Design methods

Design methods are procedures, techniques, aids, or tools for designing. They offer a number of different kinds of activities that a designer might use within an overall design process. Conventional procedures of design, such as drawing, can be regarded as design methods, but since the 1950s new procedures have been developed that are more usually grouped together under the name of 'design methods'. What design methods have in common is that they 'are attempts to make public the hitherto private thinking of designers; to externalise the design process'. Design methods are procedures, techniques, aids, or tools for designing. They offer a number of different kinds of activities that a designer might use within an overall design process. Conventional procedures of design, such as drawing, can be regarded as design methods, but since the 1950s new procedures have been developed that are more usually grouped together under the name of 'design methods'. What design methods have in common is that they 'are attempts to make public the hitherto private thinking of designers; to externalise the design process'. Design methodology is the broader study of method in design: the study of the principles, practices and procedures of designing. Design methods originated in new approaches to problem solving developed in the mid-20th Century, and also in response to industrialisation and mass-production, which changed the nature of designing. A 'Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications', held in London in 1962 is regarded as a key event marking the beginning of what became known within design studies as the 'design methods movement', leading to the founding of the Design Research Society and influencing design education and practice. Leading figures in this movement in the UK were J. Christopher Jones at the University of Manchester and L. Bruce Archer at the Royal College of Art. The movement developed through further conferences on new design methods in the UK and USA in the 1960s. The first books on rational design methods, and on creative methods also appeared in this period. New approaches to design were developing at the same time in Germany, notably at the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung–HfG Ulm) (1953–1968) under the leadership of Tomás Maldonado. Design teaching at Ulm integrated design with science (including social sciences) and introduced new fields of study such as cybernetics, systems theory and semiotics into design education. Bruce Archer also taught at Ulm, and another influential teacher was Horst Rittel. In 1963 Rittel moved to the School of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, where he helped found the Design Methods Group, a society focused on developing and promoting new methods especially in architecture and planning. At the end of the 1960s two influential, but quite different works were published: Herbert A. Simon's The Sciences of the Artificial and J. Christopher Jones's Design Methods. Simon proposed the 'science of design' as 'a body of intellectually tough, analytic, partly formalizable, partly empirical, teachable doctrine about the design process', whereas Jones catalogued a variety of approaches to design, both rational and creative, within a context of a broad, futures creating, systems view of design. The 1970s saw some reaction against the rationality of design methods, notably from two of its pioneers, Christopher Alexander and J. Christopher Jones. Fundamental issues were also raised by Rittel, who characterised design and planning problems as wicked problems, un-amenable to the techniques of science and engineering, which deal with 'tame' problems. The criticisms turned some in the movement away from rationalised approaches to design problem solving and towards 'argumentative', participatory processes in which designers worked in partnership with the problem stakeholders (clients, customers, users, the community). This led to participatory design, user centered design and the role of design thinking as a creative process in problem solving and innovation. However, interest in systematic and rational design methods continued to develop strongly in engineering design during the 1980s; for example, through the Conference on Engineering Design series of The Design Society and the work of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure association in Germany, and also in Japan, where the Japanese Society for the Science of Design had been established as early as 1954. Books on systematic engineering design methods were published in Germany and the UK. In the USA the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Design Engineering Division began a stream on design theory and methodology within its annual conferences. The interest in systematic, rational approaches to design has led to design science and design science (methodology) in engineering and computer science. The development of design methods has been closely associated with prescriptions for a systematic process of designing. These process models usually comprise a number of phases or stages, beginning with a statement or recognition of a problem or a need for a new design and culminating in a finalised solution proposal. In his 'Systematic Method for Designers' L. Bruce Archer produced a very elaborate, 229 step model of a systematic design process for industrial design, but also a summary model consisting of three phases: Analytical phase (programming and data collection, analysis), Creative phase (synthesis, development), and Executive phase (communication). The UK's Design Council models the creative design process in four phases: Discover (insight into the problem), Define (the area to focus upon), Develop (potential solutions), Deliver (solutions that work). A systematic model for engineering design by Pahl and Beitz has phases of Clarification of the task, Conceptual design, Embodiment design, and Detail design. A less prescriptive approach to designing a basic design process for oneself has been outlined by J. Christopher Jones.