I recently read Christopher Alexander’s ‘Notes on the Synthesis of Form’. Notes was originally written in 1974 and is a short yet incredibly insightful book on the design process.

The process of design is something that I think about a lot and I wanted to draw some comparisons between Design Thinking as taught at the d.school and Alexander’s work in Notes.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is an encapsulation of how designers solve problems. It is a human-centered, prototyping-driven, iterative problem solving methodology. The current canonical visualization of the process is traversing through the following modes:

You gain empathy for the people you are designing for to identify latent needs, you redefine and scope the problem, generate possible ideas and then create experiential prototypes to test with your users. This might give you new avenues to to iterate upon your solution (or on the problem itself).

Alexander’s Observations on Design

How does Alexander view the design process in Notes? Let me highlight some ideas he introduced in this book (in just the first chapter alone!).

Form & Context. “Every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form and its context. The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem.”

Ensemble. “When we speak of design, the real object of discussion is not the form alone, but the ensemble comprising the form and the context.”

System designers should totally dig the word ‘ensemble’.
Some examples below:

Multiple Boundaries. “No one division of the ensemble into form and boundary is unique. A good designer is sensitive to the fit at several boundaries within the ensemble at once. In a perfectly coherent ensemble we should expect the two halves of every possible division to fit together. (Therefore,) we ought to design with a number of nested, overlapped form-context boundaries in mind.”

Here Alexander uses the example of a kettle. If kettle is the form, everything outside the kettle which is relevant to the use and manufacture of household utensils is context. But, if a designer decided that the kettle is the wrong way to heat water, she might work on a different part of this ensemble, perhaps the water heating system in the house. Or, a designer might consider not the kettle itself, but the method of heating kettles and work on the stove as the form.

Complexity and Choice. Thus, there is choice, but also the complexity of the problem that forces that choice.

“We cannot hope to understand this complex phenomenon until we understand how to attain fit at a single arbitrarily chosen boundary. We must agree for the present to deal only with the simplest problem.”

As in the kettle example above, even though there are many boundaries in the ensemble that need to be considered, at a time a designer is working on any one form-context split. (Many times a certain form might be the only one the designer is allowed to work on. For example, consider an advertising campaign, where the form is the messaging related to a product.)

Good Fit. “Good fit is a desired property of the ensemble which relates to some particular division of the ensemble into form and context. We want to satisfy the mutual demands which the two make on one another. We want to put the context and form into effortless contact or frictionless coexistence.”

Misfits. Alright, so how do we recognize ‘good fit’? Alexander says that it is harder to see good fit, but easier to see the lack of it. So when then the form is put back into the context,
“It is the departure from norms that stand out in our minds rather than the norm itself. Their wrongness is somehow more immediate than the rightness of less peculiar behavior, and therefore more compelling . Whenever an instance of a misfit occurs, we are able to point specifically at what fails to describe it. It seems as though in practice the concept of good fit can only be explained indirectly.”

So, even though it is possible to enumerate what good fit should be (consider a requirements list for a design), in Alexander’s view it is experienced only through the absence of misfits.

Unbalanced Forces cause Misfits.

Consider iron filings in a magnetic field. Depending on the direction of the field (the context), the filings arrange themselves in a certain way (form). Alexander uses this analogy for design problems. However, there is a big difference— we understand magnetic fields pretty well, but in a design problem we don’t know what the forces are.

“What does make a design problem in real world cases is that we are trying to make a diagram for forces whose field we do not understand. We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe.”

The hint to where the strongest forces lie, is in the misfits.

“In the case of a design problem we do not have a field description, and therefore no intrinsic way of reducing potentially infinite set of requirements to finite terms. But if we think of requirements from a negative point of view, as potential misfits, there is a simple way of picking a finite set. This is because it is through misfit that the problem originally brings itself to our attention. We take just those relations between form and context which obtrude most strongly, which demand attention most clearly, which seem most likely to go wrong.”

Evaluating for Fit. Finally, knowing all this how does one in practice create an ensemble that works?

“The experiment of putting a prototype form in the context itself is the real criterion of fit. (But,) We need a way of evaluating a fit of a form which does not rely on the experiment of actually trying the form out in the real world context. Trial-and-error design is an admirable method…but real trial and error is too expensive and too slow. A complete unitary description of the demands made by context is the only fully adequate nonexperimental criterion. The first is too expensive, the second is impossible: so what shall we do?”

This is pretty interesting — Alexander notes, rightly so, that putting the real thing in the context is the real criterion of fit, but it is expensive to do so. In the latter part of the book (which I won’t talk about here) Alexander talks about “non-experimental ways” to test fit.

The Wallet Project

Lots of amazing ideas there. Let’s walk through a introductory project that is used at the d.school to teach design thinking and compare. I take the infamous Wallet Project (infamous at least in the design thinking bubble, though Kickstarter agrees there is something to it).

1)Draw the ‘ideal’ wallet.
Participants start by designing an ideal wallet. This is not unlike a prompt a professional designer may receive where the form is explicitly mentioned in the original problem, in this case a wallet. At the end of this step, many have made some obvious solutions: some have just sketched an iPhone, some create extra credit card sleeves.

2) Gain empathy with your user by using the wallet as a starting point. Next, participants try a different approach. They are paired up and are asked to share the contents of their wallet with each other, and use that as a way to learn something about their partner. For example, if someone is carrying a old receipt from a restaurant, upon investigating one might hear a story of their first date.
This is like looking for a misfits, especially if we broaden the scope of what a ‘misfit’ means—anything that is out of the norm, is worth investigation.

3) Uncover Needs and insights
The participant then make some inferences about the user. She may articulate needs, for example, “Sean needs a way to reminisce upon the important moments in his life”, or “Sean needs a way to stay connected to his loved ones”, and also something unusual about that need, called an insight. “A connection to a loved one does not need interaction with that person” or “Tangible objects carry emotional value.”

Two phrases that we use a lot are ‘latent needs’ and ‘non-obvious insights’. The idea of a latent need is to acknowledge that the user’s need is deeper and different than what he or she might say themselves. Thus they might say they need a way to keep more credit cards, but you as the designer have uncovered a deeper and potentially unmet need about connecting with loved ones. Thus the designer is working with both the more immediate functional needs of the user, but also the harder to pin down emotional needs. The non-obvious insight is something that you did not know before having this conversation.

These then are the forces in the context that seem really powerful. Two things to note here: a) in human-centered design, the primary driving forces are human, cultural, social forces instead of technological or business forces, b) the designer is exercising her judgement to choose a certain need or insight to focus on.

Also notice, that these are not forces that just apply to the form of the wallet itself and is a moment to broaden the problem scope, or reframe the original problem. This idea of reframing is pretty central to good design work.

4) Generate (radically different) ideas
The participant then generates several ideas to respond to these needs and insights. The phrase ‘radically different’ is worth noting. This is where possibilities for new forms to create are being explored. They may still stay in the form of a wallet (A wallet with a ‘last month’s memory’ slot), but also any other possibilities. (A service that sends this-time-last-year reminder, Frame-able receipts etc.)

5) Prototype and Test
Participants then actually make something physical to test with their users. The focus is to create an ‘experiential’ prototype—they use everyday materials like paper, aluminium foil, pipe cleaners and the like to create some props, set the scene by moving around furniture and posing as actors and bring the user into this make-believe world.

This is where the word ‘ensemble’ really shines for me. Instead of creating a form (which is what most people think when they think of the word prototype), you are trying to stage the ensemble. And this staging will now reveal new ‘misfits’ allowing you to iterate upon your form.

In the book Alexander states that trial and error is too slow and a non-experimental approach is better. In design thinking we take the approach of making trial and error faster, something I’ve heard called ‘enlightened trial and error’.

Design Thinking Revisualized

Here’s some visualizations of the design process by combining the design process in Notes and Design Thinking.

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Also worth watching: 37Signals’ Ryan Singer’s talk on the same book: https://vimeo.com/10875362