Article Design comparison
Ellen Do By: Mandana Sadigh
University of Washigton Fall 2002
To:
Articles Citations: 1] Horst W.J. Rittel. The reasoning of designer 2] Bryan Lawson. How designers think 3] Bryan Lawson. Design in mind 4]Donald Schon. The design Studio 5] Research in design thinking
Information Goals
My information goals in doing this assignment are focusing on these particular purposes: -
Being able to distinguish between articles, which have been and have not been referred. Analyze and compare the five different articles based on particular methodology and rhetoric methods used.
Understanding the meaning of DESIGN.
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Being able to understand the concept of design and how to think as a designer. Distinguish the difference between design and other sciences
Over here I am going to describe the articles information goals separately: Design in Mind and How Designers think - The definition of Design. - To describe the difference between design, art, science. - To let the reader know how designers thing and how we can try to be a designer. - To illustrate that all kind of designs are same. Research in design thinking
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Understanding how people do design. How to develop the ability of design How designers formulate problems. How designers generate solutions. The Cognitive strategies designers employ.
The Reasoning of Designers - Describe the failure of a design process. - What is design. - Who is a designer - How designers think. - What is the Science of design. The Design Studio - Describe reflection-in-action - Defining architecture as education for reflect-in-action - Describethe main idea of reflection-in-action by an studio example.
Reading Questionnaire
-What is the information goal of each article? -What was the method used in each article? - How informative were each article? - Whether there were any contrasts between the articles in term of representing the concept. - How these articles are related to each other in terms of content.
Synopsis
Design in Mind The important issue in this article is to understand Design and difference between designer and scientist. As mentioned in this article the scientist does a job that is essentially one
of description, that is, they try to tell us how things are. Designers, on the other hand, are prescriptive since their job is to tell us how things ought to be. The scientific process is made explicit and replicable, while designers rarely reveal or discuss their methods.
Any kind of design form architecture design, interior design, urban design and so on, will be lived in or used directly by people who are likely to be concerned about both its appearance and physical performance. In this article we see that the starting point of the design could be very confusing. There are two things that we should concern. The fallacies about both beginning and the end of design: First the design problem should be declared clearly, second the there should be solutions that could be considered optimal. The design solutions must not be confusing or puzzle type. How Designers think
The most important issues which are mentioned in this article I believe were the emphasis of Design as a skill. As mentioned in the article design is a highly complex and sophisticated skill. It is not a mystical ability given only to those with recondite powers but a skill which , for many, must be learned and practiced rather like the plying a sport or a musical instruments. Also the author has started his article by mention ting to this statement: To regard thinking as a skill rather than as a gift is the first step towards doing something to improve that skill. Also at the end of the article we see that he mentioned to the fact that thinking should be treated as a complex and high level of skill. So by putting all of these together we will get an idea about Designers thinking. As a conclusion we can say design must be learned rather than taught. And it is essential for a designer to have a good understanding of the technologies relevant to his field also they need to have a well developed aesthetic appreciation. Designers must understand users aesthetic experience , particularly of the visual world, and in this sense this may be different with artist.
Research in design thinking This article describes different research methods in design thinking. The main research methods are: interviews with designers, observation and case studies, protocol studies, controlled tests, simulation trails, reflection and theorizing. Each of these methods is described in the article clearly. Project formulation is one important part of the design. Since most of the time it is not clear what the problem is. So designers sometimes explore problem and solution together, using languages of drawing and modeling. Also they use alternative solution conjecture as means of developing their understanding of the problem. For solution generation designers impose additional constrains that narrow the solution space and help to generate concepts. Also sometimes the change goals and adjust constrains during the process id designing.
The Reasoning of designers This article like the other ones emphasize on the Design definition. It mentioned that the design is not monopoly of those who call themselves designers. The reasoning in design is different form the other kind of reasoning because the design problem is not clear form the first. Learning what the problem is IS the problem. The designers approach is different from the classis problem solver, who first defines his problem in clear term , obtain information, and searches for solution. The designers reasoning is much more disorderly. The Designers appears reasoning as a process of argumentation. There are two possible kind of failure in design process that the designers should avoid. One failure has occurred if the plan done not accomplish what it was intended. The other type of failure has occurred when the execution of plan causes side and after side effects.
Finally the article describes the science of design, which has three tasks. First to develop the theories of design. Second an empirical inquiry into how plans come about, and what is their side effects. And finally looking for tools to support the designers. The Design Studio In this article the author mentioned what the reflectionin-action is. Also he discusses how architecture is an example of reflect-in-action. In order to make since of what designers actually do, we need a view of inquiry based on the process of reflection-in-action. So in this article the reflection-in-action is illustrated with a studio example which is very helpful in understanding the whole concept. This article discuss the world of architecture and since the architecture is a designer when the reflect-in-action is discussed We can generalize it for the whole design fields.
Critique
Research in design thinking was a very good organized paper. It had a good beginning and conclusion. Informative enough. The author achieved his information goal in this article and I achieved my information goal too. The methodology was adequate. , but the information was placed in order. The Reasoning of Designers was a well developed article as well. It has a good diagram which shows why the designers reasoning may be different with other kind of reasoning. Design Studio was to some extend different with the other articles. It was not in the same category. So doing a comparison between that with the other articles was difficult. We see in most of the article it is mentioned that one way to understand the design process is to ask the designer about what they do. But also it is mentioned that mostly the designers are at their best when designing , rather than explaining and since they must sell their product at the market place they may not always describe their processes honestly. So what can we do to understand the design? We have to do all we can do. Observation, get insight form experiment and I agree with the conclusion of the all of the article which was trying to say that design is a skill. It was very useful for me reading these articles to have an open view about design process.
Comparison of articles
All articles were able to transfer information, the first four articles were more organized than the last one, and they were very adequate, and the presentation was much stronger than the other article and they were prepared very well. Actually it was useful for people who are not familiar with Design and want to have general information about Design.
In most of the article the difference between art and design is mentioned. Design is undoubtedly an artistic business, but it shouldnt be confused with art. Art is anything you can get away with, however design usually involves making something that must work in some way as well as expressing some values or ideas. But it is obvious that designers bring their own concerns into process. The design fields deal with producing of objects which are intended both to be looked and used. As we see in reflect-in-action the author menti...