Design theory, in contrast to real life practice, rarely confronts one of its key aspects, namely: 'the designer paradox' phenomenon. Creative endeavour at large and design in particular faces specific and unique challenges in industry application. On the one hand, creative design is expected to encompass aspects of inspired genius and yet, it must meet the pragmatic constraints of deadlines, costs and above all client expectations. All too often, the task of resolving these conflicting objectives is compromised by issues beyond designers' control, for example, poor requirements specification or inadequate definitions of the problem scope.
So far, the challenge of mitigating these aspects of design practice has not been solved in a ubiquitous way. However, I believe that optimal outcomes can be realised through an informed approach. Adoption of the Systems View for both the problem and the solution domains, in combination with relevant Cognitive Psychology hypotheses, facilitates a methodology which empowers all stakeholders and minimises the ambiguity of the design process. This notion assumes that tangible benefits for project outcomes can be gained through conscious realisation of individuals' roles and their influence, in context of: problem comprehension, idea generation, interpretation and concept exploration. Further, my approach recognises/accepts the opportunistic design tendency (solving problems with low cognitive cost first) and aims to promote reflection-in-action (refinement through reflection on interim stages of the design).
The probability of reaching creative/innovative outcomes is an all together different matter and I'll attempt to address it before long.
No comments:
Post a Comment