Hugh Graham Creative

This summer when I was at Mike and Kathy McCoy’s High Ground gathering in Buena Vista, Bill Moggridge of IDEO handed the attendees a xerox copy of a hand-scrawled 2×2 diagram. I wandered around with it in my notebook for about 4 months, and finally decided to transcribe to the digital realm this past week.

Bill attributed the diagram to Hugh Dubberly, Rick Robinson, Stafford Beer, and Christopher Alexander (which pretty much sums up the pantheon of the design modeling gods); through a quick web search I found one version of it online uploaded by Shelley Evensen of Carnegie Mellon from a presentation she gave earlier this year located here in PDF format.

Although this diagram doesn’t make any claims toward describing what design thinking is (or design strategy for that matter), I think it obliquely provides loads of insight into the value of research and prototype modeling.

In a typical, non-reflective approach, it’s very easy not to leave the ‘concrete’ world, attempting to move directly from “What is” to “What is might be like”. In a sense, this is a typical human approach; I do it, my clients do it, we see it all the time in our day-to-day lives.

But when we’re designing systems, when we’re designing for use, we need to get out of our own heads and not just run to the first solution that presents itself. So, instead we can move from the concrete to the abstract, where we develop models of our understand of what is (research). Then, that model is turned into the ideation/generation mode (prototyping). From this, we move toward concrete ideas of “What it might be like”.

When we take the time to explore research and prototype models – in other words, when we engage in design thinking – the design process yields significantly better results. Add in the potential for iterative cycles, and you have a strong foundation for improved solutions.

This is the best story I’ve heard in a long time. Apparently sometime today a couple of entrepreneurial local furniture designers delivered and installed some nicely designed benches to both the Libeskind addition to the Denver Art Museum and the brand new David Adjaye Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

They apparently did a meticulous job on the installation, and the benches look fabulous. The only potential issue? They were engaging in guerrilla design. To the best of my knowledge, no one has been arrested. Yet.

Oh, and they videotaped the whole thing. Watch the video at doublebutterisbetter.com.

Or on youtube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6c0RoD8GTY

I’m looking forward to the show that opens at Ironton on Friday November 2nd for a number of reasons. First, the work is constructed with terrific craftsmanship and attention to detail. Second, it shows that boundaries between art and craft continue to break down (and therefore supports the value of the local and the artisinal). And third, it just plain fun.

The show is called “Sporting and Recreation: Furniture” and the work is by Chase DeForest. Chase has an MFA from RISD, teaches Industrial Design at Metropolitan State College in Denver, and works for the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs on the Clifford Still Museum project. And somewhere along the line she finds the time to create her own work (as shown below). More information is available at irontonstudios.com or chasedeforest.com.

Khoi Vinh made a presentation called “Control” at the AIGA Next conference here in Denver; he was kind enough to put the slides up on Slideshare. The presentation is worth viewing for a couple of reasons. First, Khoi builds a logical argument and presents it in a way that is understandable in the form of a slideshow (whereas my presentations look like a series of seemingly unrelated pictures with neither rhyme nor reason).

But more importantly, Khoi is getting at something very important in how the practice of design is changing in an interactive world. He is primarily concerned with interactive design, but I believe the logic of what he has to say is just as pertinent to designers working in any highly collaborative situation. The basic concept (if I’m getting this right) is that traditionally designers used control to manage the presentation of the narrative, while in the interactive world, the narrative has been replaced by a conversation. In this respect, the designer needs to become accustomed to losing control.

I don’t disagree with this argument, though I would argue that there is still a narrative (or story) at work both within the design process and in the product. Designers are now beginning to speak about ‘metadesign’ as the process of building a framework to allow others to participate in filling in the blanks. Using the same logic, there is a kind of ‘metanarrative’, an opportunity for the audience to become engaged in the process of creating the story.

Concepts of this sort are not foreign to other design fields; for instance, architecture is most effective when it encourages human dialog. But the process of design itself is now opening up to a broader collaboration; open source and wiki projects are an example, but it applies more broadly through people-centered design processes. Designing for these types of projects requires the invention of narratives and the openness to accept the potential for stories we never imagined.

Khoi does a great service to designers by pointing out the importance of opening up new forms and processes of design; in many ways the new worlds of design (in particular) are as foreign to us as film was during the time of the Lumiere brothers, and we are mostly just looking with awe (or confusion) at the Trip to the Moon.

There are few components of modern life more confusing than the television remote control. For our home TV, we have three remotes, each of which is required to do some arcane bit of trickery (cable, tv, dvd), and none of which are in the least intuitive. In a hotel room this weekend, I pushed the big green button at the top. Nothing. The orange button? Nothing. Turns out the power button was tiny and at the bottom, and the up, down, left, and right buttons didn’t change the channel or the volume.

On Core 77 this morning I came across one possible solution; the designers at Art Lebedev have posted their approach. I love the look of it, though I’m not sure it’s quite solved the essential problems involved. But, at 20″ long, at least you’re not going to misplace it.

Next week more than 2,000 designers will be heading to denver for the AIGA 2007 conference. One of the presentations I’ll be looking forward to seeing will be made by Khoi Vinh, the design director at NYTimes.com.

Khoi will be speaking on the topic of ‘Control’. Here’s how the program describes it:

There’s a fundamental shift going on in design: CONTROL is passing from designers to design consumers, and it’s changing the way we practice our craft. For most of design history, we’ve judged the best designers on how successfully they’ve exerted control in their work. Control over ideas, over typography, over imagery, over the means of production–the more control the better.

It’s interesting that someone who works for the New York Times, one of the most carefully controlled websites in existence, would choose to talk on this topic. In this case, I mean ‘carefully controlled’ as a compliment - for the dozen or so years I’ve been using the web, nytimes.com has been my primary news portal for all of them. Of course, Khoi does other terrific design work as well – his blog, subtraction.com is a fantastic source of information on a variety of topics. And, he also takes good care of his dog, mister president, which is the best name ever for a dog.

I’m interested in his presentation because for the past nine months I’ve been working with a number of other Colorado designers exploring the topic of what’s next in design. We’ve talked about (and designed the conference materials by) collaborating in small groups, doing rapid prototyping, using design charrettes, and a lot about giving up control.

We’ve had over 30 different designers working on various components of the conference marketing collateral, and we developed a ‘brand’ that was all about providing a framework for design, rather than a heavily controlled set of rules. It has been a robust and valuable discussion, an exciting exploration, and a lot of work.

Now, as the conference approaches, we’ve launched an opportunity for the conference attendees to get involved in the discussion; through aiganext.com we’re hoping that the framework we’ve created will provide a launchpad for more discussion and more design innovation. We’ll be adding some additional features as the week goes on (including flickr photo tags) but at this point we’re hoping that conference attendees will add their profiles and their thoughts on ‘what’s next’, venues for visiting, and ‘bird of a feather’ events beyond the substantial events already sponsored by the AIGA.

None of this would have been possible without the substantial efforts of numerous colorado designers, including my core group cohorts, Fred Murrell of RMCAD, Craig Rouse of R Design, and Jason Otero of Art & Anthopology. aiganext.com is largely the result of a collaboration between myself and Sean and Todd at DayJob. Now, we’re giving up control. Visit aiganext.com and help decide what’s next.

During the course of the next month, including during “Next: the AIGA National Design” Conference, a series of banners will hang on California Street between 14th Street and the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver.

These banners have been designed by a combination of design professionals and students. The project is called Denver Urban Forest, and is an offshoot of the Urban Forest Project that was presented in New York last fall.

The Urban Forest Project was conceived by Worldstudio in conjunction with AIGA NY and Times Square Alliance. The original event brought together 185 designers from 21 countries to create an outdoor design exhibition throughout the Times Square area in New York.

A similar project took place in Portland Oregon recently; the banners are created in a fabric created from 100% recycled plastic bottles, ecophab, and once the presentation is complete they will be turned into tote bags and sold to support colorado design initiatives.

Jordan Carver from Agency made this happen. Congratulations to him for pulling it off.

I was talking with Bryan Leister this past weekend about what design is and the challenges of design in the future. He described it as selling artisanal tomatoes. The challenge for designers in our time is to convince the general public that heirloom tomatoes are better than hothouse tomatoes. This, he said, is a design problem. I think he’s right.

I think of this as a movement toward artisanal design; it’s against the grain, and a challenge to show that the atypical is preferable to the typical. But design can and should support the creation of a world where the context of use and the personality of the creator are as important as the shape itself.

“Everything is shit. The word art must be redefined. This is the age where everyone creates.”
–Patti Smith

“The blogosphere is itself a commodification of authenticity”
–Andrew Keen

Clay Shirky posted some thoughts about humility and arrogance in design on A Brief Message this morning. I’ve been considering some similar ideas over the past few months, as have many others, I’m sure. It’s almost impossible to avoid the topic in the design community, with all the discussion of crowdsourcing and folksonomies and metadesign and web 2.0 and…

I appreciate Clay’s thoughts on the ugliness of myspace (true) and the arrogance of apple (also true). As a design strategist working with interaction and innovation, I spend a inordinate amount of my time considering ways to bridge the gap between the worlds of user-generated and expert contribution; sometimes the distance feels too great to fathom.

There was even something of a internet dustup earlier this year when Andrew Keen published his book “The Cult of the Amateur”. Crowdsourcing? But what about virtuosity? You think you’re an auteur? But what about youtube? What do you say, Clay? Andrew, any comments for the crowdsourcing crowd?

Okay, this is the world we live in, and it’s our challenge to find a way to make these work together. So here’s what I would like to do; I propose setting up a tag-team cage match between the avatars of the leaders of different factions of the media world. Maybe we could do it in second life.

In the red trunks, Mark Cuban, telling stories of the long tail ghetto. You want to get paid for that? Well, unless you own the Dallas Mavericks you’re going to need OPM (other people’s money).

In the blue trunks, it’s Jimmy Wales going all wikia on everything. The future is open source. Hey, everyone is an expert in something, right?

Jimmy gets in a couple of virtual smackdowns, and Cuban tags off to the talented single moniker duo brangelina. Big Hollywood talent and money in the ring, what are the little guys going to do?

Wales escapes to his corner and is replaced in the ring by Lonelygirl15, and she gets additional support from Ask-a-Ninja. Wow, this is going to be some match. Who will be standing at the end of the day?

In truth, the process and results of design are changing. Processes tend to be more collaborative and distributed than in the past; this is true both when working with expert teams and with the folks creating their own folksonomies. In some cases, we’re building an iterative framework to allow the design to define itself over time. In other cases, we start with a expert vision, and refine and revise as we move forward.

There is still a long way to go. New paradigms are being developed; we are still exploring technologies and have yet to really understand the potential for stories in this newly connected environment. We’re still watching the Lumiere brothers fly to the moon, and we haven’t had our Eisenstein show us the potential of cinematic montage.

There is room for both the expert and the amateur in the world of design. Wisdom will come from knowing which approach is appropriate and when.

One of the most compelling exhibits of the year will be taking place this fall at the Center for Visual Art in Denver. Curated by Lisa Abendroth of Metropolitan State College of Denver, the show brings together a broad range of innovative designs focused on improving the quality of everyday life.

Lisa has put the focus of the exhibit on three parts of the “design story”; cause, method, and impact. By understanding the need, using a people-centered approach, and developing solutions that are appropriate, efficient, and elegant, the designers included in this exhibit have created solutions that show the value of design thinking in real-world situations.

Kicking off the exhibition will be a presentation by Kenneth Jewell of Continuum speaking about their work on Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Media Lab’s “One Laptop per Child” project (aka the $100 laptop).

SUBSTANCE: Diverse Practices from the Periphery
September 6 - November 9, 2007

Thursday, September 13, 2007
6 - 7 pm: Lecture: One Laptop per Child - Kenneth Jewell, Continuum (Boston, Milan, Seoul)
7 - 9 pm: Opening Reception

Thursday, October 11, 2007
6 pm: Lecture: Patricia Moore, MooreDesign Associates (Phoenix, AZ) and Bryan Bell, Design Corps (Raleigh, NC)

Friday, October 12, 2007
8:30 - 10 pm: Gala Reception in conjunction with the AIGA NEXT national design conference

More information is available on the CVA website at www.mscd.edu/news/cva/