What Designers Say
Design is all around us, and the wish to design things is inherent in human beings. One of the most basic characteristics of human beings is that they make a wide range of tools and other artefacts to suit their own purposes. As those purposes change, and as people reflect on the currentlyâavailable artefacts, so refinements are made to the artefacts, and sometimes completely new kinds of artefacts are conceived and made. The world is therefore full of tools, utensils, machines, buildings, furniture, clothes, and many other things that human beings apparently need or want in order to make their lives better. Everything that isn't a simple, untouched piece of Nature has been designed by someone.
In preâindustrial societies, craftspeople made things according to longâestablished traditions, following the patterns transmitted through apprenticeship. It was during the emergence and growth of industrial societies, with the shift from craftwork to manufacturing, that designing became regarded as a different kind of occupation. Although there is now so much designing going on in the world, how people perform this activity of design was rather poorly understood for a very long time. An ability in design has been regarded as something that many, probably most, people possess to some degree, but only a few people have a particular design âtalentâ. However, through decades of design research, there is now an established and growing body of knowledge about design activity and how to conduct it, about the design process and how to improve it, and about design ability and how to develop it.
When designers are asked to explain how they work, and to discuss their abilities, a few common themes emerge. One theme is the importance of creativity and âintuitionâ in design â even in engineering design. For example, the engineering designer Jack Howe has said:
Some rather similar comments have been made by the industrial designer Richard Stevens:
Another theme that emerges from what designers say about their abilities is based on the recognition that problems and solutions in design are closely interwoven; that âthe solutionâ isn't always a straightforward answer to âthe problemâ. For example, the furniture designer Geoffrey Harcourt commented on one of his creative designs like this:
A third common theme to emerge is the need to use sketches, drawings or models of various kinds as a way to explore the problem and solution together. The conceptual thinking processes of the designer seem to be based on the development of ideas through their external expression in sketches. As the engineerâarchitect Santiago Calatrava said:
This âdialogueâ occurs through the designer's perception of the sketched concepts, and reflection on the ideas that they represent and their implications for the resolution of the problem. The designer responds to the perceptions, reflections and implications, and so the âdialogueâ between internal mental processes and external representations continues.
The quotations above are taken from interviews conducted with successful and eminent designers by design researchers Robert Davies and Bryan Lawson. The designersâ comments support some of the hypotheses that have emerged from more objective observational studies of designers at work, and other research that has been conducted into the nature of design. Some of this research reflects and supports the view that designers have particular, âdesignerlyâ ways of thinking and working.
What Designers Do
People have always made things. In traditional, craftâbased societies the âdesigningâ of artefacts is not really separate from making them; that is to say, there is usually no prior activity of drawing or modelling before the activity of making the artefact. For example, a potter will make a pot by working directly with the clay, and without first making any sketches or drawings of the pot. In modern, industrial societies, however, the activities of designing and of making artefacts are usually quite separate. The process of manufacturing something cannot normally start before the process of designing it is complete. In some cases, for example in the electronics industry, the period of designing may take many months, whereas the average period of making each individual artefact might be measured only in hours or minutes.
Perhaps a way towards understanding design is to begin at the end; to work backwards from the point where designing is finished and making can start. If making cannot start before designing is finished, then at least it is clear what the design process has to achieve. It has to provide a description of the artefact that is to be made. In this description, almost nothing is left to the discretion of those involved in the process of making the artefact; it is specified down to the most detailed dimensions, to the kinds of surface finishes, to the materials, their colours, and so on.
In a sense, perhaps it does not matter how the designer works, so long as he or she produces that final description of the proposed artefact. When a client asks a designer for âa designâ, that is what they want: the description. The focus of all design activities is that endâpoint.
Communication of designs
The most essential design activity, therefore, is the production of a final description of the artefact. This has to be in a form that is understandable to those who will make the artefact. The most widelyâused form of communication is drawing. For a simple artefact, such as a doorâhandle, one drawing would probably be enough, but for a larger, more complicated artefact such as a whole building the number of drawings may well run into hundreds, and for the most complex artefacts, such as aeroplanes or major bridges, then thousands of drawings will be necessary.
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