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Tag: ConceptualDesign

  • Signs of bad design

    Signs of bad design

    Warning signs interest me. In some instances warning signs are necessary and appropriate, but in my experience they are often the mitigation measure of last resort for an issue that probably could have been solved by a different conceptual design.

    Take this example, one of the entrances to the Elizabeth Line at Paddington Station, London.

    In this image I count six different classes of sign directing people to the lifts with their luggage. And, what’s more, in addition to all the signs you can see, there is an additional innovation. The black TV screen is connected to a camera that scans for passengers who are towing suitcases towards the escalators. Guilty parties spotted, it displays an image of their suitcase along with an arrow pointing to the lift.

    In addition to the signs there are physical barriers to suitcases, which must not be working otherwise the signs would not be necessary.

    As I recall, when the station opened, there were no barriers and hardly any signs. All of these measures are therefore an attempt to solve a problem that has emerged since the station has opened.

    Clearly the station managers are dealing with a real, operational safety challenge. And with limited options for re-design of the physical infrastructure, they are using the levers available to them: signs, barriers and sophisticated surveillance. This isn’t a criticism of station managers – rather a provocation for conceptual designers in the built environment:

    How often do we use signs and barriers to fix problems that better design could prevent?

  • Don’t interrupt

    I need to get that invoice out. What was I thinking about? Should I order another coffee? There’s so much to do before Christmas. Is the role of the regenerative designer to fully imagine a regenerative world or just design the next step? Am I hungry? I must write those slides for Monday.

    Thoughts can be scrambled, non-linear, profound, or anodyne. They might gush out in torrents or emerge as a slow trickle.

    But a conversation provides the chance to focus—a chance to tether those thoughts down, to allow them to build.

    In conversation, we have to speak, and the power of language lies in its ability to provide a framework for expressing and organising our thoughts.

    Random musings must be transformed into nouns, verbs, and adjectives, structured by the rules of grammar.

    The thoughts we choose to express must be organised to keep our listener interested (I’m more likely to stay on topic and not digress into talking about invoicing).

    Giving someone the opportunity to speak is also giving them the opportunity to think—to refine and develop their ideas as they go.

    So, keep them talking – don’t interrupt.

  • What shall we do a with a no-brief client?

    (To the tune of “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor”)

    Chorus:

    What shall we do with a no-brief client?

    What shall we do with a no-brief client?

    What shall we do with a no-brief client?

    Early in the morning? 

    Verse 1:

    Start with a list of their requirements,

    Start with a list of their requirements,

    Start with a list of their requirements,

    To get the process rolling!

    Verse 2:

    Sprinkle on a little bit of what delights them,

    Sprinkle on a little bit of what delights them,

    Sprinkle on a little bit of what delights them,

    And now we’ve got a briefing!

    Verse 3:

    Now it’s time to go and break the brief right open,

    Now it’s time to go and break the brief right open,

    Now it’s time to go and break the brief right open,

    To start creative thinking!

    Verse 4:

    Read the brief out slowly to them,

    Read the brief out slowly to them,

    Read the brief out slowly to them,

    And see what is emerging!

    Verse 5:

    Capture all their questions on a great big mind map,

    Capture information on a great big mind map,

    Capture inspiration on a great big mind map,

    And see what thoughts are forming!

    Verse 6:

    Oh ay, another idea!

    Oh ay, another idea!

    Oh ay, another idea!

    No idea is too stupid!

    Verse 7:

    Now it’s time to test them all against the briefing,

    Now it’s time to test them all against the briefing,

    Now it’s time to test them all against the briefing,

    To see what needs improving!

    Verse 8:

    And so you’ve got a brief and some emerging concepts,

    So you’ve got a brief and some emerging concepts,

    So you’ve got a brief and some emerging concepts,

    That the team can work with!

    Final Chorus:

    That’s what we do with a no-brief client,

    That’s what we do with a no-brief client,

    That’s what we do with a no-brief client,

    Next time, call us sooner!

    —–

    🎼 Do you like songs about engineering? Here’s another one I wrote.

  • Make a little time for design

    Things are just a bit too busy right now. I don’t really have much time to think about my design process. Or so it goes.

    But here’s the thing: even a little time spent thinking about your process is time well spent. Steal a few seconds on your commute or book a 15-minute meeting with yourself in a quiet pod.

    Once you’ve carved out those moments, here are some quick things you can do:

    • Write down the high-level brief. – Often, we forget what the brief actually is! Take a moment to capture the key things that need to be achieved to meet the client’s needs.
    • Gather your inputs. Check you’ve got the basics covered: information from the brief, site details, precedents, and inputs from colleagues.
    • Print off some sketches, images, or drawings. So much of our work lives on tiny screens, but our brains evolved to process a much wider field of vision. Fill that space with physical inputs to stimulate creative thinking.
    • Do a quick sketch. A simple sketch can help you spot new connections or things you hadn’t noticed before.
    • Do nothing! Sit quietly for ten minutes and let your subconscious do the work. Sometimes, clarity comes from stillness.

    Try it once, and you’ll likely notice something you hadn’t seen before. Do it often, and you’ll build a habit of making time for design—a habit that pays dividends over time.

  • Juice the brief

    Juice the Brief is one of my favourite techniques for uncovering the possibilities hidden in a design brief. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stimulate creativity, generate new ideas, and explore questions that might not otherwise surface.

    How to Juice the Brief: Step-by-Step Guide

    To begin, you need a design brief—or at least a written description of the need or potential you’ve identified in a situation. It’s crucial that this is written down so it can be read aloud.

    Next, prepare your workspace by writing the following three headings on a large sheet of paper, a flip chart, or an online whiteboard: Information, Questions, and Ideas.

    Step 1: Write Down the Brief
    Ensure the brief is clearly documented. This is the foundation for the process and will guide your team’s exploration.

    Step 2: Read the Brief Slowly
    One person reads the brief out slowly—and I mean really slowly. The goal is to give everyone listening enough time to focus on their thoughts and notice:

    • Any information (e.g., design requirements, facts about the project).
    • Any questions that come to mind (e.g., about the end-user, the site, or the requirements).
    • Any ideas, no matter how unformed or rough, that the brief inspires.

    Step 3: Extract Information, Questions, and Ideas
    Listeners write down their thoughts under the corresponding headings:

    • Information: Captures specific details from the brief that are important to the project.
    • Questions: Identifies areas needing clarification, exploration, or further research.
    • Ideas: Encourages creative sparks—small or large—that can fuel the design process.

    In this divergent phase, every thought is valuable. Questions often lead to new information or ideas. Ideas inspire further questions, encouraging exploration and deeper understanding.

    Why Juice the Brief

    Juicing the Brief is like spinning the dense words of a brief apart in a centrifuge. It extracts the rich potential hidden within and reveals creative stimuli that might otherwise be overlooked.

    The name? It wasn’t mine. This technique originally had a more formal title, but one of my trainees—whose name, alas, I don’t recall—said, “Do you juice the brief?” Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

    (Juicing the brief is just one of the many creative thinking tools in our conceptual design training for engineers (and other humans) at Constructivist.)

  • Approaching conflict in design

    Some people like conflict. Other people stay away from it.
    Some people attempt to engage constructively in conflict. The opposite is also true.

    For me, conflict is simply when two people discover they have different views on a subject. The key is what happens next. How do they engage with one another?

    It’s important to think about how we engage in conflict in design because disagreeing is a crucial part of the design process. It’s part of taking an idea from ‘mine’—an idea in my head—to an idea that exists in the world and fits well within the ecosystem it inhabits.

    Without conflict, the ideas we have risk only serving our own needs.

    In his excellent ‘Leading and Influencing’ course, Nick Zienau teaches four modes of conflict, based on a model called the ‘Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Instrument.’ I now teach these modes to engineers (and other humans) as part of managing a design process. The modes are: competition, avoidance, acceptance, and collaboration. These will be the subjects of my next four posts.

  • Design loop the loop

    Design is a continuous, looping process.

    It is a loop that begins with observing a situation, then establishing a brief for your work, developing ideas, and testing those ideas—trying them out in some way and observing what happens.

    Then we are back to observing again. Except we aren’t back in the same place, because the system has changed. It now includes your idea.

    The second time around, we are observing a changed world—a world altered by our developing and testing of ideas in response to a brief.

    Now, we can update the brief to create a better set of requirements—a set informed by what happened the last time we went around the loop.

    Each conversation with a client about needs and possibilities is a journey around the design loop.

    Each time we share sketches with the design team, we go around the loop once more.

    Assembling tender drawings and receiving tender responses—another orbit.

    Early contractor input, detailed design, on-site meetings to resolve design issues—all further revolutions.

    Every time we loop the loop, we learn something more about the system we are working in and how we are changing it.

  • Standardising decision-making in design

    Standardising decision-making enables companies to save money. A standardised process allows more junior staff to make decisions without needing to consult a more senior member of staff. Why might a more senior member of staff be required? Because subjective decisions require experience, perspective, and judgement, all of which take time to develop. It is therefore natural for a company seeking to increase profitability to look towards standardising its decision-making processes.

    However, we can also recognise the limitations of this approach. We encounter them when the service provider we rely on can’t make an exception in our case because their system won’t permit it, even though all that’s required is for someone to use judgement and say, ‘this is acceptable.’

    Our aim in construction should be to build far less that is new and to work much more with what already exists. Building new structures lends itself well to standardised processes. Working with existing structures is a much subtler art, requiring observation, analysis, and careful decision-making. Standardised decision-making will become significantly harder, and there will be no shortcut to careful judgement.

  • The subjective in the objective

    An objective decision is one that is independent of the decision-maker, as long as that person knows what they are doing.

    A subjective decision is one that is dependent on the decision maker.

    In my experience, engineers (and possibly other humans too) tend to love an objective decision-making process. Objectivity seems to remove fallibility.

    An objective-sounding way of making a decision is to carry out a multi-criteria analysis, in which the different factors are objectively assessed and then the different factors are given a weighting. The best answer then drops out of the process.

    But even if the assessment of different factors is objective, the establishing of the weighting is subjective. Our objective process has become subjective.

    That is fine, as long as we have the skills for making a subjective decision. Subjective decisions take time, require the application of judgement, draw on experience and values. These are factors that are not easily short cut.

  • Framing Design Decisions

    Shall we go to the Italian or the Mexican restaurant?

    Shall we go to the Mexican or the Italian restaurant?

    Shall we go to the Italian or the lovely Mexican restaurant?

    Shall we go our usual Italian or try out the Mexican place?

    Shall we go to the Mexican for main course and then go to the Italian for ice cream? 

    Shall we go to the Italian or the Mexican, or shall we look for somewhere else along the way?

    Shall we go to the expensive Italian place or the cheaper Mexican and spend the money we save on drinks beforehand?

    Shall we try one this time, the other the next, and use the experience to inform future decision-making.

    The last one may be unrealistic, but you get the picture. How we frame the question influences the decision we make. How is the design decision you are making being framed? 

  • Playing poker by the rules of noughts and crosses

    This week I am writing about how we make decisions in design. I’ve written before about David Snowden’s way of describing systems using a games analogy (see reference below). To recap:

    • A simple system is akin to a game of noughts and crosses. You know the rules and you can quickly work out the answer. 
    • A complicated system is like a game of chess. There are lots of rules, but given enough time you can work out all the options and choose the best one. 
    • A complex system is like a game of poker. The rules are one factor, but the game is made much more difficult by the interaction between the players. This is the domain of unknown unknowns. It is not possible to determine the best course of action from the start – the best approach emerges. 
    • A chaotic system is like a game with children in which they are constantly changing the rules. Here it is very difficult to make sense of what is going on as the ground keeps shifting. 

    Let’s look at decision making through these lenses. 

    A decision might appear to be a simple question of A versus B. But many factors might begin to complicate the process. For example, opportunity cost of one option over another. Or competing priorities that don’t make one option clearly better than another.

    When we start to include human factors, the picture becomes much more complex. First, there are the vast array of factors that push and pull our own decision-making – not all of them conscious; not all of them we want to admit to. And then there is how the groups of people around the poker table of design (whose interests might not necessarily be aligned) show up and play the game.

    The complexity grows when we we start to consider the interconnection between lots of the factors that we might consider in design: the long-term versus short-term business model, community wellbeing, ecosystem wellbeing, etc.

    Finally, we have a chaotic decision-making environment when the rules of the game start changing. This could be the case when, say, in a major project one part of the team starts shifting the goals of the project without informing the rest. No one is clear anymore about the conditions in which they are trying to make a decision.

    All of this is to say that decision-making is often much more complex than a simple A versus B. So we need to prepare ourselves for decision-making in complex environments. 

    As ever, our guiding principles can be: to work iteratively, and to look for the emergent patterns. 

    Playing poker by the rules of noughts and crosses is a losing strategy.

    References

    Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making. Harvard Business Review, November 2007 Issue.

  • Design decisions – who decides?

    Design is full of decisions. Which client? Which supplier? Which materials? What location? Whether to build or not to build? Which idea best suits the brief? Shall I challenge the brief (yes!)?

    The journey through design is a process of decision making. The ability to make well-informed, ethical and insightful decisions is the mark of the professional. And so it is worth spending a bit of time thinking about how we arrive at decisions.

    So let’s start here — with the question of who decides. Here are four answers.

    • I decide – through some process to be unpicked, I am doing the decision-making
    • Someone else decides – we are merely informed of their decision.
    • A decision emerges – through a series of interactions between people, possibly without anyone necessarily knowing how, a preferred decision reveals itself.
    • A decision evolves – this is the living world’s mechanism for decision-making. 

    You can see all of these at play in a design team. 

    • I might make a decision about what material to specify 
    • The client decides they want to reduce the budget –  I am not consulted, merely informed.
    • In a design team meeting, we review various options together, and through the interaction of people and ideas, a particular option wins out as the most popular.
    • And I might not be aware of it, but our decision is informed by and part of a long-term evolution of design which, for example, has seen greater emphasis placed on end-of-life design.

    Understanding who decides is a first step to figuring out the decision-making mechanism, where we have agency and how we can help make better decisions.

  • Design versus Shopping

    If the client knows exactly what they want at the start of a design process, then it isn’t design – it’s shopping. Shopping for the answer that you’ve already decided upon. Because design isn’t the business of dealing with knowns. It is precisely because there are unknowns that we need a design process. 

    By all means we should have an initial brief that describes outcomes we are trying to reach. And then begins a journey into realm of unknown possibilities and constraints to find out what might be possible. What we may discover is that that original statement of intent was not quite right. We might find something based on a better understanding of the situation. 

    And then we get a better brief. Better for everyone involved, including the client.

    Consider the opposite. The client sets a tightly defined brief with highly specified outcomes. The designer is forced to the client’s exacting brief, tantamount to a shopping list (and which has probably become formalised as a contract). The designer discovers a better solution but because it is not on the client’s shopping list, it isn’t considered. 

    And so the client comes back from the shops with what they asked for. But there is no guarantee they are going to fit.

  • Start with your scales

    I was taught to start my music practice by playing my scales. Starting with your scales:

    • Grounds you in the practice. The basic relationship between you and the instrument and the sound you can make
    • Reinforces and enhances the automatic movements that become how you play.
    • Takes you through the full range of motions of play.
    • Removes the barrier to knowing where to start because where to start is always the same. You pick up your instrument, you play a scale and you have begun.

    Starting with your scales doesn’t just apply to instruments. It applies to any work where you develop a practice, be that a practice of design, facilitation or performance. 

    In the technique I call Professional Palette in my conceptual design training, I encourage participants to warm up to a design exercise by quickly drawing through all the common typologies for the project they are working on.

    It applies whether you are designing a bridge span, an investigation, a workshop or a dance performance. 

    Make it your default to start with your scales: go through the range of motions, get all the pens out and put them on the table, familiarise yourself with the full breadth of your tools, and then begin.