There are many different models of the design process, with variations that apply to diverse strands of activity across the enormous range of design industries. They mostly share many of the same stages although they place a different emphasis on these depending on the intended purpose and outcome. However, the principle of the thinking and actions underpinning these stages is important, when we consider which design skills and design thinking approaches we will teach and how we will teach this.
These process stages can be summarised as the following:
■ Define
- the identification of need or
specification including customer/user profile.
■ Research
- identifying all salient information
needed to complete the design including customer/user profiles, markets,
purpose, need, previous similar products, stylistic influences, preferences and
cost effectiveness, but also early investigation and media experimentation.
■ Imagine/Ideate
- Idea generation (key to innovation and
creative development).
■ Refine
- the development of the idea, through
stages that improve the outcome (including further experimentation and
investigation).
■ Prototype/visualise
- the modelling and creation/manufacture of
versions to enable definitive testing or consideration against the
brief/intention.
■ Implement
- the selection and move to final
production, realisation or manufacture.
■ Evaluate
- a QA process that seeks to confirm the
effectiveness of the outcome/s.
This image is from A Level Textiles at George Abbot School, Guildford. With thanks to the department for their permission to use this image.
Whilst this broadly defined process would
seem to model an industrial process more familiar with the functional design
and manufacture of engineered products or electrical goods, it can equally
describe the design and development processes for the creation of fine art,
fashion, textiles, graphical products, photography, jewellery, sculpture; craft
products and all visual art outcomes including film, digital lens and screen
based media. The process can also be
linear, but does not have to remain so and can be treated far more flexibly
when not part of a larger commercial process.
However, I do believe that students must have creative experience with
this process, both as intellectual and physical stages, each with distinct
characteristics, knowledge and skills.
The two images below share a similar aesthetic and are closely related
in time. At design stages they surely
shared similar elements of visual design, and yet the outcomes are very
different. Do we draw connections and make this clear enough in our teaching of
design?
Perhaps we think of art as one type of
outcome and design as another, leading to different kinds of product? If this
is so, we may be misleading young people in schools if they do not see the 'design'
in the 'art', and vice versa After all,
a painting is just as much a product, as an illustration, a piece of bespoke
jewellery, a bowl, a photograph or a digital game.
In a student sketchbook, we generally see much research and some development in the refining of an idea towards a suitable conclusion, leading to a painting, a piece of craft, print or sculpture. Increasingly, not all design stages (identified above) will have been as carefully explored when developing a fine art outcome. Less thinking will have been invested in defining the purpose, audience and point of display, or in the refinement of the idea or prototyping to ensure the investment of time is well spent before creating the final outcome? I am not suggesting we adopt a tight linear model, or that we follow all of the steps in every project. By not developing a thorough design experience, including an understanding of the thinking processes and skills, we are certainly missing some of the rigour we expect from the thinking and design development at each stage in the creative process. Equally, students will not gain the ‘bigger picture’ of design or understand the breadth of career opportunity available.
How also do we encompass within our
concept of art and design, the rapid prevalence of digital media and
multi-modal products e.g. web and game design, animation, advertising and film
(lens and screen based media)? I believe their place in our curriculum expands the
concept of design, broadens skills and understanding, increasing the social and
cultural relevance of this curriculum. It would be very easy to place this
within a box labelled ‘engage and motivate the underperforming boys’, but this
is not always true and the ‘ghettoisation’ of digital media for this purpose
would be morally wrong. However, I do
think we broadly understand why digital media holds the attraction it does for
many students, but all teachers must be fully prepared to embrace the scope of
this media, using it to implement approaches that make visual language more
relevant to all students. In particular, I believe it may help us to address
the awful disparity in performance between girls and boys in art and design
examinations, providing at least one strand in our strategy to tackle
this. These students will underperform
for a variety of reasons, but what seems clear is their disinterest in a
largely historical curriculum, which fuels their disengagement and poor
motivation. However, many of them are
both technically skilled in aspects of digital media and hugely engaged as consumers
of contemporary creative outcomes. This media is after all, a product of our
time and our culture, speaking to us all through film, the TV screen, web,
computer and increasingly through our phones and portable devices.
When considering how as educators we might
better utilise these digital tools, we must remember it is unlike any other
creative medium. It encompasses a huge
and growing range of processes and creative tools, with the means of both
presentation and distribution. It also
provides us with a means of connecting with the work of the present, the past
and of other groups and cultures. It
also has the potential to be interactive and will become increasingly
‘intelligent’, speaking to us directly in our leisure activities, as a learner
or as part of an entertainment process.
This environment is complex, but it is certainly creative, highly visual
and multi sensory. The games design industry models this for us and
demonstrates how successful we can be in establishing new design industries and
achieve commercial success. It also connects
art and design with other subjects such as physics and mathematics, as the
routes into design in higher education become increasingly complex, mirroring
the breadth of employment opportunity across the growing design, creative and
media industries. We will always need artists who can help us interpret and understand
our own society. However, we really do
need good designers who are highly skilled, innovative, creative, ethical,
humorous, intelligent, political, social and morally minded.
As educators, we will personally be
challenged by the demands of updating our digital and creative skills, moving
many of us well beyond the focus of our original training and practice.
Inevitably this will start to transform our departments and over time, we may
well see a shift from paint and physical media towards lens and light based
media. By rooting ourselves more
thoughtfully in the breadth of contemporary design practice, we can better
achieve this evolution, connecting to a wealth of contemporary creative design
practitioners, design companies and referencing the ways in which this practice
connects with people as consumers.
I believe these approaches will also help
us aspire to better design, to embrace the risks and problems of 21st
century design rather than remain always within the worlds of pictures and
pigment. Too rarely do lessons fully explore and develop the thinking steps and
process stages taken by an artist, digital games, product or media designer,
supported by a critique of their research and their design studies. Too often learning is about art and not about
design, with insufficient focus on the thinking processes, context and purpose,
engaging only with the physical outcomes and without value judgement, or a
consideration of the relevance to society.
We know our world has become ‘visual’,
where the image is almost more dominant than the word. All the more surprising that so many teachers
do not embrace the visual language of lens and light based media, the rich and diverse
world of design that underpins this. We
know this media often uses a different skill set, requires an additional CPD commitment
and certainly lacks many of the tactile and multi-sensory features that originally
engaged us all as creators. However, it is evolving and it is essential that we
educate young people as both critical creators and critical consumers, aspiring
to the highest standards of design.
Perhaps we think that the process of
design has been commandeered by Design Technology departments, or more
industrial and functional iterations of commercial products, rather than the
creation of a unique or bespoke outcome. We also tend to use the word ‘create’
more than the word ‘design’, perhaps because we think creation is more
expressive or is a ‘higher order’ activity than designing? If so, we miss the
point of what design is and what it can be.
Most importantly, we loose the potential to learn about and through the
diverse processes across the many areas of design. We also loose some elements
of a reflection on how the artist as designer, both physically and
intellectually interprets our world.
A question for teachers of art and design
is whether ‘it is time’ to re-claim and expand our concept of the design
process and in particular the contemporary design process? If we don’t, we deny our students the
opportunity to learn how to think as an artist and a designer, to learn how to
visually perceive, ‘read’ and ‘apply’ this thinking using the visual language
of our subject, thereby understanding how this language extends beyond 'art'
into every aspect of our lives.
