Conceptions of design activity as a problem-solving ‘process’

5.2 Definitions of design

The following section examines definitions of design activity and strategies for explaining design to non-designers described by the research participants. Concepts of design as a process and links between design and problem-solving were frequently established by the participants.

However, notions of design were not reductive and its creative aspects were emphasised alongside the technical skills that it entails. Language barriers and strategies for explaining design to non-designers were also prominent themes in the data.

5.2.1 Conceptions of design activity as a problem-solving ‘process’

In the 15 qualitative interviews, a number of the experts drew on definitions of ‘design as a process’ in order to explain their own design activity. These descriptions conveyed a sense of purpose and pragmatism which was partly linked to the material and making aspects of design activity (discussed in Chapter 6). However, explanations of design as a process did not eclipse

other definitions, and several of the experts held plural conceptions of design. The impact of design activity on process improvement in the public and civic sectors was also underlined.

“Design is a process which is about materialising an idea and making it real and you then have to follow a certain process, an iteration process, to know what works and what doesn't work.” (INT 7)

“It’s not about the service it’s about the design of it. So it’s interesting, one of the key values that we try to show at the end - so we start with design and without design, using these design devices and mindset and tools. That has an impact on the result but also on the process.” (INT 8)

“One thing designers make better is the process of how a project unfolds. There are so many bad meetings - people come and there’s the agenda and they talk and there’s the unstructured conversation and moving them forwards is hard.” (INT 15)

The experts also made links between concepts of ‘design as a process’ and its potential to clarify and develop practical responses in complex situations. One commissioner discussed their experience of working in a new leadership role at a national drug and alcohol addiction charity in the UK, where they observed a lack of knowledge about the needs their organisation was seeking to address. Design activity was then introduced as a strategy for understanding issues that were not previously visible about the people who were using the organisations’

services. Another practitioner working in a leading design consultancy in the UK, offered a succinct view of design activity as a way of making things work better. Whilst the definition is concise, the concept conveyed is a broad and practical approach to problem-solving that is not confined to a specific subject matter or medium. In both cases, the experts underline the role of design activity in building new knowledge - ‘problem-framing’ - and its pragmatic potential to create new solutions - ‘problem-solving’. Notions of purpose, intention and construction are evoked by these descriptions of design.

“I arrived at this organisation and quite quickly felt that this was a design challenge. We weren’t clear about the problem space we were trying to operate in. We weren’t clear about our product, we didn’t understand our users very well, and we didn’t have a way of coming up with and exploring new ways of working. It just felt like we’d done everything the same way for years.” (INT 4)

“We work for all types of organisations large and small, public, private and third sector.

We don’t specialise in an industry, we just look to make things work better…I just see design as problem-solving effectively, that is what I see it as.” (INT 5)

Similarly, in the social investment case study, ‘problem-framing’ was the initial motivation for the commissioning policy team to work with designers (Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3). In this situation, the policy team were using design-led research to better define the problem they perceived about the lack of demand for social investment, which they sought to address by understanding the experiences of social organisations.

“It took us a while to come to the brief...I think it was more difficult than either of us [designers or the policy team] expected: ‘To better understand the experience of ventures [social organisations] in taking on social investment’. Research was noticeable in its absence of that kind. What did exist, was people who had a point they wanted to make and then would find the social venture experience to fit it. You had the impression they had just found people to sign up to whatever they were saying, it didn’t feel venture-led.” (CS 1)

The primary data evidences the importance of problem-solving in design activity in today’s strategic contexts, but it also demonstrates expanded notions of problem-solving in design.

Several of the experts in the qualitative interviews described the use of design activity to build new knowledge and understanding, even where there was no intention to build a design output.

For example, when design activity was initiated by the Social Investment and Finance Team it was used as a research strategy (Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3).

These conceptions of design as a process in the primary data chime with the shift in value from design ‘objects’ to the design ‘process’ observed in contemporary literature (see for example Hunt, 2012). The significance of problem-framing as well as problem-solving to the research participants corresponds to more mature understanding of design in the literature, which developed after Herbert Simon’s problem-solving paradigm of the late 1960s. This later literature points to a more limited role for problem-solving in design activity, where human interaction and the creation of new knowledge through the design process are seen as important additions to the problem-solving paradigm (see Dorst 2006: Hatchuel, 2002: Huppatz 2015). Clearly, in the practical contexts in the primary data, the ‘problem-framing’ aspects of

design activity are valued as much as ‘problem-solving’. Furthermore, the data illustrates how design activity is resulting in wider process improvement in strategic environments.