Researching Complexity, Dynamic Form and the Design Process Professor Robert Young Centre for Design Research, Northumbria University SERENDIPITY SYNDICATE.

Researching Complexity, Dynamic

Form and the Design Process Professor Robert Young

Centre for Design Research, Northumbria University

SERENDIPITY SYNDICATE 3 : Talk

Introduction

• Design form and design process!• Confluence of two international conferences• DeSForM 07

– Northumbria University, December 2007, examined product/system interaction designing with a focus on their meaning and how designers communicate information, functions and ideas to enable these to be perceived and understood by people in their everyday lives.

• Intersections – Baltic Gateshead, October 2007, asked how design is

adapting in a world in transition by acquiring new know-how.

• Common threads?

DeSForM themes and topics

1. Methods and Tools • Active forms • Theatre and choreography • Sketching in space and time • Aesthetics and notation of motion • Editing and scripting of movements

2. Theoretical developments • Meaning and perception • Conditions of applicability • Ambient versus interactive

movement • Structuring mechanisms and

linguistics • Gestalt theory and compositionality

of meaning

3. Practice-based research and case studies Using movement as a mediator

• Appropriation of the everyday

• Effects of context on meanings • New typologies and ecologies of

objects • Dependencies between form and

movement

DeSForM observations

• In mature markets, where the functionality and performance of products are often taken for granted, attention is increasingly focused on the visual characteristics of products. In such markets, ‘attention to a product’s appearance promises the manufacturer one of the highest returns on investment. (Lewalski, ZM. 1988)

DeSForM observations

• Creating Value By Design Stefano Marzano

The challenge for designers, and indeed for everyone in societies that are entering the Third Wave, is to discover the new relevant benefits and qualities – the qualities that products and services will need to have if they are to fulfil the aspirations and dreams of those who use them.

• The New Everyday - Views on Ambient Intelligence(The need for) meaning and purpose in life is common to everyone, the only difference is that technology changes the way it gets gratified John Perry Barlow (USA)

• The New Everyday - Views on Ambient IntelligenceThe distinction … is between syntax and semantics. For a machine, all that matters is syntax. The meaning does not matter … all that matters is the form and capacity to change that form into another form. For humans, what matters is not the syntax but the semantics, the meaning, what lies inside. Even if machines are able to imitate humans perfectly, it is unlikely, that they will have a concept of semantics in a way that human beings do. Meaning lies not in our heads or in the structure of our language or in the structure of our problem solving capacities. Meaning lies in the social world. It is the social world that imputes things and phenomena with meaning. And in so far as machines don’t live in a social world, they cannot have meaning. Kenan Malik (UK)

DeSForM observations

InterSections - Conclusions

• Briefly, the Intersections conference pressed the pause button and explored the limits of design. Its speakers told us time and again, we live in more complex times. And complex times call for design practice with a wider repertoire. Complex times require designers to do new and different things. Jeremy Myserson summarized these, designers are acting as: – strategists, – co-creators, – rationalists and – storytellers

InterSections

Content

InterSectionsProcess

Content

InterSectionsProcess

Content

Context

InterSectionsProcess

Content

ContextQuickTime™ and a

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Dealing with complexityProcess

Content

ContextDesign Value

Design Didactic

Derivation

D3 - PolicyThe creation of meaning and purpose

Design of context

D2 - SystemThe design of systems and services

Designing context

D1 – ProductsThe conventional world of design ofartefacts, components and products

Design in context

Intangible

Tangible

Macro

Micro

Direction

Elaboration of process

Physical Sciences

Elaboration of processSocial Sciences

Physical Sciences

Elaboration of process

Physical Sciences

Humanities

Social Sciences

Elaboration of process

Physical Sciencesreductive

Humanitiesinductive

Social Sciencesdeductive

DesignAbductive

Design Thinking

Themes of engagement

Human Centred Problem Solving

Design Practice Innovation

Design Thinking & Didactics

Responsible Design Practices

Design Craftsmanship Pedagogic Practices

Linking policy to practice

Human Centred Problem Solving

Design Practice Innovation

Design Thinking & Didactics

Responsible Design Practices

Design Craftsmanship Pedagogic Practices

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Innovative Pedagogic Practice

Research Study & Postgraduate

Learning

Enterprise and Research-led Consultancy

Engagement with audiences and initiatives

Human Centred Problem Solving -InSTeP

Design advocacy - conferences and events - DeSForM

Engagement with audiences and initiatives

Responsible Design Practices -Design-led social enterprise in developing communities

Crime and security

Ethical Fashion

Design advocacy - conferences and events - EAP Design Health & Wellbeing

Engagement with audiences and initiatives

Pedagogical Practice -Inside Out

Design consciousness

Design advocacy - conferences and events - EPDE

Engagement with audiences and initiatives

Design Craftsmanship -LCFS

Designers in Residence

International programme delivery

Design advocacy - conferences and events - Intersections

Engagement with audiences and initiatives

Design Practice and Innovation -nuDIL - Intel Mobiles on the Move, Philips Responsible Wellbeing Service Concepts

Design advocacy - conferences and events - ISDn3

Design thinking

Distinctions – the conscious and intuitive act of designers

involved in the design process – a process of conscious reflection about the

nature of design of itself

Categories of design research

• Design Ontology – branch of metaphysics concerned with the designer nature of being (experience and awareness)

• Design Hermeneutics – methodology of interpreting/explaining design concepts, theories and principles

• Design Epistemology – study of the nature of design knowledge – its foundations scope and validity.

• Design Phenomenology - a philosophy of design exploring phenomena presenting to us as conscious experience of acts and outcomes of design(ing).

• Design Praxiology - the study of professional skill

Bruce Archer circa 1980

Design exegetics

• would be the branch of design research dealing with the study and interpretation of design thinking/consciousness in its broadest sense;

• the conscious and unconscious essence of being and doing design, together with the energy and passion that this entails.

Common threads!

• Dealing with complexity - product system and service

• Polysensorial manipulation

• Storytelling and creator of narrative

• Sense-making - meaning making