Wrapping My Mind on Design Philosophy

At Indiana University Bloomington, 05.13.2019

“What is human-computer interaction design?” is the question I received almost every time when I introduced my field in HCI. For me, design in HCI is also a broad and multi-layered concept which makes it difficult to give a direct and simple definition. The way I take to answer this question is from the angle what I design — experiences/products/services/ information for people to interact with the others and their surroundings.

Compared to those traditional design fields such as graphic design, architecture, industrial design, design in the field of HCI is more like a integrative filed, in which sense it not only covers or overlaps with the focus (e.g. visual communication, functionality, usability, etc.) and the subjects (e.g. space, physical products, etc.) of those traditional design fields but also address design in a comprehensive frame. I see design in HCI as an integrative collection of thinking and doing targeting all kinds of human activities with its core being problem-solving [1].

Through each design space, design proposal or solution, I as a designer convey the idea of using design as a universal and integrative approaching of thinking and doing. On the other hand, each design addresses the problem in an ultimate particular in which sense every design is situated on a temporal and spatial scale, limited to certain scenarios, users and stakeholders. The design approach we take is also “a process moving from the universal, general and particular to the ultimate particular.” [2]

Unlike scientific or engineering approach, design problems are almost always ill-defined wicked problems [2] at the very beginning. What is the undesired situation, where is the preferred status, what is the gap between them, what is the key factors that can fill the gap? Gapingvoid Culture Design Group visualized the way how data can be turned into a status of wisdom and make an impact (pic. 1). Data is in the wild and everywhere. Various data is identified and organized to become information. Each piece of information intertwines or links with one another to form different layers of knowledge. A design emerges in the same way. Each society, community, group, and individual is a dynamic and evolving system. People’s needs are constantly changing as we develop. If we define an undesired state as a situation where our needs cannot be fulfilled in a preferred way, “The difference between the desired state and the actual state is framed as theproblem.” [2] When there are certain factors that accumulate to make a noticeable undesired situation. we begin to pinpoint where is the problem and how it is working with the system. The knowledge which we rely on to work without conscious awareness rises to the surface to be rechecked. As a designer, we dive into the artifact ecology, the population related, all the human and non-human factors involved. Given the limited resources (time, financial, etc.), boundaries need to be set up concerning who (users, stakeholders) belongs to the population we should investigate and what elements (artifacts, infrastructures, emotions, etc.) need to be examined. The number of actors, as well as the aspects and characteristics they have, could be numerous or even numberless. Thus, as long as we step into the design research, the designer’s judgment comes into play, to organize and prioritize different information since design is the complexity where there is no single right answer.

Based on this overarching understanding of design, I developed my own design approaches and principles.

Building Design Repertoire

A couple of weeks ago, I talked to Yuki Zhang, a designer at Google. Our discussion ended up talking about the difference between senior designers and junior designers. “Basically there’s not too much difference between specific design skills. The most obvious distinction between them is the way they communicate their ideas and the skills of persuasion. Their past experience in design helps them to quickly respond to each design decision and often times they are able to present their rationale convincingly.

When I was working as a junior designer, my mentor was leading a mood board session for branding. Among hundreds of pictures for inspiration, he was able to name each of them with a different category of style or by a distinct description. The sensitiveness of the nuances between different designs was gained through years of long training. By distinctly defining the style of the exemplars we collected and clearly framing the style of our branding, he was able to lead the discussion to quickly pinpoint the desired design direction.

For me, a designer’s repertoire is the pool of knowledge designers can rely on to frame a problem to make an argument, to generate ideas create and manipulate [3]. Design repertoire comes from various experiences, e.g. design exemplars, discussion with other designers, design blogs and books, and our own unique life experience. The more design exemplars we see, the more designers we talk to, the more variants of a design situation we can think of [4]. By doing so, we equip ourselves the power to maneuver the wicked problem through all the potentials to a better design solution.

Communication & Collaboration

Design cannot be done by one person. This doesn’t mean that we cannot technically design only by ourselves but instead, we have to be the leader of our design and constantly collaborate with people around us, the users, stakeholders, other designers, developers, product managers, etc.

On the one hand, through collecting data and information of user scenarios and limitations on design resources from others, designers are able to set up the boundaries for problem space and form solid design frames. On the other hand, designers’ ideas and thoughts need to be clearly stated to be examined by others and her-/himself. A Design doesn’t happen in one’s mind. It is frustrating when I think I’m confident about my idea but when it comes into the reality through words or sketches, chances are that it is either not valid or I can barely frame it in a convincing way. Receiving feedbacks and critiques would help us to know the blind zone of our design and the perspectives from others could be complementary to multi-layer design complexity. In the long run, communication facilitates us to gradually build our design repertoire.

The way designers communicate should be creative, verbal, visual or even haptic(e.g. hi- fidelity functional prototype) depending on the progress of the design project. In this sense, I see design as multiple rounds of communication from the very beginning of design exploration, inspiration, iteration until implementation

Design Quality

By saying a preferred status, oftentimes we ask about how we evaluate our design accordingly. Or the design goals and requirements we are trying to reach. From case to case, those goals may vary according to the problem and the frame of it. However, among all the design goals, some common patterns of the characteristics or quality the designer values appear. By reflecting on those values, we are able to see the underlying values we want to create throughout our design and then make a convincing argument for it which amplify the impact explicitly.

Among all the design qualities what I value the most is usability. In different design scenarios, different sub-qualities such as functionality, efficiency, robustness, and durability can be composed of a higher level of usability. Usability should be considered according to the target user scenarios. For example, in a smart home appliances environment, for senior users, automation and easy instruction might be the first priority for the product to be usable. While for young housewives who would like to take full control of the activities in their house, flexible automation and customization might be the desired functionalities. Moreover, the system and product should be robust, sustainable and resistant to potential damage.

Aesthetics is a design quality that is commonly recognized to be valued by design practitioners. I see it more as a basic level and part of the intrinsic usability. For example, proper aesthetics for a digital calculator should be simple and clean for functionality. However, the aesthetics for luxury should carefully be designed to be a status object since that’s part of its goal and functionality.

Design Layers

The above talks about what perspective I have in viewing design, what approach I take in doing design. Regarding each design in my work, I also formulated four layers which can help me lead my design: mechanism, flow, frame, and content. These four levels of design elements work together in different layers to create a complex and comprehensive design experience.

• Mechanism: Mechanism is the driving force for the users to accomplish a certain task. For example, an e-commerce platform is trying to implement offline pick-up location-based services. The business goal is to increase offline exposure to users and from users’ need, the first priority of using this pick-up services is for convenience and efficiency. Designers might think about what is the barriers for more people to use it when certain efficiency for them is missing. Is there any rewarding system? Are there any deeper desires that can be met?
• Flow: In user experience design, user flow is the most commonly recognized tasks that a UX designer is in charge of. Flow is a series of actions users need to take to finish a task.
• Frame: designing the frame as designing a container. The frame is the form we use to contain and present the content. Thinking about designing the frame as designing a container. A location-based service product uses a map as the container. While a message product uses a list as the container. Different forms serve different functionalities and create different flows.
• Content: Content is the finest granularity. Text, buttons, the layout of different elements come together to fill the frame or say the container.

Design is like a meal. The content is the ingredient. The frame is the container. Different frames with different contents form the flow. While mechanism as the underlying and overarching driving force leads all these to create a higher level of desirability.

Reference

[1] Hatchuel, A. (2001). Towards Design Theory and expandable rationality: The unfinished program of Herbert Simon. Journal of management and governance, 5(3), 260–273.

[2] Nelson, H. G., & Stolterman, E. (2003). The design way: Intentional change in an unpredictable world: Foundations and fundamentals of design competence. Educational Technology.

[3] Donald A. Schon. (1990). The Design Process.

[4] Horst W. J. Rittel (1988). Reasoning of Designers.