design

Research Design your process, process your design.

It’s not possible to design something that is a helpful tool in the design process, if you’re not even a little bit familiar with the design process itself. So the goal of the research phase was to get familiar with the design process. Therefore we arranged some interviews with independent designers, all with a different background. Also we did some research through libraries and the internet to find out more about design processes.

Interviews We had an interview with Cindy van den Bremen (see inset 1). She works as a Contextual Designer and Creative Advisor. Projects are realized independently or in co-operation with other (creative) parties where different disciplines are represented. Cindy van den Bremen works both on assignment as well as on her own initiative. She graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Most important conclusion about Cindy van den Bremen is that’s she works very intuitively and that research is the most important part of her design process.

We also had an interview with Jan Roelof Kortstra (see inset 2). He is a designer, graduated from TU Delft. He has together with Maurits de Koning a design bureau called Ko:work.

Jan Roelof Kortstra is a different designer than Cindy van de Bremen is. He works with a more standardized rational design process, roughly divided into four steps; -Orientation -Designing -Engineering -Implementation Own Research Searching through libraries and internet provided us with lots of information about design processes and people’s opinions about design processes. Design processes got different forms and different styles.

But there are some characteristics to every design process, so you can divide them in different groups.

For example: -

Every individual works through his design process differently; you can do it rationally or intuitively.

All processes start with a goal or purpose. You can work on a ‘problem solving design’, an ‘user centered design’ or maybe an ‘opportunity creating design’.

There are so many different design processes; we can’t even describe them all individually. But on the next pages you see some examples of design processes.

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The design processes on these pages we found searching through the internet. These are 6 different processes, all different forms and different orders, but they do include all the same most important steps.

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Design Process With this research in the back of our heads we made a design process we thought that would fit to our needs and way of working. Below you see our process:

Analyzing every step we were very interested in the brainstorm sessions and the part of idea creation.

So we narrowed our focus from the whole design process down to just the part of brainstorming, getting creative and creating ideas.

At the end of our project we realized we used a whole other design process than we first thought of.

Brainstorming Brainstorming is a group activity designed to generate a large number of ideas. Members of a group are being encouraged to develop ideas about a subject, even if they’re not useful, so collecting all these ideas and building on it gives you more solutions or ideas about a subject. The idea behind brainstorming is that a group of people can get to a higher level of creativity than an individual can.

Off course we want our ideas to be innovative and creative. Something that not already exists. A way to obtain that is using a creativity technique. A technique we liked was ‘the random word association’, or ‘forced fit’. The ‘random word method’ works like this; you have a subject you’re all brainstorming about. Someone names a random word, for example picked out of a dictionary, and everybody names a single word that he or she associates with that word. Then the group is asked to suggest the associations between each word and the subject or topic of the brainstorm.

We tested it out by brainstorming with this technique and found out that it worked quite well.

Why did this technique work so well? It’s really quite simple. In a typical brainstorming session, when members of a group are asked to come up with ideas or solutions to a problem, their minds access their memory banks and download what is already known about the issue. Introducing the random word method forces the mind to find a link between dissimilar things. Because of the gap between the random word and the topic, ideas may be quite unusual, or even off-the-wall. As the group members build on each other’s ideas, they generate more creative solutions.

This method is fast and simple, and usually leads to ideas that are more creative than those generated from the classic brainstorming format.

This is a mood board we made. It gives a feeling of the holistic idea we thought of the table should have.

Idea Creation Visual stimulation is also an important part of Industrial Design, and in line with that the design process and idea creation. A way of visual stimulation is looking through documentation of what is already existing comparing to the subject your designing for. And visualizing your ideas is very important for interaction between you and your group members, and showing and explaining to everyone your ideas.

It’s a very important way of reflecting ideas together. And by visualizing your own ideas and

comparing them with ideas of others you’re creating concepts by building upon each other’s ideas.

A way to do so is making mood boards. A mood board is a type of poster or poster design that consist of text, pictures, colors and everything the creator decides to use. Designers use these mood boards to interact with others about their ideas and develop their vision of their design. The mood board can be used as a thing to reflect on during the design process or which you refer on to explain ideas.

Mood boards must not be seen as just visual objects, they often serve as an example of the designer’s vision or mood he is working in. So mood boards are very helpful when designing.

With the idea of using ‘the random word association’, the important interaction between people in a design process and the important visual stimulation in the back of our heads we went further on thinking about how to use this all together in a tool?

Because that was still the main goal of our project. We made some variations on the ideas we had and came up to the following problem statement; How can several people brainstorm easier without obstruction of creativity with a tool kit?

Students who are working at the ID-department.

Concept Problem After looking around the ID part of the main building and observing the people within the same project group working on their projects we noticed that the interaction between each other was not missing but completely gone. From this point we came to our problem statement.

When you want to design a good product with a group of people the most important part is the interaction between each other. You have to know what the others are doing and they have to know what you’re doing, so sitting behind the laptop is a killer for designing with more people. One of the most important parts of the design process are the brainstorms, and not just the one in the beginning about the idea you were going to work from, but also the brainstorms about decisions of concepts or strategies. We saw that this lacked within the groups we observed, so time for a change in the interaction within groups.

Solution We came up with the idea to keep the interaction alive in group working, this was our main goal, and from this point we came to our concept: The interactive brainstorm table. This table is designed especially for brainstorm sessions or for meetings. It provides the participating people a multi-touch interface on which they can show pictures to each other or sketches. This keeps the conversation going and will be very positive for the brainstorm session.

Sketch of the brainstorm tool as middle console.

Aid We didn’t only want to stimulate the interaction in the brainstorm but we also wanted to aid the session, which is why we came up with an innovative idea of helping the creativity going by showing other, random pictures from the pictures you collected.

The table Our first concept was a round multitouch interface for several people (think up to 6) to participate on, the people would all have their personal workspace on which they can store their own collected images. After rearranging these, by making a mood board or make the pictures with a higher priority bigger, you could shove these in a middle console. This middle console consists of 4 to 6 screens on which everyone at the table will see the exact same things so you can show your pictures or mood boards to each other.

Sketch of the interactive table with a middle console.

We decided not to continue with this concept as our final prototype; there are couples of defaults on the table. One of them is the middle console, this would block the view on each other which is very impersonal and could discourage discussions. Another point is the individual workspace, this would encourage people to look at their own workspace and pay no attention to the things other people are doing or even saying.

From this point we came to a new concept.

The interface would remain the same so a round multi-touch interface at which several people can participate. But this table has no chairs and is about 1.50 meters in height, this lets the participants stand around the table which is an active posture and so gives the people an active feeling. It is one big touch table, so there’s no individual workspace, this would positively influence the interaction between the participants. In the middle of the table there won’t be a console like our first prototype, but there is a search function. With this search function you can find related pictures on the internet to the pictures that you put in earlier. With the new images popping up the creativity is stimulated, this could generate new ideas and lead to new discussions.

This is the idea we wanted to reach with our project.

Functions The table has a few basic technical functions; the most important one is the input.

Persons that want to gather around the table brought their own pictures for discussion; they can upload these in the table by inserting their memory stick in the portal of the table.

Our symbol of the table is the prism. So you will see the light emission of the prism and the picture will pop up. By the physical movement of putting your hands on the picture and spreading them out you can move and enlarge the pictures. Now you can make a mood board or just rearrange the pictures. If you “shove” the pictures into the color related search engine there will pop up new pictures who are related, and that is the output. You can also press in the middle of the table and then there will pop up several visual categories of the search engine. Just by putting your hand on one category, new pictures will pop up. After discussing the new pictures you can save these on your memory stick by a simple save option.

In the pictures underneath this textbox you see that by the intuitive movement of shoving the picture towards the prism will activate the search engine. The search engine will search by color and there will randomly pop up some pictures with the same color. This works that way because it’s a color related search engine. It will search his pictures in the database of http://www.flickr.com/

There is also the option to search randomly through pictures that are related in some kind of theme. For example sports or animals.

To create mood boards and organize pictures we thought of a technology that will work like this.

Every picture will be formatted as in an own layer. You can shove them together and organize them in such a way that you will create a mood board together.

You can also enlarge pictures by putting your hands on two corners of a picture and spreading them out.

This storyboard tells the experience of working with our brainstorm table.

Conclusion Design is about interaction. You can only come to good ideas and concepts if your creativity won’t be blocked. Good brainstorming and idea creation demands good preparation. Creativity is hard work, you’ll see in our reflection.

Reflection We thought of the functions and the form. Form follows function and function follows form. So we linked these two things together. It was very difficult to show what we’ve ‘made’ because we couldn’t make something concrete. What we did find was information about a multi-touch table experiment.

There was explained how we could make a multi-touch table, but it was too difficult to realize in such a short time and it would be too small-scale. So the most of our idea was in our heads and it was difficult to get it on paper.

But we discovered that a design process isn’t undoubted. You have a lot of different design processes and all of them are a good approach. You have the rational approach or the more free approach. You just have to find one that matches your personality.

In this part of the report, we will give our opinion about the design process we went through the last 6 weeks. We will evaluate and give alternatives to the methods we used that did not work out.

After meeting each other, we all shared the same thought; what is this project about and where do we start. Since it was our first project no one expected it to be easy, but it certainly took us too long before we actually realized we just had to start designing. We learned that in the process of designing, you are forced to make decisions based on too little information. We felt a bit uncomfortable doing that in the beginning, but got easier towards the end.

When we reached the idea generation phase, things finally came together. Creativity began to flow, and the teamwork and motivation reached a new top. A solid concept was the result of this, and the next phase was research. During the research we found out our concept was not innovative at all, which resulted in desperate situation. No one knew how to continue and all the motivation was gone.

After some coach meetings and team counseling we finally got things back together again, and went back to the idea generation phase. The mistake that followed was that we never really made it to the next phase. We got stuck between idea generation and research, and never really got to prototype phase. Next time we should make a clear schedule of when we want to finish certain phases in our process.

When we almost reached our deadline, we still had a lot of things to discuss about our design. We had certainly misjudged the amount of time we needed to complete our project. As a result of this, we did not have the time to elaborate on some issues in the last phases. Like we said earlier, the time management could be a lot better next time.

Finally to recap on what we learned from this project. We learned a lot about the different ways to approach a design process. There are hundreds of ways to design your process, but some will work better than others due to group related preferences. We also learned that designing is a very broad thing. There are a lot more things to it than we initially thought. And finally we found out that strict rules and clear expectations in the group are very important for the process, and indirectly for motivation.

Reflection on our design process.

Here you see our own reflection on our design project we made in clay. You have to see it from up going down.

First you see 4 individuals coming together in a project group.

Together they come to a climax in the pressure cooker.

But after that result they struggle to come further. With a little help from our coach we came through.

We got a little push in the right direction.

Where we’d got all kinds of ideas but finally were just working through one

To 1 concept, the table, the tool.

Inset 1

Interview Cindy van den Bremen

Cindy van den Bremen is an Contextual Designer and Creative Advisor in Eindhoven, I interviewed her about her study and experience related to her idea of the design process. Cindy graduated at the design academy in Eindhoven and took an internship in the United States. She started her own company a few years ago to produce her master project named “Capsters” a sporting headscarf for Muslim women.

Now she is working on a project in “De Africanerwijk” in Rotterdam-Zuid, in which she involves the local women in the design process of clothes made of fabric purchased at the local market. That is the part of Contextual Designer, she also helps making an art magazine called “heART & SOCIETY” a magazine which contains projects done by designers, artists or other creative people. That is why she also is an Creative Advisor.

Cindy told me lots of things about designing in general but the only part that is of interest to us in this project is the design process so I’m going to limit myself to that part. For Cindy the design process isn’t a pre programmed process, it adapts to the project. But the fundaments of starting a design process or a project is research. She considers this as the most important part of the entire process. She said that is possible that 80 percent of the entire project has been research. As an example she told me about her master project, the Capsters, in which she found an article of one … long that spoke of the fact that gym teachers had the right to exclude Muslim girls from the class when wearing a head scarf. She said that if she hadn’t put so many time in research she probably hadn’t read that article and she probably won’t have created the Capster which is one of her best designs and with which she graduated from the Design Academy. After the research part she feels that generating ideas is very important, by sketching and drawing lots of prototypes. This she got from the design academy, they … on sketching and drawing.

After this comes the prototyping, so really making the sketches with actual materials. And of course testing the prototypes with users to see where little or big errors occur. This is the basic part of her design process.

Inset 2

Interview Jan Roelof Kortstra 3 Octobre 2008 Jan Roelof Kortstra is an independent designer. He has its own design bureau called Ko:work together with Maurits de Koning. They just work with the two of them. They get assignments from mostly technical companies who want to improve their product or machines. So they don’t want a whole new technology but improve the existing technology.

Jan Roelof Kortstra so works very structured from a mostly common basis. In their process there is no place for any brainstorm part because they don’t have to invent something entirely new.

The basic steps of their design process: - Orientation: first they go and observe the people who work with a product and watch them use it. Their observations are being used for their improvement.

- Designing - Engineering - Implementation; this step is meant to find out the last problems and suggestions, so the product can be adjusted.

They often use a design matrix. With existing products they create a board where you can see the gaps in the market or the gaps in technology, or an indication of what is already there, so a customer can give his preferences.

Our conclusion after our conversation with mister Kortstra about his design process; the main important part returning in every design is innovation. His design process is very structured, with basic steps and always the same. He is approaching the design process very rationally.

Sources

Brainstorm spel http://www.beleidsimpuls.nl/brainstorm_spel.php Microsoft Surface http://www.microsoft.com/surface/index.html Multi touch table experiment http://tinker.it/now/2007/02/28/multitouch-table-experiment/ Can touch http://www.cantouch.nl/CanTouch/nederlands/main.html Design Processes 1 http://www.mos.org 2. http://www.lawrence-najjar.com 3. http://www.ocw.mit.edu 4. http://www.ardelius.com 5. http://www.envision-creative.com 6. Hutchinson and karsnitz Random Word Association http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/13913