Designing AND making
Design is a word that is in popular and common use now. It is broadly understood to be a means to brand and product differentiation, as well as a tool for personal expression.
The business press writes about design thinking within the context of the need for innovation, which is considered a very important challenge in our global economies.
With the democratization of digital tools like graphics software and additive manufacturing, many more people have the chance to participate in this activity.
Design has finally gained its place at the adult’s table.
That’s all very positive and I no longer have to explain what a designer is or what they do. However, I’m not convinced that this is a topic that is as thoroughly understood as it might be tempting to believe. Since I’m not only in the design business, but also in the education business, I feel as though I ought to comment.
Like many designers, this activity has been, for me, largely intuitive. It’s the way my mind works. But I wouldn’t be nearly as good a designer as I like to think I am if I had not consciously and deliberately applied myself to becoming better at it. That entailed going to design school and to putting in the long hours of time to gain and hone a skill. It also included a lot of factory and workshop experience, learning about materials and techniques.
Fortuitously, my teaching experience has also been a big help, because it forced me to think about what I did and how I did it deeply enough to be able to explain it to others.
One of the important things that I learned along the way is that while design, as a cerebral activity, may have primacy, the act of making what I was designing was a very useful complementary process. In fact, making something can fairly be described as a way of thinking. That isn’t so easy to explain, but it’s as if contained within our hands are supplemental brains that, through their exercise, reveal important insights. It’s feedback and it’s also more than that.
This insight was reinforced by other designers, who are inclined to make things, through their observations during a curriculum mapping exercise that we undertook at my school.
As well, it’s obvious in the results of student work, that those that took the trouble to model their ideas had far more successful results.
Our imaginations are wonderful things, but I feel that they require an external discipline to keep them honest. Flights-of-fancy is a useful description of what can happen. But the hard, tangible realities of scale, proportion, material, tool, connection and technique can not only show us the error of our imaginary ways but also reveal to us new options and potentials, if we are so inclined.
Now that we are able to build virtual models on our computers, it can be tempting to substitute this for the more laborious and dirty activity of building tangible representations. While the on-screen images can be wonderfully useful and even efficient, ultimately, they are less than adequate.
As I have observed before, all CAD models of chairs are comfortable and all CAD tables are steady and strong. But are they? There is still only one way to find out. And in the finding out, we usually discover more that we had anticipated and gain both knowledge and confidence.
Design is a complex activity, as I’ve learned. A good job of it will necessitate more than whiteboards and post-it notes. We need to be more holistically involved and that is part of what the activity of making does for us. We bring to our efforts not only our thoughts but also the use of our bodies and our senses of touch, smell, hearing and even taste.
We also have an enhanced opportunity to include our feelings and emotional responses. That is of major importance.
Discussions of design will now often include references to experience design (its own discipline) and discussions of learning will include references to experiential learning. Making what you design is a very good and irreplaceable way to experience it.