From the outset of a new project, the designer’s preliminary work can be based on very limited information which may be sufficient to justify putting forward ideas for consideration. However, it is very unusual to find that the finished design materialises effortlessly, translating initial ideas into reality without any revision. This quote from Karl Popper ‘An Evolutionary Approach’ sums up the situation concisely:
‘We start, I say, with a problem, a difficulty. It may be practical or theoretical. Whatever it may be when we first encounter the problem we cannot, obviously, know much about it. At best, we have only a vague idea what our problem really consists of. How, then, can we produce an adequate solution? Obviously we cannot. We must first get better acquainted with the problem, but how? My answer is very simple: by producing an inadequate solution, and by criticising it.
Only in this way can we come to understand the problem. For to understand a problem means to understand its difficulties; and to understand its difficulties means to understand why it is not easily soluble – why more obvious solutions do not work. We must therefore produce more obvious solutions; and we must criticise them, in order to find out why they do not work. In this way we become acquainted with the problem, and may proceed from bad solutions to better ones – provided always that we have the creative ability to produce new guesses, and more new guesses.’
Designing is a continual process of selecting and organising elements, trying to establish which are the most important and how they might all play their part in the creation of the new product, and inevitably ideas change as possibilities are added or discounted, as proposals are conceived and considered.
The aims of design can be summarised as follows:
Only in this way can we come to understand the problem. For to understand a problem means to understand its difficulties; and to understand its difficulties means to understand why it is not easily soluble – why more obvious solutions do not work. We must therefore produce more obvious solutions; and we must criticise them, in order to find out why they do not work. In this way we become acquainted with the problem, and may proceed from bad solutions to better ones – provided always that we have the creative ability to produce new guesses, and more new guesses.’
Designing is a continual process of selecting and organising elements, trying to establish which are the most important and how they might all play their part in the creation of the new product, and inevitably ideas change as possibilities are added or discounted, as proposals are conceived and considered.
The aims of design can be summarised as follows:
- Identify all the relevant elements pertinent to the project.
- Discover or understand how the elements interact with one another.
- Plan or arrange the elements so that they fit together in an appropriate or meaningful way to create a competent product.
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