Every designer will have a design process that they use to produce their best quality work. I will explore the design processes as commentated by Karl Aspelund, Nigel Cross and Anastasia Prokhorova. Karl Aspelund’s design process describes a common design process used by many graphic designers, architects and interior designer. Nigel Cross describes the design processes from an engineering context and Anastasia Prokhorova depicts the design process of many UX designers. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences of each of the design processes, as well as noting how the processes overlap.
Karl Aspelund:
Karl Aspelund describes his theory of the design process as a seven-phase process. Aspelund maps out the design process as inspiration, identification, conceptualisation, exploration/refinement, definition/modelling, communication and production.
Inspiration
Inspiration should be a key part of every designer’s process, it is where initial ideas start forming and the designer is able to begin to envision a solution. Aspelund identifies that inspiration is a crucial part of the design process however, ‘it is a tool that furthers designs; it is not an end in itself’ (Aspelund, 2010). Aspelund expresses that without inspiration a designer can too easily focus too closely on one idea without noticing valuable and effective ideas. This can be dangerous for the designer as the designer should be ‘continually on alert for new stimulations, new challenges and new approaches to old problems’ (Aspelund, 2010). The reason that inspiration cannot be the most important part of the design process is that design ‘involves a need to go beyond [inspiration] and use an idea and the philosophizing surrounding it to create something else: a product that is physical, useful and more than just an expression of a concept’ (Aspelund, 2010) .
Identification
The identification phase of the design process is where the constraints of the project are considered. Every project will contain constrains, whether they may be imposed by the client, yourself, the time to complete, available resources and budget. These constraints will then form the project brief. ‘A project’s needs and limit’s are it’s constraints, and by identifying them, we understand what we need to engage with to create an effective design,’ (Aspelund, 2010). Aspelund identifies that ‘the best way to recognize a designs inherent constraint is by questioning whether the object would lose its essential nature if a certain aspect were to be removed,’ (Aspelund, 2010). The identification stage is crucial to the success of the designer and the design as ‘a designer’s main concerns are solving problems and making decisions’ (Aspelund, 2010), without identifying the constraints there are no problems to solve, nore decisions to make.
Common Constraints:
End User Constraints are constraints that directly affect the end user. These often include the safety of the product or design and should also include the functionality and form of the product as well as societal constraints.
Constraints of Production are the limits as a result of production materials and processes available. These will often include software such as Adobe and CAD modelling programs. It will also depend on the materials available as well as techniques that can be used. The capabilities of all involved in the process (human and machine resources) is also a constraint to the design process.
Constraints of the Designer must also be considered. The constraints on the designer include the information that is available to them, the time they must design the product. The materials and budgets available are also constraints on the designer.
Constraints of Responsibility include the designer’s responsibility to plan for unexpected outcomes as well as planning for sustainability. It is important that the designer considers how to use resources most efficiently. The designer should work to increase durability, reuse and reparability. The designer may also consider how they can help with changing the relationship between developed and developing countries.
Conceptualisation
In order to bring an idea from a vision to a tangible concept the designer must work to refine their idea. Aspelund states that a good way to refine this idea is to ask, ‘how can you explain this idea further, so that your clients, fellow designers and production team can understand and relate to what you are thinking?’ (Aspelund, 2010). The design stage of conceptualisation involves growing your understanding of the idea ‘to the point where you know as clearly as possible what it is and how it behaves’ (Aspelund, 2010).
Exploration / Refinement
Aspelund includes this phase of the design process as he describes that every ‘concept for a design contains many unexplored possibilities; and these possibilities should always be explored, no matter what the outcome.’ (Aspelund, 2010)It is important not to remain convinced of one idea, rather all possible solutions should be explored before the best is chosen. This stage also ‘allows you to question the viability of your concept by testing the imagined elements involved against reality’ (Aspelund, 2010). You should also start refining the best concepts so that it is possible to see how they would work as the final product.
Definition / Modelling
The definition and modelling phase is when the concepts begin to look like actual products. It is also important to consider a ‘hierarchy of needs’ (Aspelund, 2010) in order to decide which parts of the design are more necessary to the end solution than others. This is necessary as there are usually more limitations when creating the model than there were when thinking of a concept. The modelling of a concept can also be a good tool for further exploration of ideas as many designers will learn by doing, and by making the model in its actual form, many designers will continue to think of improvements.
Communication
Throughout the design process it is important that the designer can clearly communicate ideas. However, at this stage it is especially important that the designer is able to clearly and effectively communicate their ideas as they will need to convince others about the success of the design. Common audiences at this stage are ‘clients, corporate officers, production staff and fellow designers’ (Aspelund, 2010).
Clients
It is important to respond to the needs of the clients, as this is who prompted your design. However, you don’t need to follow the exact requests of the client, but you should absolutely respond to them. The client may identify an issue, and you may find a solution that fixes that issue, but also others. The client may be right, but that doesn’t mean you should stop exploring other solutions. Mark Zeff, president of Zeff Design, based in New York and working in multiple fields including architecture, interior design, furniture, graphics, product design and marketing, says that ‘probably the most important component in the design world is the ability to communicate with your client and hear what the client wants.’ (Mark Zeff cited in Aspelund 2010).
Corporations
When designing for a corporation, ‘the levels of communication increase dramatically’ (Aspelund, 2010). Generally there are many more key stakeholders who each have their own agenda for what they want for the product. It is necessary to communicate to and consider each of these perspectives. In this space it is imperative that you make sure that you communicate effectively and clearly with all stakeholders, and that you do not miss any key communication.
Manufacturing
It is important that as the designer you can clearly communicate the product to the manufacturer. Ultimately it is the manufacturer who will create your product in the form it will enter the market, so it is of upmost importance that you can communicate the needs of the product to them. If you don’t communicate this effectively the manufactured version of your product may look very different to what you had in mind.
Production
This is the stage of the design process when the designer will be working the closest with the manufacturing teams. It is important that the designer can ‘see the benefit of feedback’ as the ‘production team has knowledge and expertise that the designer can make the most of’ (Aspelund, 2010). It is important to build multiple prototypes so that you can best understand how the product will interact. It is also important that you keep to a defined schedule to ensure the product can be delivered within the set timeframe and do not hold others up. This is the final stage of the design and will see your product find its way into the hands of consumers.
Nigel Cross – Study of how designers work
Cross studies how designer’s work, especially in comparison with other problem-solving fields such as science and engineering. He found that after studying some of Bryan Lawson’s studies that ‘scientists problem-solve by analysis, whereas designer’s problem-solve by synthesis’ (Cross, 2006). Lawson (2005) described ‘scientists as having a problem-focused Lawson (2005) described ‘scientists as having a more problem-focused strategy and the architects as having a solution-focused strategy.’ Cross (2006) suggests that this is way of thinking is most likely as a result of the respective education programs as Lawson conducted more experiments with first year and high school aged students and these differences did not appear.
Cross also suggests that the difference in the ways of thinking occurs out of the necessity for the type of problems that designers and scientists would need to solve. Generally designers problems are more ‘ill-defined, ill-structured or wicked’ (H Rittel, 1973) as opposed to scientists and mathematicians where all the ‘necessary information …is available to the problem-solver.’ (Cross, 2006) Therefore, the designer must know how to re-format and re-define the problem until they can find a solution, this can be ‘the most challenging and difficult part of designing.’ (Jones, 1970).
There are three design processes that Cross identifies as being most commonly followed by designers and engineers. The first is the ‘systems approach,’ which is followed mostly by innovators. The second involves ‘framing the problem in a distinctive and sometimes personal way,’ (Cross, 2011). The third process involves ‘designing from ‘first principles’ (Cross, 2011).
Systems Approach
The systems approach is adopted mainly by innovators as ‘the innovator has a systems mind, one that sees things in terms of how they relate to each other introducing a result,’ (Maccoby in Cross 2011). It was found that designers who followed a ‘flexible-methodological procedure tended to produce good solutions’ (Fricke, 1993 cited in Cross, 2006‘) It is common that designers who use this approach will spend a lot of their time analysing the problem in search for a solution. (Also check out this article by Janan Mustafa, An Exploratory Study for the Role of System Mind in Creative Design Thinking)
Framing Approach
Many designers explore a problem from a particular perspective ‘in a way that stimulates and pre-structures the emergence of design concepts,’ (Cross, 2011). Often this framework will come from the ‘requirements of the particular design situation, but is strongly influenced by their personal motivations,’ (Cross, 2011). Cross represents these approaches in the context of race car design, where the designer may be focused on ‘providing pleasure for the product user, or competitively achieving the fastest car despite regulations.’ (Cross, 2011)
A designer who used this approach was Victor Scheinman, as demonstrated in the ‘Delft Design Protocols Workshop (Cross, 1996 cited in Cross, 2006). Here, Scheinman had to think aloud his design process for the design of a clip to attach a backpack to a mountain bike. It is evident how he framed the problem using his own personal experiences of riding mountain bikes as a kid. Rather than solving the problem from the perspective of simply attaching the backpack to the bike in a static scenario, he considered the issues he had found with the instability caused by a backpack with a high centre of gravity on the wobbly mountain bike trails. By simply framing the problem using his own experiences he was closer to making a more effective solution. It is still of importance to understand user feedback in order to design with empathy, but if it is possible to relate an experience of your own to a problem, it is much easier to begin the process of understanding and analysing the problem.
First Principles
This approach closely follows key fundamental design principles such as ‘form follows function’, where the highest priority is to perfect the function and usability of the product and the form that this will take will follow. Engineer, Gordon Murray, stresses the need to design from first principles in his context of race car designing. He sees the importance of viewing the yearly iterations of race car designs as a need to go back to what they want the car to be able to do, not just looking at what worked (or not) the previous year. Whilst it is necessary to understand what did and didn’t work on the previous car, the design team should be looking at what it is that they ultimately want the car to be able to do.
Anastasia Prokhorova and the UX design Process
The UX design process involves a variety of phases with steps that need to be completed for each one. Prokhorova suggests that these phases are Research, Defining and Analysis, Sketching and Wireframing, and UI design, Prototyping and Animation. (Prokhorova, 2019)
Research
The research stage involves the study of the problem as well as the users. It is important that this stage is completed as it is what will ensure that the end result provides the best solution to the design problem. It is also important to research and understand the user. If the designer proceeds with the design of a solution without first understanding the end user, the design solution will most-likely be ill-fitted for the scenario.
Defining and Analysis
In this phase of the design process the problem is defined as a result of the research in the previous stage. The design team will also create personas to represent the users using these personas the design team will then create scenarios and storyboards which will help them to understand the problem from a user’s perspective.
Sketching and Wireframing
Once the research and definition stages are completed the designer will begin sketching possible designs. The process of sketching the designs allows the designer to translate their ideas into images quickly, allowing for many more possible ideas to be drawn in a short space of time.
Once the designer has some designs that they are happy with they will then begin creating wireframes using a computer application.
UI design, Prototyping and Animation
The final stage of the UX design process according to Anastasia Prokhorova is to complete the UI (user-interface) design and to prototype the designs. This will allow for testing of the design to receive user feedback.
Throughout this study of the design processes used by a number of design disciplines it is interesting to see how the processes place a different emphasis on different part of the process. It is also worth noting that each design process tends to follow a similar structure even across the differing disciplines.
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PROKHOROVA, A. 2019. What is the design process? and why every designer should know about it [Online]. Available: https://uxdesign.cc/what-is-the-design-process-and-why-every-designer-should-know-about-it-baab017eed82 [Accessed 7 April 2020].
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