Exposing the Magic of Design – Jon Kolko

Author: Jon Kolko Type: #book

Reference: Kolko (2018). Exposing The Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis

• Design synthesis – the process of making sense of design-problem-related input (brief, research data etc.) that leads to ultimately producing a design output (idea, concept, artifact)
• In the design practice, the process of design synthesis is often implicit and not (well) documented.
  • This leads to stakeholders discounting the value of research. Because they don't see how it connects to the output, so they assume it's not necessary.
  • The more innovative the design is, the more this issue is compouned.
• Designers need a set of applicable synthesis methods to make that part of the process more explicit.

• "Problem solving is ultimately a process of decision making" (i.e. I make a series of decisions in order to solve a problem).

  • Kolko references Herb Simon's work in this area.

• Most design problems are ill-structured. They lack a set of predictable steps that lead to solving them. They require some very human techniques for solving: acting on an informed hunch, making a judgement, using incomplete information and breaking out of constraints.

• We make sense of complexity better by doing things rather than consuming "predigested elements"

  • (this can be linked to my notes about understanding)

• "We learn when we make meaning ourselves"

• At the same time, the connections/associations we make are unique based on our past experiences. Two designers approaching a problem with the same process and methods can come up with very different solutions because of the different associations they have. Kolko argues that one should embrace all the past experiences & their role in this process instead of discarding them to be more "objective".

  • This also explains why diversity is so helpful for innovation and why diverse teams can produce better designs.

• Framing plays an important role in design because it provides a set of constraints. When designers approach a problem that's framed in a certain way (e.g. the frame of "Ease of use: The user should neve encounter confusing things or technical jargon "), it narrows down all possible choices to a set of appropriate choices.

  • One design problem can have multiple different frames that each provide unique constraints. This doesn't need to be a burden, but rather a blessing as it further funnels down the choices to the most appropriate ones. - Frames should be made explicit so that everyone on the team understands where others are coming from and can refer to the frames in discussions.

• Kolko talks about "knowledge funnel" (first described by Roger Martin, 2009) – a process of thinking about ideas that goes from mystery, to heuristic, to algorithm to code. It's a divergent process at first (design synthesis happens when designers produce many diverse ideas to address the mystery, i.e. the problem + in the heuristic phase). Then process converges onto a single, universal idea that can make it into production ("the code").

  • This is very similar to the tradition double-diamond process. Funnily enough, the double-diamon is from 2005 so it's perhaps Martin that was inspired by it?

• On synthesis, research and innovation:

  • Kolko talks about innovation as something that isn't just new but also succeeds on the market. In this sense, design and research alone cannot produce something innovative. Other parts other organisation like engineering and marketing must make it happen and succeed, if an idea should be actually innovative.
  • What design research can do, is find the right problem to solve. It can point to an opportunity. However, a research with focus on human behavior is needed for that:
    • "...design research that focuses on human behavior – not on a particular object or service – is the most useful at discovering data for innovation"
  • So research is problem finding. Synthesis, then, is problem understanding. It can describe a solution in terms of characteristics but fundamentally acts as a link between research (generating data) and design (producing something tangible).