The design process - The aims of design

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 materializes 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 criticizing 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 criticize 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 organizing 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 summarized 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.

It can be argued that trying to meet these aims is a process demanding logic; an intellectual, rational review of the matter, but it is by no means clear that this is how all, or any designers work in practice. Much has been written about brainstorming, mind mapping and even daydreaming as ways in which unexpected, apparently illogical design solutions appear. However, in many cases, the design development process involves the following actions.

Analysis
Analysis means splitting up the ‘whole’ into its constituent parts. In the example of the shop front described earlier, it is useful to find out what the essential design criteria is for the major elements of function, appearance, cost, image and so on, which can each be analysed in more detail to determine what they mean, or could mean in relation to creating the shop front.

Synthesis
Synthesis is the re-assembly of the parts into a meaningful ‘whole’. The information gained through analysis can be used to suggest a possible design for the shop front.

Appraisal
The proposal for the shop front can be checked to see if it matches the analysis, critically assessed by interested parties such as the client, the Planning Authority and other members of the design team.

Feedback
Critical comments received following appraisal in the form of further information, advice, recommendations, approvals or instructions will either confirm that the proposal is acceptable, or that some elements must be analyzed again in more detail. Further examination of the elements leads to a new synthesis, a new design proposal which can be re-appraised and tested once more, leading to more precise feedback so that the design improves, becomes better, more practicable, economical or attractive until at some point it is accepted as being the right solution, or the best solution to proceed with under the prevailing circumstances.