Situation

• At the top of a chart, you have a situation
• As a designer, you want to change it
• As a researcher, you want to know more about it
• Can’t see all of it at once!
• So, you can break it down into a couple of different parts (X,Y)
• But the, you realize that you need to break it down even farther
• As you continue to break it down, it continues to expand…
• E.G. – Weight Loss can be broken up into Diet and Exercise
• Diet can be broken down into different categories, as can exercise
• This leads to new / different academic disciplines
• In the past, the majority of the experts in philosophy, mathematics, religion, etc., actually knew each other. This was before the internet, before telephones, they traveled and shared knowledge
• As a designer, its tough because you have to look at everything in the big picture
• If you miss something, you might get labeled as a “bad designer”
• Paralysis of Analysis
• When you try to design something at the top of the tree, you want to know more, so you begin to analyze and you begin to move down the tree
• Then, you realize, as you do move down the tree the more you know the more there is to know.
• Eventually you get to a point where you become paralyzed… do I need to know more, should I act on this, what should I do next? Move up the tree, move down the tree, etc
• A designer can’t really ignore a major facet because its “too complicated.”
• In science, you CAN get away with ignoring something like performance, or functionality, and really drill down on a particular part of the problem
• In design though, you have to bring everything back and put it back in context. You have to focus on the situation as you finish the design
• In science the solution is evaluated on how well it fits into the tree
• In design, the solution is evaluated based on the situation
• This is particularly important when designing things like bridges… or nuclear power plants
• If you miss something, if you make a mistake, you could kill someone
• “Killing someone is not good. Write that down.” (Erik Stolterman)
• Object of Study
• From Science: To Understand is the Purpose and Knowledge is the Outcome
• From Design: To Create and Change is the Purpose and A “changed” Reality is the Outcome
• Design is generally seen as coming from an ethical perspective, as much of design is changing or modifying the world in some way. Changing the world is generally looked upon as an ethical approach
• From Criticism: To Challenge and Emancipate is the Purpose and Meaning is the Outcome
• Criticism of Art is generally seen as a critique… the way you comment on the world through artistic activities… Also to create new meaning of the world and what we should do!
• From The Spiritual:
• One of the most difficult things of a designer is to challenge people to think about whats not in the real world right now
• We really want something new and innovative… but we don’t want our day to day operation to change
• “As a designer, you have to be in conspiracy with your client.”

• A lot of research is done on designers about practice, but, as a result you get a lot of data on things that may not necessarily be “good” practices
• If you look at a really good high school football team, and a pro team…
• Fundamentally, they will appear to be very similar: The same rules, same practices, same equipment, same types of things
• But, when you see what they do on a really deep level, you’ll quickly see the difference between a novice group and a professional group
• To understand practice is one thing, but to understand “good” practice isn’t necessarily the same thing

Erik’s Study
• Large study with practicing designers
• “When do you come up with your first idea”
• They were hesitant to discuss this… they wanted to appear to be very rational (Do the research, reach an understanding, and then come up with the idea)
• But, when you can get an idea within 10 minutes about something you know nothing about, how is that possible?
• Over time as you learn more about design you gain more knowledge, best practices, and thought figures, and repertoire, that are not connected to a particular instance or situation. Miniature design principles.
• As a novice designer, everything is new. You don’t have this repertoire to draw on, and as a result you can’t wrap your head around it
• However, if you’re an expert designer, when you approach the same situation, there is still no connection between the tacit knowledge and the situation, but when they collide, ideas will come out of the meeting of what you know and what you’re presented with.
• An expert designer can find an appropriate solution a thousand times faster than an inexperienced one, not because the expert is smarter, but because they have a methodology that allows them to quickly come up with ideas, sort them, and figure out where to go.
• NOTE: Expert doesn’t equal Experienced. You could have 40 years of design experience and not be an expert at all