Design is in our nature. Let us nurture it.
It is fascinating to watch my baby learn and grow. While parenting has been fun and educational, it has helped me reflect on human nature. The ‘parent’ and the ‘designer’ voices in my head have begun to chatter and exchange notes! The eight-month-old parent in me found itself reminiscing about lessons learnt through a decade and a half of design education and practice. It seems that the ‘way of the baby’ has many parallels to how designers operate. Here are some reflections and thoughts.
The approach is highly organic and experimental.
Babies do not start with learning a process. They just do things and learn from what happens next. For example: speech is a complex endeavor and my son explores different utterings while making connections based on how people react to his sounds. The ones that get good reactions are repeated and refined; eventually they lead to the very desirable mama or dada. This organic approach is a quick way of finding one’s path in a world that is mysterious and challenging.
The design approach is underlined by a sense of innocence and an understanding that is driven by exploration rather than processes. Where there is freeform exploration and experimentation, there is chaos. Dealing with this requires a mindset that blends positivity and a deep respect for the context. Seasoned designers do not just follow pre-determined processes. It is an approach that relies on instincts that have been developed through curiosity, practice and experience. Like many vocations, it takes time to become a good designer and to get proficient in understanding one’s intuition and its multitude of applications. It seems that dealing with chaos seems to be a key life skill — especially for kids.
Chaos and ambiguity become fun through the act of “play.”
For an infant, there is chaos from two quarters. One sort is propelled by all the changes happening from within: Neurons are multiplying at an exponential rate, there are new emotions to deal with and teeth are beginning to pop out. The other sort is from the external environment, which contains new places, foods and people. Infants find their way around the chaos of life through play. My little one spends time viewing the world upside down and from every way he can turn and tumble. He also picks up nuances of social interactions by engaging in play with peers. These activities seem to help him make connections, learn, and discover in ways that our grown-up logic might find it hard to explain.
Ambiguity and play are key components of design education and practice. Design deliverables need to appeal to people from a cultural, financial, and technological standpoint. While research and experience help inform design practitioners, the breakthrough solution comes through play and abstraction. Abstraction helps designers make sense of ambiguity. Training the mind to view things unconventionally provides opportunities to reframe the circumstance and deliver unexpected solutions. This involves suspending judgement for a time and allowing for creative interpretation of what is known. This applies for all endeavors of design — whether it’s a poster, a motorbike or a business plan. With time and practice, one gets fluent in the skill of directing the energy of play towards making order out of chaos. This skill requires both the mind and the body to work together.
The mind and body intertwine in skill.
My son seems like an avid multi-tasker when he explores his babbling skills while simultaneously trying to flip himself over. For him, mental and physical activities are highly interconnected and spontaneous. This approach applies to both the way he learns and reacts to events and his environment. As we grow up, we tend to separate thought and action. But our young ones have an intuitive way of melding the two.
Design is as much a physical act as it is thought-work. The design approach places heavy emphasis on skills, especially with respect to visualization and prototyping. Borrowing from the realm of art, the trained designer’s hand and the mind act together. They influence one another in learning, abstracting, and playing with ideas. It is not always the case that the whole of a solution is sketched out; a designer’s sketchbook will have ideas that capture snippets of solutions. Often the unfinished sketch or clay model is the most valuable one. It guides imagination and invites viewers to fill in the gaps. The power of prototyping — of making and constructing — is not only important for user validation but also as a thinking tool for the design practitioner and the team.
Being organic, playful and the confluence of the mind and body characterize our innate human nature. The Design approach accounts for the ‘human’ in the equation by relying on these aspects of our nature. A seasoned practitioner can use imagination and ingenuity to apply the learnings from one set of experiences to another set of tasks, however unconnected. It is the ability to transplant, adapt, and fashion new ways of working that differentiates the design approach.
On nurturing design.
As design has begun to draw more of the spotlight, these principles that characterize its approach are being undermined. Design is being subscribed to as a process — one that is a prescription for growth. In the pursuit of growth and scale, many designers and design organizations have begun to sell this idea that knowledge of the design process is just as good if not better than sharp design skills.
Perhaps, parenting is also making me protective of my baby and of design in its classical sense! Design is the art of making ideas tangible. While other schools of approach teach us to ‘receive, revise and recall’ — the classical design approach drives us to ‘observe, abstract and construct’. A shared understanding of the fundamentals of the design approach is key to growing and nurturing the field. It is important for designers and design organizations to provide the space and time to nurture the creative power behind design and celebrate the organicity, playfulness and skills that drive its practice. The key to doing this is in hiring the right people, incentivizing these behaviors and standing up for these values.
Consider this about processes — if one can put a process to a way of doing something, there’s a good chance that it’ll get automated. Let’s keep design unpredictable, creative, natural — and hence effective.
