An Introduction to Design Method

 
      What is a problem? 
      In the context of design, a problem is any situation where you have an opportunity to make a difference, to make things better.  Whenever you are thinking creatively and critically about ways to increase the quality of life (or to avoid a decrease in quality), you are actively involved in problem solving.  { Instead of defining a problem in a negative way, only as something that is bad and needs to be fixed, this definition is positive and proactive. }
      In every area of life, creativity and critical thinking are essential.  These mutually supportive skills are intimately integrated in the problem-solving methods used in a wide range of "design" fields — such as engineering, architecture, medicine, mathematics, music, art, literature, philosophy, history, business, athletics, law, and science — where the goal is to design a product, strategy, or theory.  Broadly defined, this includes almost everything in life:

      For example, although we usually think of a product as an object (like a bicycle or refrigerator), it also could be a repaired object (a car that now works better than it did before), a work of art (like a painting, song, or story), a letter to a colleague, an inspirational talk for a community group, or an educational game or website.  The product being designed and constructed might even be the food you're preparing for a dinner party, a tasty casserole for a potluck picnic, or an apple pie you're entering in a contest at the county fair.
      Similarly, you can design strategies for a wide variety of situations — including educational (as a learner or teacher), social, romantic, athletic, political, military, legal, financial, entrepreneurial, agricultural, and ecological — involving competition and/or cooperation.  You can plan a strategy for winning a football game, running a charity, or growing crops to feed a nation.  Or the goal of a plan may be to improve a personal or professional relationship, to make a friend or be a friend, to plan a party or prepare for an interview.
      Decision Making:  When you make personal decisions, you are designing a strategy for living, for the actions that will help you achieve your goals in life.  Similarly, business decisions are strategies for achieving business goals, and so on.
      Often, the design of a new product is accompanied by strategies.  For example, making and selling a musical CD (a product) requires the coordinating of many strategies — for artistic research and development (writing and arranging songs, and deciding which ones to record), for rehearsing and performing, engineering and production, financing and manufacturing, marketing and distributing — to achieve objectives that are practical, artistic, and financial.
      And if you're opening a new restaurant, making delicious food is just one part of a complete strategy.  You'll want to think about which combination — of foods, atmosphere, service, prices, location, marketing,... — will bring in new customers, send them out satisfied, and keep them coming back for more.
 

 
      The Process of Design
      The first step in problem solving is to recognize that a problem exists, because you have looked at a situation as it is now and you can imagine a future in which things have changed and improved.  Or perhaps you can imagine a future in which things have changed but have not improved, and you want to avoid (or minimize) these changes.  Either way, if you want to take advantage of your opportunity to make a difference, you will generate and evaluate ideas (and actions) that will help you make progress toward a solution.  These ideas and actions are the focus of this section.

      Imagine a "time machine" experience in which — before the invention of hybrid cars that run on both gasoline and electricity — you are part of a design team whose objective is to develop this new type of car into an economical hybrid minivan.  The general method you will use for solving this problem — for converting your ideas into reality so you can take advantage of the opportunities inherent in your ideas — is shown below:

      Why are you interested in designing a hybrid car?  Because, based on old observations, you have decided that this is an idea worth developing.  In making this decision you have taken the first step in design, to define an overall goal.  In this case, the meta-goal is to design a hybrid minivan.
      Then you can define goals that are more specific by asking "What do we want?  What characteristics (for what it is and what it does) should our product have?"  /   For this minivan, you set goals for function (such as making it easy to remove the seats, and to load large objects through the doors), performance (for gas mileage, acceleration, handling, braking, crash safety,...), aesthetics (so it looks good), human response (so lots of people will buy it), cost (for the initial "factory changeover" and for each additional car), plus criteria such as quality control and reliability.
      You can generate ideas for options by selecting an old product or inventing a new product.  Usually, to invent a "new" product you revise an old product.  Your new hybrid will have some old components (bodies and seats similar to those in vans and station wagons, existing engines and transmissions, electrical storage devices,...) that you can adapt and combine in new ways.  You will think creatively about different ways to use these components (or new components you'll invent) to improve your car in all ways, especially by letting it use gasoline-and-electricity cooperatively to improve the car's efficiency.
      Then you run an experiment — either a mental experiment (in your mind) to produce predictions about what you think will happen, or a physical experiment (in the real world) to produce observations about what really happens — that will produce useful information.  /   To test a new body style for fuel efficiency, you might make a prediction based on what you know (from previous experiments) about the fuel efficiency of similar bodies.  Or you could test the body's aerodynamic properties in a wind tunnel.  Or, to transform your idea into reality, you can build a prototype, then drive it and observe the actual gas mileage.  Similarly, you can predict the body's consumer appeal based on the response to similar bodies in the past, or by showing people a drawing (or prototype) and asking them, "How do you like this?  Would you buy it?"   Or you can start building your minivans for sale, to find out how many people really will buy them.
      You evaluate an option by comparing goals with predictions (to see if there is a close match between the characteristics you predict and those you want) or by comparing goals with observations (to see if there is a close match between the characteristics you observe and those you want).  This comparison usually leads to a continuing development of new ideas for revisions and/or experiments, as described above.  Eventually, you may decide that one of your product-options is satisfactory, so you can begin making and selling it.  Or you may decide that this project is not worth doing, and you abandon the idea.  Or you might convert it into a new project by revising your goals, based on what you have learned during the process of design.  { It is important to recognize that critical thinking is simply evaluative thinking;  it is not necessarily negative and does not always lead to criticism.  Critical thinking can also lead to an enthusiastically positive conclusion about the idea being evaluated. }
      In a step that is optional — that is not necessary when designing a product or strategy, but is often helpful — you do a "reality check" by comparing predictions with observations in order to evaluate theories, to see whether your ideas about "the way things are" match the reality of "the way things really are."  /   For example, how closely do your theory-based predictions about fuel efficiency match your observations of the actual fuel efficiency?  And are people really buying the type of vehicle that, based on your theories about consumers, you predicted they would buy?

      This process of design, this method of thinking, is a design method.
 

 
      Design and Science
      What is the connection between design and science?  Broadly defined, a designer is anyone who tries to improve a product, strategy, or theory.  Since the overall goal of science is the designing of improved theories about nature, science is just a special type of design, devoted to solving one kind of problem.  But when we are studying the methods used by problem solvers over a wide range of areas, it is useful to distinguish between two types of objectives: the designing of products or strategies (which I'll call design) and the designing of theories (which is science).

      As described above (in The Process of Design), goals and predictions and observations can be compared in three ways:  two of these comparisons are the main strategies in design, and one comparison is the main strategy in science.

      In science our overall long-term objective is to search for the truth, to develop theories that are accurate representations of reality.  During this search our most useful thinking tool is a reality check that compares theory-based predictions with observations.
      In conventional design the main objective is to develop an improved product or strategy, and our most useful tools are quality checks that compare goals with predictions, and goals with observations.  Although in design it may be useful to get feedback about theories by comparing predictions and observations, this is not the central focus of action, as it is in science.

      Despite these differences in objectives and methods, there are many similarities.  In both activities, there is goal-directed "design action" with a creative generation and critical evaluation of ideas, plus experimentation (mental and physical) to produce the predictions and observations that (as you can see in the diagram) are a central part of the thinking process.  { This section continues in two follow-up pages: Part 1 (with more sophisticated comparisons of Scientific Method and Design Method) and Part 2 (about scholarly studies of design and science and their relationships). }
 

 
      Frameworks for Improvisational Thinking
      To improve our understanding and our teaching of thinking skills, I've developed models for the methods of thinking used in design and science.  These frameworks for improvisational thinking — Integrated Design Method (outlined above) and Integrated Scientific Method — were designed to achieve two main goals:  A) allow an accurate description of methods — of what designers (or scientists) think and do when they are solving problems — and  B) help students improve the quality of their own thinking by helping them master the methods of thinking used by designers and scientists.  These goals are discussed below.

      1. Problem-Solving Methods (in Design and Science)
      Other pages examine — briefly and in detail — the activities that occur during the process of design:
1A. DEFINE OVERALL GOAL (for what you want to design) 
1B. DEFINE GOALS (for desired functions and performance)
2A. SEARCH (by gathering old ideas and observations) 
2B. IMAGINE (to generate new ideas and predictions)
2C. TEST(to generate new observations)
3.  EVALUATE (by comparing goals with observations and predictions) and DECIDE 
4.  THEORIZE (based on comparing observations with predictions) [optional] 

      And the methods used in science (in a designing of theories about nature) are introduced in Basic Scientific Method and are then explored — briefly and in more depth — while the skeptical question, "Is there a method?", is answered in another page.
 

      2. Educational Applications for Design and Science
      An important function of education is helping students learn how to think more effectively.  In our efforts to achieve this goal, some activities involving design and science — activities which require the generation and evaluation of ideas, and thus inspire thinking that is creative and critical — can play valuable roles.

      Design before Science
      As a concept, Scientific Method is more familiar than Design Method.  But as an activity, design is more familiar, for most students, in what they have experienced in the past and what they can imagine for the future.  Design makes a concrete connection with the past (so students can build on the foundation of what they already know) and with the future (so they will be motivated to learn skills that will help them achieve their own goals for life).  Therefore, it seems logical to teach design method before scientific method.  {details}

      Curriculum Coordination
      A model of Integrated Design Method (IDM) could play a valuable role in a wide spiral curriculum that has wide scope (to allow a coordination, across different subject areas, of related learning experiences) and uses spiral repetitions (to allow a coordination, over time, of related learning experiences).  IDM will help students understand the coherent integration of thinking skills within each design experience, and also the connections between different experiences.  The beginning of this page (What is a problem?) describes the design opportunities in diverse areas of life.  Although these areas may seem unrelated, IDM shows that similar problem-solving strategies are used in each area.  This understanding — and the use of IDM in reflection activities that enhance "what is learned" from an experience — will help students transfer their skills from one area to another.  IDM provides a common context for instruction in different areas, allowing mutual support in a synergistic system, with a coordinated strategy producing a more effective teaching of "thinking skills" across the curriculum.  {details}