The 'Art' in the Design Process.

A recent post on LinkedIn by Don Norman ('The Future of Design: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It', here), made me think of a conversation I had with a good friend in our days as students at the Industrial Design Engineering faculty in Delft.

I got a recommendation for 'best design' for that year but I almost failed the assignment on the grounds of 'bad process'! After a long discussion with my supervisor in which I explained my process I saved the day and my assignment. At the end of that day, after a cheap meal at the Mensa, my friend and I agreed that I successfully applied the analysis. But there has been nagging something ever since, because we ended up discussing what we would really like to do with our lives and although our course was focused on designing products for the masses, I expressed my desire to create small series of 'artful' designs (we called them 'arti-farties').

Now, 25 years later, I was very happy to read Don Norman's post about the fork in the road between 'design as a craft' and 'evidence based design' and to discover that for most of us the choice will lead to the same outcome.

I see the 'fork' in the road as the split between 'art' and 'design'. To me it felt more like a chasm than a fork, but this chasm is slowly being bridged.

Art, for me, means creating meaning. Through manual skills honed over time and from a drive deep within the artist something is created that, first of all, appeals to the artist himself and, in second place, may appeal to others. It would be silly to try to expect an 'artistic' outcome from a prescribed analytical process: after-all it is an 'art'. An artist is successful in the eyes of others when the 'inner spring' produces strong meaning for others, even when they cannot put in words what exactly this experience is. You only need to look at your favored piece of art to experience this. For me this happens when I look at the works of Vincent van Gogh.

Design on the other hand is a process for finding a (material) solution to a given task or problem, which can be replicated or at least easily copied endlessly, but it lacks the deeper meaning of an 'object of art'.

Even in my student days 'the design process' was not a fully described analytical process, this process was reserved for pure engineering tasks. Our design process included inputs, from besides engineering, economics and ergonomics, also from a less tacit field (of 'form' or) 'design' which gave an 'intuitive' and creative streak to the process. This aspect of 'creative inspiration' of the designer or 'the artist in the engineer' was looked down upon by other 'pure' engineering sciences.

When functional features and objective experiences are a sufficient focus, a designer can base his intuition on an objective analysis of the needs of potential customers and add some creative ingredients to the mix of the solution.
I would now argue that 'this does not cut it any more'. People are constantly looking for meaning in their surroundings. More and more their surroundings (their world of experiences) are created by designers, and in many cases almost completely! But to create meaning requires that designers rely more on the artist inside themselves. But, unlike the 'pure' artist, designers operate in a primarily commercial environment. This means they need to create meaning not for themselves, but ultimately for others: customers! This requires that the designer has a thorough understanding of the psyche and the environment of the customers. It is a bit like 'method acting', deeply immersing yourself in their position, not just -think of- but -think like- your future customer.

There are frameworks available to include 'the creation of meaning' in the design process. It seems that those who can best combine the 'analytical process' with the 'method acting' are most likely to produce better customer satisfaction and thus create more value. But it requires that the 'process of design' (or lets just call it 'design thinking'), is again less analytical and more artistic. It requires those going through the 'process of design' to immerse in this process, and trust that it will result in a more beneficial outcome.

Those that are willing to 'take this uncertain bridge' and include the 'art-side' in their design will open-up a whole new world of design potential.

Now I can admit that my process for the assignment was flawed. What I had done was, I analyzed existing designs and applied the outcome, very successfully, to my design, but I failed to immerse myself in the position of the customer, the child that would play with my design. I failed to 'explore' to take my design so much further. I failed to let the artist in me 'live like the customer' for a while, and let him add meaning to the design, which cannot be achieved through a purely analytical process. Now I know better and I have the courage to immerse myself and trust the creative process.

Yes, sometimes your supervisors were right, even when you rationally convinced everyone that they were not.

(PS: Photo by Bram Hilgersom via Flickr of the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam)