Design decisions are taken in the context of the design as a wole. That whole is subject to change throughout the design process. Therefore, logically speaking, all design decisions remain up for debate and themselves subject to change throughout the design process.
This is highly impractical, of course. In practice, therefore, important decisions are ‘frozen’ at some point during a design project. In practice, the reason for some decisions then becomes something like ‘because that follows from what we decided earlier’ or ‘it would cost too much to change’.
The philosopher Agnes Callard argues in her book Aspiration that it is possible to want to become something you cannot yet understand. That it is possible to rationally pursue a way or view of life of which it is currently impossible for you to judge the value. For example, to aspire to become a music lover, a parent, the kind of person who enjoys long walks – or a designer.
There is a paradox here because it is impossible to (fully) judge the value of achieving such goals before achieving them. So how can you pursue them rationally, Callard asks. Their value is only properly visible from the inside, to those who have already become music lovers, parents, walkers, or designers – those who have already passed through the looking glass.
This may be a good metaphor to use when explaining this predicament to design students and teachers. That experienced designers have stepped into a world or bubble that can be described accurately, but only to those who are also inside. As if they’ve put on a AR headset and now see things the other simply doesn’t. Also similar to the difficulty of explaining or characterizing a new taste to someone who has never eaten a particular snack or food. There is a truth to how it tastes. Most people who’ve eaten the thing will agree to its character. But it cannot fully be explained in words to those who have never tasted it.
Reviewing a number of (engineering) design textbooks, it strikes me that none of them discuss what a good set of concepts looks like, other than that they are the most promising options.
Together with the fact that these textbooks give little to no guidance on how to construct and present the complete case arguing the final design, this lack of discussion on the collection of concepts as a collection – and what defines it as such – seems to be a result of these books’ framing of design and the design process in a professional context.
One big difference between that professional context and an academic context (including many educational settings) is the role and presence – or lack thereof – of a client. Concept selection seems like a particularly good example of this. In a professional setting, you would present your concepts and your evaluation of them, together with a recommendation on which to proceed with, to your client(s). You would give them the final say or ‘OK’ on that decision, or at least come to a consensus. And because that decision is taken together, at a specific moment in time, in a specific project context, it matters less whether that set of concepts has a particular logic to it.
In an academic context, however, if you present concepts and a comparison at all, you present them only at the end of the project, together with the – further developed – final design. You write it all up in a single (peer-reviewed) paper. In that context, where you’ve selected a concept yourself and already further developed a design based on one, the concept comparison and ‘selection’ is no longer a forward-looking strategic proposal but a component in the justification/support for your final design. Rhetorically and epistemologically, it’s doing (can do) something quite different.
Here, I consider concepts as a means of exploration and – as a set – as the basis for arguing why the final design embodies/is based on the concept that is does/is.
What if we take the game SET as an analogy for how your concepts should differ.
When ONE aspect varies, you have something that looks like a controlled experiment. You’re changing one variable and seeing how that impacts the design’s properties and performance. Of course, when ‘one’ aspect is different, many more aspects will also be different. The world (and thus, physical artefacts) are infinitely complex.
When MORE THAN ONE aspect is varied, you either have to do the full combinatorics or find some way in which different choices in those aspects hang together (in effect, going back to the situation where only ONE overarching aspect is varied). Or, if there are no significant interaction effects between the aspects (sub-functions, domains, components) then it’s better to decouple them and decide per aspect which is preferable.
What of the case of the get-up-chair combined with two knee orthoses? What when you have A/X, A/Y, and B/Z? Could that make sense? Yes, I think so. In this case, there is a ‘wildcard’ concept. This could be a sound strategy in cases where there seems to be an obvious best option for one or a set of aspects (in this case: a powered knee orthosis). The function of the wildcard concept, then, is to check/justify that assumption. Trying to find the wildcard by asking ‘What do my two ideas have in common?’ can be a way to discover hidden or unconscious assumptions (and thus also, to find ‘more creative’ options). The emergency Covid ventilators also fall in this category, with only one departing from ‘modern, digital control system’.
(Examples from my slide deck of concept set examples)
I recorded a short explainer video for the course WB3135 Integrated Mechanical Systems this week. This was my second video recording with a script and prompter. It went much better already. I feel I’m relatively natural and well-paced in most of it. And making a video like this can be fast! Recording was over in – I think – half an hour, and editing is also less work when the flow of the text was considered and edited beforehand (no shit). Less than half a day spent on this.
Teaching
Yesterday was the second round of progress presentations for the same course (WB3135). We ask students to analyse a technological breakthrough or invention by comparing the alternative technologies, the various mechanisms or systems that were the ‘candidates’ for that disruption (e.g. VHS vs. Betamax vs. Video 2000). For these 3rd year BSc students, it’s incredibly challenging to set up a comparison like that. Every technological development is different, so they really have to frame and shape their analysis themselves. And we have far too little time to really coach them on it, with only roughly 15 minutes per group presentation. It’s a super fun course, and some groups come up with really interesting results. But it’s frustrating to see them struggle and nog being able to provide the right kind and amount of support…
I came across a definition of human agency as “the ability to generate choices and select from among them” (here).
If that is what makes for agency – and it seems a reasonable definition – then the skills and habits of designers – exploratory thinking in particular – suddenly become something everyone should learn and practice in general education. In fact, design ability – including discovering your aims, values, and possibilities by asking ‘What if?’ – is *the same thing* as human agency defined as such.
At some point, I’d like to write an essay or something about design thinking – for lack of a better term at the moment – as a general skill. The value of developing the skill and habit of exploratory, divergent, parallel thinking in all kinds of areas of life. Not just for ‘problem solving’ or ‘creativity’, but as a way to approach questions and dilemma’s more broadly in all kinds of areas of life – both private and public.
Usually, it seems to me, when the value of learning some design skills is argued, it is in the context of ‘innovation’ or ‘problem solving’ – to achieve known aims. But the big value of exploration and developing alternatives is also – and crucially – in the fact that it is a means to find out what you want in the first place. You go looking for the goal by considering different options. Or at least you further your understanding of your goal, what you find important and what less so, by exploring different ideas and approaches to then critically respond to.
‘What if’-thinking seems to be unnatural or counterintuïtive to most people. Is that innate or learned? Regardless, the skill goes undeveloped in primary and secondary school. In tertiary education too, expcept in design education. This is at the core of what you learn there, and I don’t see how or why that way of thinking about and engaging with the world should be confined to those programmes training professional designers.
Delta column ‘Exploring Futures’, which I had rather just titled ‘Architecture’, but the editors thought that was too boring. I wanted to get something down on the difference between engineers’ focus on causing/guaranteeing functionality and architects’ aim to make possible, to create (necessary but not sufficient) conditions (Cf. Taeke de Jong). It turned into something a little different, more on the question of what it means to practice design and/or engineering as an academic discipline. Not my best work.
Notes / Other stuff
Went to Antwerp on holiday. What a stony city. Hardly any trees.
First session with my ‘Climate & Transition’-themed cluster for IMS. Off to a good start. Great session. It makes for such a different class atmosphere when an assignment actually matters to students.
This week was the start of the large enrollment BSc course I’m teaching at ME this quarter (‘Integrated Mechanical Systems’). It includes a project that ends with a written report. In discussions beforehand, a colleague said we really can’t assess learning goals in the area of general analysis and evaluative, critical thinking with a report anymore, what with ChatGPT and all. But after the experience of administering the group formation for hundreds of students, I think we should realize that we were never able to adequately teach those sorts of things simply do to the number of students, the fact that we’re forced to make it a group project because of those numbers, and the very limited time we have to engage in actual discussion with students.
Tinkered
I played around with redesigning my personal homepage (bobvanvliet.nl). More and more often I wish I had a central online repository of my stuff to point people to. Ended up going with a barebones block of text for the time being, after also sketching out some more fun stuff (see below). Took too much work to make responsive, though, so I opted for just getting something out beyond just an email address (which was what I had before). I would like to find the time to prepare and publish more of my educational materials for reuse by others.
This week I read most of the 31 papers for the ‘Bio Inspired Design’ course. Lots of wacky designs as usual. But this year especially, it strikes me how difficult (or just not intuitive) it is for students (even at the MSc level) to separate the prototype from the actual design. Under ‘design improvements’, for instance, a good number of groups describe tweaks to the 3D printed version of their work, while the final design would be injection molded or even made of metal or something.
This was my first week working 50% at the Architecture faculty and to get a sense of the level and approach of their first year’s, we joined their presentations. The designs were much more complete and (sometimes) rich than I expected. Fun!
Also, many models displayed that same sort of naieve inability to make an abstract model or representation of a plan or design that I noticed in the mechanical engineering students’ work. Most of these were very literal, unsuccesfully trying to look like real grassland and stone with printed textures on everything, and with way too much detail in unimportant parts.
University/organizational
Responses to my column on the rector’s remarks about protest and freedom of speech on campus have kept coming in this week. I don’t think I ever had this much positive response to a column from staff and students.
