How Do We Generate Ideas?
My Reflection
Design process is not something I have read much about previously. I found it interesting and it made me realise that I have never thought about my own design process before. I liked the Bauhaus method with all of the stages overlapping and no clear path through, to me this is what design is, throwing out different ideas and picking the one to carry forward. [1]
The main principles of Bauhaus were unity of form and function, the idea that design is in service of the community, and a belief in the perfection and efficiency of geometry. With such linear principles it is surprising to me that the Bauhaus design process is distinctly not linear. The idea that each stage feeds into the next and gains momentum sits really well with me as a designer. I like how many elements the Bauhaus model includes, it seems that following this would lead to a really robust design. I also really liked the inclusion of exercise classes in the working day, this would help with mindfulness and concentration.
Bruce Archer's systematic design approach [2] I think is too linear and simple. It doesn't allow for any fluctuation or alternate ways of working which, thinking about it further, is probably how a process diagram should be. I think for something as natural and free flowing as design shouldn't be restricted by such a tight process.
I researched this further as I didn't want to be too dismissive of a well respected theory. I found that Archer was the first (along with the Department of Design Research at the Royal College of Art) to realise the need for philosophy of design. Archer thought it was really important to understand the meaning of design, the knowledge it requires and the role of design in society regarding sustainability, social wellbeing and policy. I also found Archer's theory that Design is actually the third form of knowledge, the other two being science and humanities very interesting. Although I still think this process lacks the wiggle room you sometimes need in a design process, I think the combination of design and philosophy is really interesting and I plan to research this further.
I think Archer's approach is a good start at making sense of complex thinking. However it does not take into account external factors such as sustainability, social responsibility and technology (to name a few). Modern design thinking has to incorporate this. I think because of the fast paced changes in technology since Archer designed his ideal process in the 1970's, designers today have to be far more adaptable and flexible when it comes to process.
The Design Council's double diamond approach was interesting however I felt like it didn't leave much room to rework your ideas. It seems like a very linear path from problem to solution. I think design is far more fluid than this, with sometimes problems arising in the second diamond that require you to go back to the first, such as one of your development ideas identifies a problem you did not initially know about, requiring an alteration to the brief. I've often found that until you have your solution you don't understand the problem fully; the double diamond separates the problem and solution so much so that they are essentially separate processes with the design brief being a constricting factor in the middle. I decided to sketch out alterations to the double diamond and develop this with the aim of discovering my design process. [3]
I started by adding arrows to the double diamond (top left) to suggest the idea you could go back and fourth through the stages. It got too complicated however to add this into each stage. I then removed the brief stage in the middle (bottom left) as I think it is not fluid enough and added arrows to and from each stage, this made the diagram unclear. I then boiled the stages down to their simplest possible form (top right) to develop my own model of thinking (bottom right). The sketch process bottom right was the one I designed to most resemble my own process. While some stages are similar to the double diamond, I always like to have the option to revisit stages if need be. For example, if feedback and testing requires it, you have the option to jump backwards in the process to redefine what you are doing. This is a very personal approach to design and may not encapsulate all of the stages necessary. Either way, sketching out these diagrams was a really interesting way of exploring my approach to the design process.
RSA Animate - The Divided Brain - RSA [4]
Before watching this video, I was one of the people who believed the right side of the brain was emotional and the left was logical. I really enjoyed this animation about the brain actually being separated in an alternative way; the right side being broad open and alert and the left side being narrow and sharply focused with the frontal lobe inhibiting instinctive reactions. I was really interested in the right side of the brain having a preference for the embodied world rather than machines.
This got me thinking how important the understanding of human emotions and empathy in general are to design. I strongly believe that empathy and understanding coupled with the desire to make the world around you better are the most important things that make you an exceptional designer and all of this appears to come from the right hemisphere.The ability to connect and communicate with people is what makes design great. However, the left hemisphere helps in other ways. The ability to think in the abstract and the power to manipulate the lifeless both play a massive part in design I think; thinking outside of the box and creating something unique as well as bringing images and messages to life play an important part in the actual making of the design. I came to the conclusion with design, the left hemisphere is the practical skill and the right hemisphere is the consideration for the world around us (including empathy, emotions, context).
I also found the end of the video really insightful - the idea that the world we live in now is a left hemisphere world with the age of technology, virtual meetings and bureaucracy. It seem like we, like McGilchrest, should be more passionate about the right side, about being intuitive and caring about people through both design and every other avenue available. This video really made me think about how I can utilise both sides of my brain more and include this consideration in my thought process, making sure I don't forget the intuition or the rational.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein
Tim Brown - Design Thinking
TED Talk 2009
While studying Architecture I came across this TED Talk by Tim Brown [5]- it was all about how we need to start thinking bigger in order to solve bigger problems. Tim explains that we used to think big like Brunel (Great Western Railway) then after the industrial revolution design became a career and we started thinking smaller; now is the time to think bigger again. I really like this idea, having spent five years as a designer for not for profits, this is the kind of thinking I like. For example, UNICEF's aim is not to feed 50 children, it's to keep all children safe. If this way of thinking is used in other industries such as the third sector why can't we use it in Design?
When I was at school a teacher asked me what I wanted to do, back then (I was 11) my answer was to be an astronaut. She then gave me the single piece of advice I will never forget - if that's what you want to do, every decision you make from now on needs to push you closer to that goal. This in my eyes is how design should be - you should have a big goal in your mind and everything should service that destination. Perhaps this is where Edward De Bono's Six Hat Thinking could come into it - everyone involved has the end goal in mind but you need to look at the problem in all six ways in order to make sure you are covering every base. For example, your goal could be to end poverty and the immediate way you're going to help is by raising money for a homeless charity. Yes the end goal is ending poverty but you need the six hats to ensure feelings are considered, caution is observed and new ideas listened to. The six hats allows you to use the collective group mind to make conscious decisions to reach that destination. I think the six hats fit really well with this theory of big ideas.
Out of the processes so far I think this one is the one that makes the most sense to me - rather than focussing on a restricted nature of the design process this is more about focussing on your destination and how you want to improve the world around you.
Thinking Too Much; and Thinking Too Little
Alain De Botton [6]
My Reflection
This one was pretty deep! I must admit, after I heard the description of thinking too much and too little, I did go through people I know and decide whether they thought too much or too little. But after I stopped judging my friends, this one did really make me think about thinking. The question I was left with after watching this video was what is the mid point between these two extremes? While I thought the content was good, Alain De Botton offered no sense of optimism in this, it seemed like we either think too much or too little and there is nothing in-between. It's almost like we perceive both eventualities; thinking too much and being more academic without accepting ignorance; and thinking too little and avoiding awkward complexities with common sense; but by being both we are also neither.
This reminded me of the Aristotelian view of thinking; the idea that there are differences between perceiving and understanding, one involves taking on perceptible form and the other intelligible form. This is similar to De Botton's; the intelligible form is thinking too much (academic) and the perceptible form is thinking too little (common sense). To support this, Aristotle describes the intelligible form as active - you're always making sense of ideas and understanding things on a deeper level; while the perceptible form is passive, you're being affected by something but not necessarily thinking about it. I found this a really interesting comparison as the theories are thousands of years apart yet still view thought process in a similar way. With all of the advancements in science between Aristotle and Alain De Botton, there is still not a deep scientific understanding of how a person thinks. It is so individualised that even to this day the subject is made up of philosophy and theory rather than fact. I do however think philosophy is an important element of design and one I will look into further.
"Intelligence is a Moral Category" - Theodor Adorno
I decided to do some further research into philosophical ideas of thought and the division between the intelligent and the emotional. Contradicting the belief shared by Aristotle and Alain De Botton is Theodor Adorno who believes that both intelligence and emotion are needed to make moral decisions therefore shouldn't be seen as two separate entities at all. [7] He believed that both science and pop culture have had a negative effect on us; science makes us less emotional and pop culture makes us less intelligent.
While I don't agree with everything Adorno says (he suggests to be moral we must not watch TV, I like Netflix far too much for that), I do find the idea that we shouldn't separate emotion and intelligence fascinating. I have spent this blog so far saying we need both to make good design decision and good life decisions so why separate them at all? We need both in order to be good at what we do and a good person in general. Design needs to be both intelligent and emotional to connect with people and get the message across. It may be time we stop thinking about them as mutually exclusive and instead spend more time working out how they can work together. [9]
On Exercising the Mind
My Reflection
I found this article quite interesting. [8] The idea that since the rigid and unimaginative society of the early 20th century encouraged spontaneity and liberation which in tern led to current generations feeling like their lives are chaotic and overwhelmed really shows the ebbs and flows in society. What is needed for one generations healthy minds, often results in the exact opposite for the following generation. It is also interesting to me that we are now heading back towards an ancient Greek principle that a good life is reliant on education. It seems to me like this is part of it, being well educated means wider world views, more opportunities to learn and a deeper understanding of certain things, but it is not the only thing you need. Once again it seems if we keep heading down this road, 30 years from now that generation will be liberated and find the spontaneity again and so on, the cycle continues.
Will exercising the mind help to break these cycles? Will 'thought gyms' where you can go to look at things in a different way, or talk through ideas really help make people feel less chaotic without the need for a total reset to a more structured and conformist time? it seems to me like they would allow people the opportunity to organise their thoughts and work on different areas much like in a gym for your body. Maybe the reason it is so chaotic now is because of all of the different options open to us. The internet is constantly at our disposal, there's billions of hours of streaming on Netflix and (pre pandemic) there were thousands of restaurants within a ten minute walk of the flat. This kind of choice has never been available before so maybe it is time to start exercising our minds and get them ready to take on this new world of opportunity.
Workshop Challenge
[11] After reading the 'Exercising your mind" article the part that really stayed with me was about people going back towards the Ancient Greek approach that a good life is reliant on education and reason. I have always been fascinated with ancient Greek Philosophy since studying it at undergrad level and the theory that has always stood out in my memory is Plato's cave allegory. I am really interested in the theory of the forms in relation to modern day design. Plato believed that the real world is actually the world of ideas, this contains the ideal forms of everything, the world we are born into, the world of senses is just full of imperfect copies of ideal forms. The idea that forms exist in the mind of a creator perfectly and all you can produce physically is an imperfect shadow of the perfect form makes me wonder if this is the difference between ideas and execution. How many times can you see a design perfectly in your head yet when you try to represent it the reality never matches up to the expectation? It certainly happens to me a lot.
Instead of being about the process of thinking, Plato's allegory was more about what we think we know and what is true. In "The Republic" Plato states that the forms are innately known to us at birth and the only way we can get closer to the ideal forms is through reason, not through senses. I find this way of thinking really interesting - the idea that we can never produce something perfectly formed, instead we spend our lives chasing this perfection. I think this really relates to a designers way of thinking (even though this was hundreds of years before design was even a job!) as even when a project is finished, you go through it in your head thinking about what you could have done differently or ways you could have improved it. In this instance, we are trying over and over to see if we can get closer to understanding perfect design.
The Allegory of the Cave also separates intellectual thinking from empirical thinking in a really interesting way. The empirical thinkers believe the only things that matter are what you can see and experience in the empirical world and that what you see should be taken as truth. Intellectual thinkers (the prisoner from the cave who escaped and saw the world of the forms) know they do not know everything, they understand that what we see and experience is just a shadow of truth. I think this is the kind of thinking good designers have. They know that the best way to communicate isn't necessarily tangible - it's a feeling someone gets when interacting with your work; it can be the best poster in the world (empirical truth) but if it doesn't have an effect on someone or move someone (intellectual truth), it's not as successful as it needs to be.
"Design must seduce, and perhaps more importantly, evoke an emotional response" -April Greiman
April was one of the first designers to embrace a computer as a tool for design and agrees with this philosophy of the most important thing being the intellectual response rather than the empirical one. By being one of the first American designers to embrace change and learn new skills I think shows Greiman's view on the importance of education and intellectual thinking, coupled with the idea that your aim should be to reach someone on an emotional level rather than just the empirical one. [10]
I think Plato's allegory of the cave can applied to a lot of different situations, including and not limited to design today. The way of thinking that separates the empirical from the intellectual is a really interesting approach that speaks to me far more than a linear design process does. I did realise through investigation that I think about design in this way without realising. When I finish a draft I always ask myself how have I executed this? (empirical) and how do I want someone to feel what they look at it? (intellectual). We all want to be the person who is freed form the cave and gains a whole new perspective on life and not the ones who stay in there and insist they know everything, on a macro level I think the allegory of the cave is good motivation to continue investigating, learning and being curious about everything.
Black Line Drawing
I started by exploring the different kinds of drawing referenced in the brief video; descriptive, diagrammatic and abstract. I liked how the descriptive one looked, it told the whole story. However, considering the concept of the cave allegory, the descriptive approach seems too obvious. I thought in order to reflect the idea that what we see is not the whole truth, maybe the diagrammatic or abstract approach is more appropriate. Even as I sketched it I didn't like the diagrammatic approach - it seemed too clinical when talking about the concept of beauty and truth. I think for the purpose of showing Plato's allegory through single line drawing the abstract approach worked best.
To come up with this I thought about the three most important parts of the allegory; the sun meaning truth and knowledge, the cave containing the prisoners and the perfect ideal forms. I then put these together in an abstract sketch and decided to work from this to develop the idea.
The first thing I thought to do was simplify the abstract idea. I took the solar flares away from the sun and then simplified the chains to just show the shackle inside instead of the chains too. In the final sketch (bottom right) I added the solar flare back in and made the chair look three dimensional however I think the third drawing (bottom left) represents what I want to say about the allegory more.
I didn't just want to go with the first sketch so I thought of another way to represent Plato and his allegory of the cave. This sketch focussed on the idea that the world of ideas (the platonic world) is above and separate from the world of senses (the physical world). I developed this idea from diagrammatic form to abstract concept. I then thought about making the line drawing appear as a shadow on the wall like in the cave; the perfect forms being seen only in shadow. I did like the way this looked however I feel like my previous idea, the sun, chains, cave and perfect form represented the platonic way of thinking more.
I then did a black line drawing of the abstract concept. I felt like although the abstract shaped represented the allegory it was missing something, a key component to make this more intertwined with the concept I am describing. So I then added a shadow behind to represent the imaged projected onto the cave wall. I like this however I think it may have more impact if I made this and actually projected it in shadow onto a wall. I grabbed my partners soldering wire (even though I've never seen him solder a thing in his life) and got to work...
These images are the result of shining a torch through the sculpture I made and capturing the shadow. I altered the images in photoshop. The first was projected onto a wooden surface in an attempt to represent a natural material like the cave. I don't think pine was working as a backdrop so I decided to move on and think more about lighting to heighten the impact. I was really pleased with the middle image, I think it got across exactly what I wanted it to, the idea of a perfect form projecting the shadow onto the 'cave' wall, I also used an orange filter on the torch which really helped with the ambience of a cave. In the third image I darkened it to try and give the effect of a dark cave with only a small glimmer of light, representing the small portion of truth people chained in the cave see. I think this was the most successful out of the three.
I then decided to simplify the form to see if I could still get across the same meaning with a simpler black line image. While I think this had varying levels of success. I like the middle image as I think there's quite a nice campfire vibe to it. However I think the previous iteration with the three parts; the sun, the cave and chains and the perfect form is more successful in communicating the philosophy plato puts forth in the allegory of the cave.
Workshop Challenge Final Piece
Summary
I must admit when I started this week's content I was a bit sceptical, thought it was just going to be a bit dull. But the more I got into it the more I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed having the opportunity to learn about the left and right sides of the brain and the myths surrounding it. I also really enjoyed being able to look more into philosophy after not having the opportunity to since undergrad.
I am reasonably pleased with how the piece came out. I think it represents my abstract vision of the cave well. I liked the orange filter I used to represent the fire in the cave and I think the shadow came out well. The inclusion of the wire frame is something I wasn't sure about when I first took the photo, however I like that I can represent both the shadows and the perfect form in one image.
I do however think given more time there is two things I would do differently;
Use different material. It was pretty tricky to get the soldering wire to stay in the form I needed it to, it was too pliable. It didn't have the smooth look I really wanted in order to represent the perfect forms. I would also use black wire so the wire would be a more solid colour against the background.
Make a more cave like material to cast the shadow onto. I think this might have given my image more depth and a more authentic feel.
Although I would change a couple of things I am happy with the concept for my final piece, even if the execution could use a bit more work with more time. I like how although Plato's Allegory of the Cave is not directly about design thought and process it can be applied to it. Through research I think I have shown that the ancient greek philosophy of knowledge, education and beauty is still very much used in design and can be applied to modern design thinking. For example, the feeling that you are always reaching for something perfect, even though you will never reach it, gives you the motivation and ferocity to continue to push yourself further. If as a designer you are always trying to communicate these ideas of perfect forms, it will enhance your process and encourage you to try even harder to deliver this.
Shout out to my assistant during this whole process, my long suffering partner, Mat. He didn't complain about my incessant picture taking or achy arms once and would like that on record.
Further Reflection
After a few weeks passed I looked back on this outcome and really wasn't happy with it - I think the wire wasn't the right material as it lost it's shape quickly to the point where it was almost unrecognisable. I decided to have another go at this workshop challenge taking my other idea about the physical world and the world of ideas (left). I decided to make this one out of cardboard in the hope it will retain it's shape.
These are the photos I took of the new design. I think these are much better because the shape is more obvious, it hasn't lost its shape like the previous one and it looks far neater without the original cut out in it. As one final experiment I am going to play with the saturation to see if the warm glow of the fire in the cave will make the final piece look more authentic.
I decided I wanted to give the black line more space on the page so retook the photos.
While I quite like the orange hue to suggest fire in the cave I actually prefer the unedited photos. I think they give it a more authentic feel. Therefore my new final piece for this week is:
Peer Review and Discussion
References
[1] Cramer, C, Grant, K. (2017). The Bauhaus, an Introduction. Available: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/german-art-between-the-wars/bauhaus/a/the-bauhaus-an-introduction. Last accessed 23/02/21.
[2] Boyd Davis, S, Reeve, O. (2016). The Origins of Design Research: Bruce Archer and the Department of Design Research. Available: https://www.rca.ac.uk/news-and-events/rca-stories/origins-design-research-bruce-archer-and-department-design-research/. Last accessed 23/02/21.
[3] Dubberly, H (2015). How to Design. San Francisco: Dubberly Designs. p11-18.
[4] RSA. (2011). The Divided Brain. Available at: https://www.thersa.org/video/animates/2011/10/rsa-animate---the-divided-brain. Last Accessed: 23/2/21
[5] Brown, T. (2009). Design Thinking. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_designers_think_big?language=en. Last accessed: 24/2/21.
[6] The School of Life. (2021). Thinking too much, thinking too little. Available: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/thinking-too-much-and-thinking-too-little/. Last accessed 25/2/21.
[7] Buckingham, W (2011). The Big Philosophy Book. UK: DK. p226
[8] The School of Life. (2020). On Exercising the Mind. Available: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/exercise-for-the-mind/. Last accessed 25/2/21.
[9] Cook, Deborah. 2008. Theodor Adorno Key Concepts Stocksfield [England: Acumen.
[10] Heller, S. (1998). April Greiman. Available: https://www.aiga.org/medalist-aprilgreiman. Last accessed 25/02/21.
[11] MCALEER, Sean. 2020. Plato’s ‘Republic’: An Introduction. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.
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