Design Thinking Types

Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen

Design process has seen as a cyclical and iterative process of manipulating visual and technical design ideas. The most important part of the design process is the analysis of the design context, design constraints and generating new design ideas. The use of the Progressive Design Thinking Types based on the model of the collaborative design process helps to learn and use these important parts of design process.

Design Context

The environment forms part of the context of a design challenge. Design context is typically specified in a design brief or in a negotiation with a client. The design brief, however, does not completely specify all the requirements (i.e. fundamental constraints that shape the main challenge), guidelines or wishes a for the design product.

Design brief is often a general and vague description of the desired product, giving only partial information about the user, the purpose of the product or resources. These are external constraints for the design process. However, during the design process the designers have to specify the given design constraints and sometimes even modify them and analyzes opportunities (i.e. what is possible to do).

The new information may also change the design context and designer develops more internal constraints for the design of a product. The analysis of design context is one of the most important aspects of the design process.

Following are examples of analysis of design context:

• Does anyone know how big (size) usually are prematurely born babies?
• Do the premature born babies turning around while sleeping? Do they lie down on back or on stomach?
• Does anyone know about research conferences and conference bags?
• If formulating a design challenge is difficult, it is often a sign of design context needing more analysis.

Design Challenge

Design challenge is your own definition to the problem (i.e., main goal). During the design process design challenge can be divided into more specific design tasks (i.e., steps to be solved sub-problems). Design task is a smaller sub-division of the Design challenge which can be solved on it's own and which is a step closer to the actual implementation than the challenge.

Design challenge and design tasks are tied to the principal design ideas and design context. Design tasks aim at helping designers find solutions to the main goal. Moreover, new information can emerge from the solutions of new specific design tasks.

Some examples of design challenges:

• In the briefing, it was said the look of the bag should reveal the subject of the conference. How should we do that?
• First of all we should be able to develop very functional clothing to prematurely born babies, without neglecting aesthetical aspect of that and we should take into the consideration parents and nurses needs.
• It is often the case, that if coming up with design ideas is bad, then the designer needs to redefine the design challenge or learn more about the context.

My Design Idea

My design idea represents your own design ideas of the design challenge at hand. It

is a sort of first sketch of a design idea - visualisation of the idea or verbal description of the main functions of the design product.

Design idea can be as well as conceptual as visual. The different type of visual ideas (e.g. visual sketches) can be further labelled as thinking sketch, prescriptive sketch or final alternative. A design idea is not necessarily well defined or articulated early in the design process. However, it is crucial to understand that by creating design ideas visible to yourself and others during the design process these ideas become more refined and developed.

Thus, you should avoid going straight from the first sketch to a final alternative, but rather make most all your sketches and design ideas visible to others.

Following examples represents creating my design ideas:

• I have been sketching a body-type of clothes for 40 cm babies. Here's the image...
• Here is an idea about the shape of the bag. Actually we thought that the bag would be more round, it is the way things are today (modern cars etc.)

New Information

A design idea is not necessarily well defined or articulated early in the design process and there are probably lot of open questions related to design context and design challenges. Thus, by searching and providing new information and knowledge is important for further developing design ideas.

Providing new information related to design constraints, the design ideas become more refined and developed. The user of the end product or different external sources can provide crucial new information to the design process.

Following example represent new information:

• I found some nice pictures from www.premierstore.com. Go to look.
• I had an interview with one conference visitor, who gave me some ideas and requests. He thought that briefcase shaped bags that had a shoulder strap in addition to handles were among the best ones he had been using.
• I was asking a friend of mine what kind of bag it should be. The answer was that the bag must be big enough for a big folder.

Evaluating Idea

The evaluation of design ideas and design processes is crucial for collaborative designing. You should give feedback about their design ideas to your fellow designers.

It is useful to note that sometimes the solution further refines the design problem and vice versa, making it worthwhile to go visit and reflect your earlier design context analysis and ideas again.

Following are statements which represent evaluating ideas:

• I found the shape pretty good, but does the way it is carried give too feminine an impression? At least I think so. The large pockets and some small pockets to the both sides of the bag are a good decision.
• If evaluation is difficult, then the context and challenge are not properly defined and understood.

Organizing Process

In a collaborative design process it is important to make general plans and division of labour between designers. With an "Organizing the Process" you may make plans on how to proceed and to evaluate (e.g. whether the process is progressing in the desired direction, whether appropriate methods are used).

Further you can consider how sharing of tasks should be done and how design process is co-ordinated among the members of the design community.

Process organizing statements are following:

• We should send more messages. But now there are so many other works going on at the same time (embroidery course) but very soon we should concentrate more on this, ok?
• Shall we come up with a collective way of working or shall everyone do what he or she wants to do, and just let's see what will happen when we meet.
• Organizing a process is easier when you know your goals, resources, time, finances, requirements, constraints and what is still missing from the design work.

Summary

With a summary you draw pieces of the design ideas together and propose solution which hade made together. The summary may aim at identifying a new rise above aspect of design context, working ideas or design process. It also may reflect the summarized views of the collaborative design process by reflecting different aspects, which have been considered under discussion.

A summary of sorts that pulls together sub-tasks and their solutions to a single unified solution that solves part of the original main design challenge.

Example:

• We have discussed a lot of the possible colors to be used in the clothing. Most of us proposed that green might be the good color for neonate’s clothing. Also the parents and nurses liked mostly the green examples we hade. In other words green will be the color, which we will use because it is aesthetically most pleasing.