Is Product Design an Art or a Science?
Hint: It’s Both
As the tech industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, many companies are struggling with how to best integrate design into their larger product teams. Several months ago, Wayfair addressed this challenge by combining our UX and UI positions into a hybrid Product Design role. Although this approach allows us to seamlessly share resources and expertise across the team, a fundamental question remains: what kind of practice is Product Design? Broadly speaking, UX or Interaction Design seems to draw heavily from the sciences, with a focus on observation, hypothesis generation, and testing. On the other hand, UI or Visual Design, which focuses on aesthetic principles such as color, typography, and negative space, appears more closely aligned with the arts. Given that science and art are usually seen as distinct (and even opposite) disciplines, how can we as Product Designers begin to bridge this divide?
Product Design and Science
For the past several centuries, scientific inquiry has usually followed an established set of techniques. According to this scientific method, an investigation begins by making observations, which are then formulated into testable hypotheses. From there, one can gather data to either validate or modify the initial hypotheses, eventually allowing for the development of more complex theories, followed by another round of observation, and so on. In the agile design process, we also start with a research and discovery phase, followed by problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and implementation. As illustrated below, the scientific method and the design thinking process are both founded on a perpetual cycle of observation, testing, and iteration.
Donald Norman, a pioneer in the field of interaction design, has argued that the increasing complexity of everyday objects necessitates a human-centered design process, one which is informed by a deep understanding of psychology and technology. (For more on this subject, I highly recommend reading Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things). Practically speaking, there are a few ways that product designers can take a more scientific approach to their work. This great presentation on evidence-based design by David Gillis demonstrates how designers can refine common inputs such as business requirements, analytics, and competitive analysis into a set of robust insights that will eventually inform design decisions. In “The Science of UX Design,” Zack Naylor explains how the process of abductive reasoning, or explanation by inference, can be applied to design. For example, if some users have a hard time reading small text but comprehend images better, we can predict that they may understand our content better if it’s associated with a picture.
Several months ago, one of our product managers approached me with a difficult problem related to our online returns tool. The issue was two-fold: Many customers were calling customer service instead of using this tool, and roughly half of users that began an online return did not reach completion. Unfortunately, we knew very little about what was causing these issues, although we did observe that most users were exiting the flow before selecting their desired return method. After conducting a heuristic analysis and performing several rounds of usability testing, we decided to form a set of preliminary hypotheses about our users’ problems, acknowledging that these were generated from incomplete data and would likely need to be revisited at a later point in time. By making this leap, however, we were able to streamline the wizard and provide additional feedback to properly set customers’ expectations around their return and replacement options. We believe these changes will make a substantial impact on completion rate and overall satisfaction.
Product Design and Art
By focusing on observable evidence and scientific reasoning, we can use data to generate and test hypotheses about what will work best for our users. But what about making beautiful designs? To answer the question of whether design is art, we need to start by briefly defining what we mean by “art.” Although it is nearly impossible to encapsulate such a diverse and dynamic field, traditional definitions of art have focused on its representational, expressive, and formal properties.
It seems pretty obvious that our work as product designers is representational (i.e. communicates something) and formal (i.e. has a defined practice), but some designers have questioned the role of expression in their craft. Austin Knight argues that design and art are “fundamentally different disciplines” because while art is expressive and subjective, design is contextual and objective. Or, as Goran Peuc claims:
“Design and art could not be more apart even if they tried”.
While art is about exploration and personal expression, Puec writes, design strives to meet specific goals through observation and iteration. In other words: art is up to interpretation, while design is universal.
In this article, I’ve focused heavily on the role of observation and iteration in product design. As Eli Davis notes in his response to Peuc’s original article, however, these techniques are actually very common in the art world. As illustrated below, Pablo Picasso’s style changed dramatically over the course of his career, often in the context of his own past work.
Additionally, entire schools of art have responded to observations about the world at large. Renaissance painting, for example, was heavily influenced by findings from mathematics and anatomy. In addition, movements such as Expressionism, Dadaism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Futurism emerged in response to changes within the art community and in society as a whole.
As someone with a background in both design and art, I also disagree with the notion that design is inherently objective or universal. The way people experience a product is largely based on their past experiences and current expectations, both of which can vary greatly between individuals. This opens the door for different interpretations of design and copy, no matter how objective both may seem in the eyes of the product team. For example, we recently discovered that some customers were confused by our “Outside Front Door Drop-Off” delivery option.
Given this seemingly unambiguous description, I was very surprised to learn that these individuals expected the products to be carried inside their homes. However, my own research revealed that less than a third of our competitors allow customers to choose their own delivery options, and most force the user to pay for more expensive in-home delivery. As a result, our customers’ past experiences with other retailers may have influenced their expectations regarding delivery in a way that our team didn’t anticipate. Although we are still investigating this issue and testing various solutions, it serves as an important lesson in how even the simplest design and copy decisions are still subject to interpretation. In summary, many of the heavy-handed distinctions made between art and design seem to be based on an oversimplification of both disciplines rather than a set of fundamental differences.
Conclusion (Or, Why Does Any of This Matter?)
To answer the original question posed in this article, product design isn’t an art or a science: It’s both. Recent scholarship in both fields has explored not only the concept of interdisciplinary work but also something known as the antidisciplinary hypothesis. According to Neri Oxman, the increasing complexity of our world has inspired the realization that “knowledge can no longer be ascribed to, or produced within, disciplinary boundaries, but is entirely entangled.” By this logic, art and science aren’t opposing approaches but rather two different methods of discovering the same truths. Or, to put it more elegantly:
“Art and Science can be understood as human needs to express the world around us. Both require suspension of disbelief, offering speculations about our physical and immaterial reality prior to proof.” — Neri Oxman
Of course, not all design is about creative expression, which is why Oxman proposes a distinction between “critical design,” which challenges our assumptions about the world and how we live in it, and “affirmative design,” which focuses on practical solutions. In my mind, the ideal product design practice will draw from both of these approaches in order to create experiences that are simultaneously functional and delightful. As designers blur the lines between UX and UI in order to embrace a more holistic approach to solving complex problems, we should similarly re-examine the urge to place our work within clearly defined disciplines.
Sources
- Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things.
- David Gillis, “The Art & Science of Evidence-Based Design”. http://uxmag.com/articles/the-art-and--science-of-evidence-based-design
- Zack Naylor, “The Science of UX Design”. https://www.slideshare.net/znaylor/the-science-of-ux-design
- Austin Knight, “Design is not Art”. https://austinknight.com/writing/design-is-not-art/
- Goran Peuc, “Design is not Art”. https://artplusmarketing.com/design-is-not-art-d229af10c167
- Eli Davis, “Design is not art. But the two have a lot in common.” https://medium.com/@eli.davis/design-is-not-art-but-the-two-have-a-lot-in-common-7d0b460e5e97
- Amrita N. Singh, “Describing the World or Transforming It? Considering the Roles of the Arts and the Natural Sciences”. http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/910/2/describing-the-world-or-transforming-it-considering-the-roles-of-the-arts-and-the-natural-sciences
- Neri Oxman, “Age of Entanglement”. https://www.pubpub.org/pub/ageofentanglement?context=jods
