Phil’s first refactoring of brainstorming

Posted: May 20th, 2009 | Author: Phil | Filed under: big ideas, homepage | No Comments »

Overview

We covered a lot of ground in the first couple days, and I think it sets the stage well for our research. It seems to me that we’re covering three main areas.

1. defining how designers work and what parts of that we’re interested in.
2. defining our approach to building a taxonomy
3. identifying potential directions for our prototypes

How Designers Work – Areas of Interest

In order to focus our work and chart out a unique area of research we have to narrow and refine what we’re looking at. I think we agreed that we are less concerned about the specifics of mark-making and gestural aspects of the designer’s tools. Others have covered much of that, and we think we can contribute more in the modes of design as they relate to making/crafting/forming/generating meaning. A big breakthrough in our thinking about design process was that designers not only make tangible outcomes, but as important to their process, designers make ideas from which the tangible outcomes result. In addition, we identified a pattern of making (at least for the tangible output) of, roughly, Hand ->Tool ->  Content -> Format.

Focus on Meaning Making

For both the taxonomy and working prototypes, we’re focusing on how designers make meaningful results rather than the lower level aspects of gesture, form-making and mark-making. In particular:

• making bits and ideas: the design process that we consider must include affordances around idea making as well as making bits (see below for more)
• meaningful modes of expression: we’re interested in how tools afford expressive and interesting making of meaning. The metaphor of musical instruments was raised in terms of how simple they are, yet how wide a range of output is possible (with skill). Further, we’re interested in the specific, idiosyncratic output tools afford. And lastly, we like tools that afford creative abuse.

Designers operate in two different modes: Making Ideas and Making Bits

We realized that a designers process for design includes two parts. Often the designers spends a significant amount of time generating ideas, whether through thinking, note making, sketching or other process. Ultimately, this process is about helping the designer shape what’s inside their head (or the collective heads of a group) rather than making tangible output. This part of design requires significantly different kinds of affordances than producing tangible output (bits). The designer often slides easily between the realm of ideas and made outcomes, and there is not always a clear dividing line.

Nevertheless, we believe that the affordances needed for making ideas vs. making bits are substantially different. And we believe that the realm of tools with affordances for making ideas for designers is fertile ground for digital enhancement.

Design Process: Hand -> Tool -> Content -> Format

In trying to understand the methodology of design in relation to affordance, we came to the following understanding:

• The designer makes a gesture with part of their body, typically the HAND
• That gesture intersects with a TOOL of some sort
• The tool operates on some form of CONTENT, either turning raw materials into communication, or reworking in some way existing “samples” into new forms.
• The working of the content intersects with its context which is the FORMAT of the communication, such as an 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, or multimedia installation in a 20′x40′ room.

Gestures of Expression

We found 3 types of high level gestures for working with content as a way of creating a meaningful expression. Any of these three modes can be done in isolation or in combination.

• Additive/Generative – This is create new content out of thin air. Whether typing letters into a word-processor, applying graphite to paper, or making new vector shapes in Illustrator, the designer builds up new content.
• Subtractive – This approach involves a process of removing material from existing content in a process of editing and eliminating.
• Manipulative – Here the designer works with existing material to rearrange, distort, combine, and juxtapose.

Our Approach to a Taxonomy of Affordance

In trying to situate our research and develop a taxonomy of affordance, we discussed the goals of the taxonomy, the areas of affordance we’re interested in, and the format of the taxonomy.

Goals for a taxonomy

We identified the following goals for our taxonomy of affordance:

• Provide designers with inspiration for invention
• Analyze and understand design practice
• Inform the discourse of design
• Provide tools for design pedagogy

To achieve these goals, we’ll want to eventually publish our results in a range of forms including a website, conference papers, and articles.

Focus on Meaning Making Affordances

Rather than concentrate on detailed gestures of mark-making or the detailed affordances of tools and how they operate, we decided to focus our efforts on the quality of meaning making that affordances offer. As discussed earlier, we’re interested in:

• range of output – that affordances offer useful ranges of output in terms of making meaningful output
• idiosyncratic output – we think that the character of the affordance is extremely important, and that often the best tools have a personality, and a somewhat idiosyncratic and rich way of interpreting the designer’s gesture. This means that the design can select a particular tool knowing its character and how that may fit their desired meaning.
• creative abuse – often the best tools do their particular job well, but also afford creative abuse. i.e. permit unintended uses that the designer discovers in through process of design.

More generally, we’re interested in the designer’s process at the level of meaning making, the creative moment, and also as discussed the making of ideas.

What kinds of affordances should we look at?

We’re still in discussion on what affordances to look at. Should it be for making bits, making ideas, or? And should we also look at the affordances of humans? I.e. what role do they play in the mix? Hunter discusses this more in this post: Human Affordance and Ideation

Format of the Taxonomy

We discussed different forms of taxonomy, from hierarchical to grid based. But we are leaning towards some form of database driven taxonomy that affords the user to get at the collection in a range of ways, producing their own conclusions through an interactive and computational driven approach. In particular, we think that some form of tagging and possibly rating characteristics may provide the best and most flexible taxonomy.

We may need to build a custom database to achieve this.

Prototype Directions

While more discussion is needed, we identified several areas of potential work in prototypes. First, each RA is interested in the following (these need expansion):

• Hyun – How tools and affordances can be customizable, and how tools can learn the designer
• Chris – how can affordances help develop a culture for designers. also what affordances can help give media elements “thing qualities” through their behavior, agency, etc.
• Hunter – How does the workspace itself become a tool for design. How does it shape context, help with collaboration (within design and across other disciplines), and how can mobile tools afford the designer more power as they operate in different environments including working in other people’s workspaces.

Tools for Making Ideas

In addition to these areas of interest, a new idea was developed. Out of our discussion on making bits and making ideas, we came to the realization that there is an interesting opportunity in creating something that will help designers in their generation and refinement of ideas. This system might have the following characteristics:

• Helps manage project ideas and documents
• Permits sketching in many forms, and maintains a history of sketches
• Helps with brainstorming
• Is a separate device from the “workstation”
• Automatically tracks documents as they are created, and assists in the collection of those documents into projects
• Assists in the management of projects in terms of organizing ideas, documents, and outcomes.
• Also permits the leveraging of previous projects in the starting of new projects, e.g. copying an old project to establish a starting point for something new.

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