Design is a Social Process

[Adam_F_Collins]

I've been working on my Master's Thesis in Graphic Design for the last year. (One more to go!) and I am often struck by the similarities between the different realms of design, whether it be Graphic Design, Architecture, Industrial Design, Interior Design, Interaction Design - or Golf Course Design.

In my work, I've set out to discover what is "Design", when it is separated from the specifics of a particular type of design practice? What is it that makes Design distinct from art? What elements are THE SAME about all forms of professional design practice?

Well, after pounding the books, I've found that in order to really get to it, we have to first make a division the basic activity of design (the conception and planning of an action or undertaking) and the Professional practice of doing this. The professional practice of design - that which makes us all fit under the heading of "designer" - requires SOCIAL INTERACTION, and the process of reaching AGREEMENT on a course of action in order to bring our designs into reality.

To me, this social aspect is the least focused-on, but perhaps the most important defining characteristic of what it means to be a designer. It is common to all design practice.

When I read the posts on this site regarding golf course design, I see it everywhere. Why did my club choose Les Furber to design our golf course when there are much better designers out there? "Well, he gave a GREAT presentation". Why does the name Fazio appear on so many "signature" designs? Why do we so often come back to discussions of "marketing"?

Well, it's because design is a SOCIAL activity before it is a formal one. Designers must connect with people and find their way to reaching AGREEMENT about what form a dream will take.

Look around you. The buildings are the physical product of a social agreement on what the form of human dwelling should take. Churches are the physical evidence of an agreement about what makes a building suitable for worship. Cars are the agreement on transportation and communication about what a ride should be.

And golf courses are the embodiment of the agreement that was reached between all of the people involved.

There are many forms of agreement and different ways it is reached. Perhaps it is the architect throwing up his hands and saying "Fine, I don't agree, but I can't convince you so..." Or maybe it is the developer saying "Go wild, just do what you know is right" - Or maybe it comes from the construction boss saying, "This young architect doesn't know his ass from a greenside bunker, so we really should put some mounding in there".

Whatever the case, the result - the golf courses which we spend our time critiquing, pining over, dreaming about - the golf course lies in the middle. Its form is what we are able to agree on.

Any designer who can't deal with people; with the give and take and the understanding that the products of your labors will be as much the products of others, will find professional practice very difficult to say the least.

A designers work is a testament to their ability to collaborate - and therefore compromise - with other human beings.

Design is a social process. And it's too often overlooked.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Tom Paul mentioned my thesis work and so I dug this up.

[Marty Bonnar]

Nice thread, Adam,
although I think you may have missed or overlooked the important element of 'DIS'-agreement in the design process.

Clients, (Britishism for customers!) when presented with designs usually disagree with as much as they agree. They have their own visions of how things will turn out. Sometimes, this might be a very well-informed standpoint. Other times, they are talking thru a hole...!

Any designer (of ANYTHING) needs to be adept not only at the design bit, but also the political bit of the process (maybe even more so?). If you're not, then you're never gonna get anything built/printed/made/fabricated/DONE!

FBD.

[Garland Bayley]

 From Answsers.com the first definition is:
"To conceive or fashion in the mind; invent"
I would maintain the more social, the less inventive.
Or perhaps, the more social, the more reinventive.

[Adam_F_Collins]

From Answsers.com the first definition is:
"To conceive or fashion in the mind; invent"
I would maintain the more social, the less inventive.
Or perhaps, the more social, the more reinventive.

That's why my thesis work is directed toward gaining a better understanding of the word "design" as it applies to the profession. Under the definition you provide, who ISN'T a designer. And if everyone is, then what makes a professional designer different? Why have them around? And how does one separate 'art' from 'design' in terms of different fields with different titles. Are they really the same? No they're not. Art can work for clients, but doesn't have to.

You won't find many people who are 'designers' who don't work with and for other people in collaborative efforts of conception and planning.

[Garland Bayley]

In my field, software, design is very often a singular activity. Often times this brings about a new paradigm and all the other designers have to "resocialize" themselves. Applying this to gca, the truly champion gca designer would have to bring about a new paradigm. Championship golf depends too much on putting? Vijay will retire to a design career creating greens that have six depressions (and on Monday the course is closed) with the pin placement at the low point in the depression. Every green is a 1 putt green, and ball striking rules. That would be a new paradigm. In golf these changes don't seem to happen, because they fail to find social acceptance.

[Adam_F_Collins]

In my field, software, design is very often a singular activity. Often times this brings about a new paradigm and all the other designers have to "resocialize" themselves. Applying this to gca, the truly champion gca designer would have to bring about a new paradigm. Championship golf depends too much on putting? Vijay will retire to a design career creating greens that have six depressions (and on Monday the course is closed) with the pin placement at the low point in the depression. Every green is a 1 putt green, and ball striking rules. That would be a new paradigm. In golf these changes don't seem to happen, because they fail to find social acceptance.

Garland,

Who is designing software alone? With no client, no established need, no budget... They just go off into a room on their own and make new software based on their own agenda, budget, equipment and interests?

[Tom Dunne]

In my field, software, design is very often a singular activity. Often times this brings about a new paradigm and all the other designers have to "resocialize" themselves. Applying this to gca, the truly champion gca designer would have to bring about a new paradigm. Championship golf depends too much on putting? Vijay will retire to a design career creating greens that have six depressions (and on Monday the course is closed) with the pin placement at the low point in the depression. Every green is a 1 putt green, and ball striking rules. That would be a new paradigm. In golf these changes don't seem to happen, because they fail to find social acceptance.

Garland,

Who is designing software alone? With no client, no established need, no budget... They just go off into a room on their own and make new software based on their own agenda, budget, equipment and interests?

Adam,

Without agreeing or disagreeing with your initial post, but simply as a reply to your question to Garland, I'd offer a one-word answer:

Google. That's exactly what they're doing.

[Adam_F_Collins]

In my field, software, design is very often a singular activity. Often times this brings about a new paradigm and all the other designers have to "resocialize" themselves. Applying this to gca, the truly champion gca designer would have to bring about a new paradigm. Championship golf depends too much on putting? Vijay will retire to a design career creating greens that have six depressions (and on Monday the course is closed) with the pin placement at the low point in the depression. Every green is a 1 putt green, and ball striking rules. That would be a new paradigm. In golf these changes don't seem to happen, because they fail to find social acceptance.

Garland,

Who is designing software alone? With no client, no established need, no budget... They just go off into a room on their own and make new software based on their own agenda, budget, equipment and interests?

Adam,

Without agreeing or disagreeing with your initial post, but simply as a reply to your question to Garland, I'd offer a one-word answer:

Google. That's exactly what they're doing.

Google is not an individual. A key word in your last sentence, Tom:

"they're"

"They're" a group of people, working together, analyzing needs of many more people, debating amongst themselves about what to do next. We'll know what they've come to agree on in their social process of design by the next technology headline regarding the moves of this internet giant.

Google is an organization of people with a variety of individual needs, aspirations and agendas. What "Google" is and does is the physical manifestation of agreement between them.

[ForkaB]

Adam

For a different (and possibly illuminating) perspective, read some of Tom Peters (if you have not already).  I resonate with him as we have very similar backgrounds, interests, and in a few cases, clients.  OK, he's got the fame and the big bucks, but 3 out of 5 ain't bad.......

To me "business", is the integration of esthetic principles (including design) with social needs.  To paraphrase the simplistic vernacular, taking form and turning it into function.  Peter's began to explore this in "Liberation Management" and built upon this in "The Pursuit of WOW!" and later books.  When I first read it I thought, "Design?!"  How could that be important to corporate strategy?  Well, history has shown that it can be and it is.

[Marty Bonnar]

Adam,
one other thing which came to mind for me was:

'never under-estimate the power of the viscera'

I mean that we TOO OFTEN over-intellectualise both design and the design process. I know that as a young(er) designer I spent WAY too much time thinking about all of the ramifications of the minutest details of a design (I was an Architecture undergrad) and often got bogged down completely in stuff which I could easily have left until later. (Details, Colours, Materials instead of sound Planning, Site Surveying and Analysis and so on).

Sometimes it is just right to maybe draw something and play it out until it either works or doesn't. How often have you gone back to an earlier or maybe even the first iteration of a design to find that (actually) it wasn't as bad as you thought then and that, with a little re-thinking, it can be made to work. I know I still do every day!!

What I guess I'm trying to say is that maybe there's no right or wrong process to design and we don't actually need to play whatever game is trendy this year (glass-box, black-box, repetitive iteration or whatever, yawn, yawn...) and that maybe as designers (who rather fortuitously also happen to be HUMAN-BEINGS too!) we just might know what the hell we are doing - instinctively.

FBD.

[TEPaul]

http://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/cw.html

Adam:

Take a look at that article by Clive Wainwright. It gets into the history of the interrelationship or lack of it of architect or designer and the craftsman (whether it's one who does both or many involved in the design and production process and what that all may mean in art). Very interesting generally as well as from an historical perspective.

[Tom Dunne]

Adam,

Point taken re Google. I think it was the phrase "no client, no established need" that led me to think of them. Clearly there is a social process at work within their company.

Having read your original post again, I think I'm mostly inclined to agree with you. As far as GCA is concerned, I don't think it's a coincidence that the heroes of this site tend to surround themselves with the smartest and most talented associates working today. On the occasions I've had to interact with Bill Coore, for example, he has literally never failed to highlight the intensely collaborative nature of his work, not just with Crenshaw but with the entire C&C team. It does tend to deflate the sense of a GCA "auteur theory", at least in this modern era.  

I've always both feared and respected the idea percolating in Hemingway's line, "The first draft of anything is shit." I think it can generally apply to creative production across the board--where would F. Scott Fitzgerald be without Maxwell Perkins....where would Scorsese be without Thelma Schoonmaker? Where would Pine Valley be without the contributions of its various architectural players?

And yet at the same time, I do agree with Martin Bonnar that the process can be over-thought. There are moments when simplicity and the "power of the viscera" absolutely carry the day. Milton Glaser, after all, sketched one of the iconic branding logos of the past half-century ("I Heart NY") in the backseat of a taxi....AFTER his final design to the state Commerce Dept. had already been accepted.

[Garland Bayley]

Garland,

Who is designing software alone? With no client, no established need, no budget... They just go off into a room on their own and make new software based on their own agenda, budget, equipment and interests?

Think about every software Ph. D. thesis that went on to become the  foundation of a successful software company. Google started that way. However, I don't know in particular if it was a sole individual at the basis since some Ph. D. projects are too large for an individual.
The first company I worked for was funded by the banking friends of the father-in-law of the principal engineer. He created a unique simulator and patented it. To a much smaller extent I design software alone. My piece must work with all the other pieces, but the internals of my work are my responsibility alone.
Software is different from gca.  The funders often have no way to even communicate about a software design. The can communicate about the human interface of the software, but it is typically considered to be the most trivial part of the design.
I am not maintaining that there is no social aspect to software design. Out of curiosity, I picked up a book that I had read several years ago - "Bringing Design to Software", Terry Winograd. Three chapters deal with the social aspect of software design.
In my original post, I was alluding to my belief that often social processes water down invention, thereby watering down the design.
People often criticize Pete Dye creations. I wonder what he would have created if he hadn't had Alice around to "socialize" him.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Adam,
one other thing which came to mind for me was:

'never under-estimate the power of the viscera'

I mean that we TOO OFTEN over-intellectualise both design and the design process.
...we just might know what the hell we are doing - instinctively.

Very true, Martin. To me, a lot of this drive to 'over intellectualize' in design may come largely from it's social aspects. Artists don't necessarily need a 'reason' to do the things that they do. However, because designers so often have to justify their actions to others, I find that we naturally tend to intellectuallize almost everything (even if it happens to be AFTER we have created something instinctually)

To the idea of instinct, another area I'm interested in is the thought that designers may be a "type" of person. Think of the elementary school science fair. There were many designer types there - maybe they ended up in business, or education, or engineering, or design but they all have that - well - that "need" to shape the world with other people.

[Adam_F_Collins]

When I first read it I thought, "Design?!"  How could that be important to corporate strategy?  Well, history has shown that it can be and it is.

Very True, Rich. Design is (and always has been) very much a part of business in the form of corporate strategy and product design. That is one aspect that I'm working to illuminate in my work. Much of the lack of conscious connection has to do with the definition of the word itself. I've started there.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Think about every software Ph. D. thesis that went on to become the  foundation of a successful software company. Google started that way.

Garland,

Your point highlights the problematic aspects of the word 'design' itself. Certainly, one can design something alone. But are they a designer in a professional sense? A student is a student; designing a solution to their problem.

And I agree that the design process of a professional fluctuates between the social activities of the collaborative, to the private, problem-solving functions of the individual. The ratios of one to the other will certainly vary with the profession, and the unique situations of the specific job.

[Garland Bayley]

...But are they a designer in a professional sense? A student is a student; designing a solution to their problem.
...

I only used the student example as an example most people would be familiar with. Think about the underground drainage systems in gca. How much social process goes on during their design? Probably much less than the visible above ground facets of the design. In software, the "underground drainage system" is the guts of the software system. It is the hard part and there are thousands, if not millions,  of software designers designing them on their own. The customers measure external phenomenon to determine how well the "system drains". In my business, the system that "drains" the fastest wins the customers.

[TEPaul]

"Design is a social process. And it's too often overlooked."

Adam:

I've read your initial post a number of times. It's a very broad and complex subject, to say the very least. But I keep going back to your final line there.

And because I do, even if it may seem somewhat far-fetched to you at this point, I'm wondering if you're familiar with some of the thinking, historical and otherwise behind what is often referred to as John Nash's "Game Theory"? If you haven't considered it perhaps you should---it just may help you in your thesis and perhaps a good deal. Do not be, at first, thrown off by it's name---as most people are.  

I'm told that John Nash's "Game Theory" is essentially to social science as significant as Albert Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" is to physical science.

If you've never heard of John Nash, I'm sure it would be understandable because owing to various mental and other problems on his part he was virtually forgotten about (even if his "Game Theory" most certainly wasn't). Unbelievably, he is still today around Princeton U, even if as somewhat of a curiosity.

And interestingly when he became rediscoverd (most people thought he'd been dead for about 30 years) he became the subject of the really interesting movie "A Beautiful Mind".

Look into his "Game Theory". You might find some things there relevent and helpful to your Master's Thesis's subject.

[ForkaB]

Tom

It's not "Nash's" Game Theory--von Neumann and Morgenstern were the fathers.  Nash was just one (although one of the more talented) of their many sons.

[TEPaul]

"Tom
It's not "Nash's" Game Theory--von Neumann and Morgenstern were the fathers.  Nash was just one (although one of the more talented) of their many sons."

Rich:

Actually the roots of the concept probably originated in Arabia long before any of them. When I say "Nash's Game Theory" most know what I mean for that and I'm pretty sure you know what I mean by that. Well, knowing you, maybe not.  

Anyway, Adam, look into it---as there might be something there for you with your mention of 'Design as a SOCIAL process'.

[ForkaB]

Actually the roots of the concept probably originated in Arabia long before any of them.

Right.........

Next thing you'll tell me is that the girl Nash and his buddies were trying to pick up in that Princeton bar was one of your cousins and that she grew up in an Arts and Crafts house next to a family whose back garden was based on one of Capbility Brown's English gardens where George Thomas learned everything he knew about roses and was the inspiration for his 10th at Riviera which was where a young researcher from the Rand corporation got his idea for the Prisoner's Dilemma which inspired Nash............

[Adam_F_Collins]

Excellent, Tom - I have the book!

I haven't spent any time with it yet, as I have a mountain of books full of bookmarks - but I will be sure to give it some focus.

Cheers.