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Understanding Design: 175 Reflections on Being a Designer by Kees Dorst
What does it mean to be a designer, and what does it take to be a good designer? Understanding Design stimulates designers to think about what they do, how they do it, and why they aim for a certain effect. One hundred seventy precisely formulated mini-essays give insight into the design process and encourage reflection.
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First published October 1, 2006
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August 17, 2018This may have been the most practical book I have read about designing. It clarifies the complexity of design without reducing it through over simplification.
Also well organized and designed as a book. One essay per page and grouped into categories that are helpful. The book can be used as reference for reflection during one's design process.
Also well organized and designed as a book. One essay per page and grouped into categories that are helpful. The book can be used as reference for reflection during one's design process.
December 11, 2022
In broad agreement but....
I found myself quite interested to read what "Understanding Design" (UD) said next; it was a page-turner. I found myself in broad agreement about what it had to say, but yet I found it...
maybe a bit boring?
UD is a book that aimed to be a commiseration as one finds oneself in the design situation, avoiding the alienation from the impressive abstraction of design methodology and research and the inspiring but remote examples of other design practices. There's a time in which one will find a great solace in knowing, world-weary practicalities that hold true time-and-time again. However, there's also a time in which one thinks "Yes, but I'm trying to get around that now, and live in the excitement that being part of my practice brings."
and maybe also incomplete?
As though it hadn't actually quite figured out a number of core ideas about what it was proposing about what one needs to understand about design in general. Perhaps one would notice if they only have a notion of those missing pieces are, so I'd like to give the courtesy of sharing my notions about this.
Evaluating explorations
UD ends on exploration as a core for design, and I agree with this: if design in general is anything, it is the process of exploration for forming interventions and their particular assessments. It is about is discovering what the problem is, and how it behaves, by looking into particular approaches without commitment, but to see what those possibilities now allow us to associate with the situation. They do so with sensitivity to the concerns of all stakeholders, including themselves, and engage the physical dynamics, participant experiences and sensibilities, and contextual particulars that build a holistic picture of what given changes would mean.
If this is true, then what designers are building skill in is not only shaping outcome, but in these discovery processes that find the right information to do so. With this, the criteria to evaluate them is also the degree to which they deftly discovered a suitable picture, making a reasonable trade-off between the costs of further exploration and the risks of inappropriate commitment.
Improving the effectiveness of design exploration enables better outcomes, as effectively wielding tools for rich exploration will reduce the cost-to-discover, and therefore the cost-to-risk trade-off point will encompass greater coverage of the stakeholders, their concerns, and the factors impacting these concerns.
What this means is that, independent of design discipline, independent of personal practice, and separate from any particular methodology, is operational approaches for effectively exploring the web of knowledge, bringing together associations that trigger further salience, and being mindful of the concepts being brought to stakeholders. In this framework, the story of particular observations is no longer particular.
That which is always already there
The other aspect missing is that there is no true spot of domain neutrality for designers and there really never has been. The book knows this, mentioning thrownness, but has not internalized it: that we are thrown into a world of living things, as a living thing, and immediately are under the constraints of being animals on Earth. There is always a context of living in habitat that it makes no sense to be neutral to, and is an immediate factor for any design discipline. No matter one's concerns, one will always be subject to social, technological, environmental, economic, and political factors. There is never a point not bringing these considerations to the design context.
The opportunity
Design curriculum has the dual opportunity in navigating information: in situating itself in our world situation and in critiquing process as to develop rich knowledge gathering that recombines to catalyze evolving design concepts.
I found myself quite interested to read what "Understanding Design" (UD) said next; it was a page-turner. I found myself in broad agreement about what it had to say, but yet I found it...
maybe a bit boring?
UD is a book that aimed to be a commiseration as one finds oneself in the design situation, avoiding the alienation from the impressive abstraction of design methodology and research and the inspiring but remote examples of other design practices. There's a time in which one will find a great solace in knowing, world-weary practicalities that hold true time-and-time again. However, there's also a time in which one thinks "Yes, but I'm trying to get around that now, and live in the excitement that being part of my practice brings."
and maybe also incomplete?
As though it hadn't actually quite figured out a number of core ideas about what it was proposing about what one needs to understand about design in general. Perhaps one would notice if they only have a notion of those missing pieces are, so I'd like to give the courtesy of sharing my notions about this.
Evaluating explorations
UD ends on exploration as a core for design, and I agree with this: if design in general is anything, it is the process of exploration for forming interventions and their particular assessments. It is about is discovering what the problem is, and how it behaves, by looking into particular approaches without commitment, but to see what those possibilities now allow us to associate with the situation. They do so with sensitivity to the concerns of all stakeholders, including themselves, and engage the physical dynamics, participant experiences and sensibilities, and contextual particulars that build a holistic picture of what given changes would mean.
If this is true, then what designers are building skill in is not only shaping outcome, but in these discovery processes that find the right information to do so. With this, the criteria to evaluate them is also the degree to which they deftly discovered a suitable picture, making a reasonable trade-off between the costs of further exploration and the risks of inappropriate commitment.
Improving the effectiveness of design exploration enables better outcomes, as effectively wielding tools for rich exploration will reduce the cost-to-discover, and therefore the cost-to-risk trade-off point will encompass greater coverage of the stakeholders, their concerns, and the factors impacting these concerns.
What this means is that, independent of design discipline, independent of personal practice, and separate from any particular methodology, is operational approaches for effectively exploring the web of knowledge, bringing together associations that trigger further salience, and being mindful of the concepts being brought to stakeholders. In this framework, the story of particular observations is no longer particular.
That which is always already there
The other aspect missing is that there is no true spot of domain neutrality for designers and there really never has been. The book knows this, mentioning thrownness, but has not internalized it: that we are thrown into a world of living things, as a living thing, and immediately are under the constraints of being animals on Earth. There is always a context of living in habitat that it makes no sense to be neutral to, and is an immediate factor for any design discipline. No matter one's concerns, one will always be subject to social, technological, environmental, economic, and political factors. There is never a point not bringing these considerations to the design context.
The opportunity
Design curriculum has the dual opportunity in navigating information: in situating itself in our world situation and in critiquing process as to develop rich knowledge gathering that recombines to catalyze evolving design concepts.
September 10, 2009
Good book to have lying around, read a page here and there. Deep understanding about life as a designer.
Want to read
March 26, 2012UQ Engin & Sciences library
NK1510 .D67 2003 browse call no
NK1510 .D67 2003 browse call no
May 29, 2011
Simply: it was amazing. Well-written, easy to read, interesting and funny!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews