Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
world may be unique to a designer or may be shared with a larger design
community ... Designing is primarily social ... ” (Sch ¨ n 1991 , p. 4). If we map
the concept of design world onto the design space, which can be done albeit
differences between the two, we interpret Sch ¨ n as insisting that something that
is common to a community (professional or otherwise) is actually part of the design
space in which the designer operates. I take this to mean that even before a design
task is formulated, there are already a host of factors that shape the design situation
a priori. These include what is known about social and cultural conventions and
traditions, the history of a place or building type or type of product, the technolog-
ical state of the art, environmental issues, legal concerns, prevailing design meth-
odologies, and more. But pre-design also includes the designer or designers' beliefs
and values, both in general and as regards the professional domain to which they
belong (for example, adherence to a particular style), various constraints, and goals
beyond those stated in the task brief (for example, an architect may want a building
to completely merge with nature, although no such requirement was advanced).
In other words, the designer does not start from scratch: he or she or they start at a
spot which has clear coordinates that must be addressed.
Pre-design knowledge is the platform on which a design exploration begins, and
during the exploration things move around in the design space as priorities shift,
information is interpreted from different points of view, relationships are defined
and redefined, and a succession of mental models, individual as well as shared, are
created, revised, recreated, and so on. This is the process of framing the design
problem, task or situation. Following the initial framing (as well as in parallel to it),
an exploration gets under way which consists mainly of embodying the entity that is
being designed (or parts thereof) and establishing a rationale for embodiment acts
(Goldschmidt 2012 ) . Concrete propositions, partial and complete, are made and
assessed and passed on to a more articulate phase of detailing. Upon the emergence
of the most appropriate response(s) to the initial situation or one that arose from its
manipulation, a design proposal is developed. The proposal or proposals are then
typically presented to the stakeholders in pursue of their approval. If the project
moves ahead, at that point the design process shifts to construction or production
supervision, until it is brought to completion. Normally this is considered the end of
the design cycle.
So far we have seen that pre-design is tightly connected to design, where the
latter is the nominal activity of problem solving after a design assignment is
launched. Can we be satisfied terminating this cycle when the artifact is material-
ized, that is, the product manufactured or assembled, or the building constructed?
The answer is clearly negative. A need to gather feedback from the designed entity
after it is put to use was evident to methodologists already in the era of the 'design
methods movements' in the 1960s, mostly in architecture. The idea was that
buildings do not always perform as expected once they are occupied and from a
user-centered point of view it is important to learn about gaps in performance and
use. The lessons learned are implemented in preparing for new designs, especially
of same building types (e.g., health facilities, jails). The name given to the system-
atic gathering of feedback was Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE). A useful
Search WWH ::




Custom Search