Designers and the Art of Interpretation
Too often, our understanding of design is limited to its physical form and doesn’t extend to the quality of our experience with that form.
My education taught me that design is process. It’s a way of seeing, thinking, and acting that allows for the creation of the most appropriate forms to provide a human audience with the best possible experiences. Design is not an outcome; it’s a means to a successful outcome.
A designer’s first job is to understand what needs to be designed and for whom. This isn’t a passive step of taking an order from a client; it’s a process of gathering essential information to challenge and verify the client’s assumptions, with the goal of discovering what factors haven’t been considered as project parameters.
To fill the gaps in the definition of the project, a designer gathers information from multiple sources so that the starting point is the most accurate and complete definition of the challenge. These data inputs may include a designer’s direct observations of some of the people who will be using the product as well as the environment in which the proposed device will be used, together with the research of psychologists, anthropologists, and technologists—all in an effort to understand the limitations and the possibilities of the project’s context and to prove the accuracy of the project’s definition. This period is comparable to an attorney’s pretrial discovery process, in which a deep and broad exploration of information defines the framework for strategies that will unfold during trial. The attorney doesn’t just take the client’s word. Nor does an attorney assume that any one expert or witness owns the truth.
If you had asked my grandfather what kind of car he wanted when he was ready to replace his Model T, he might have asked for a car with a better set of tools, but what he really needed was a car that wouldn’t require him to keep a set of tools handy to make routine adjustments. Poll a sampling of today’s drivers about what they want in their next car, and you’re likely to hear everything from reasonable requests for better mileage to absurd desires for triple the power and double the speed. Deliver on all these lists of wants, and lives will be lost. This is essentially how businesses specify software requirements all the time—by listing superficially desirable features and functions without challenging the genesis of these requirements or even their value before handing them to systems developers to build.
Translating an accurate definition of need into a physical form is an intricate step in the design of any product. Designers are uniquely qualified to do this because they can quickly and effectively produce drawings, models, and prototypes to describe physical forms that will meet the defined requirements for a proposed system. These visual tools provide early, affordable opportunities to see and experience what could be. Most importantly, they allow any number of individuals the opportunity to contribute valuable information that can influence and refine the design.
Exploration and discovery—an accurate statement of need to drive a project, the definition and refinement of a physical form through iteration of collaboration and adjustment, and the delivery of a proven specification to produce the object—this is the process of design, the sequence of steps and the communication model of which the designer is the trained steward. The most beautiful and the most useful physical forms created by human hands, from our skyscrapers and cathedrals to our wristwatches and mobile phones, have come about through this design process. Designers allow us to clearly understand a problem, efficiently explore the possibilities, and map a path to the realization of that vision.
— Excerpted from Wrench in the System: What’s sabotaging your business software and how you can release the power to innovate . by Harold Hambrose (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York). Order your copy of this book.
