Image courtesy of Michel Boot, Delft University of Technology
This is the second article from Dr. James Self exploring designers’ approaches and tools in support of a thoughtful, reflective design activity. You can read the first piece, “CAD vs. Sketching, Why Ask?” here.
Design practitioners are well-aware of and indeed exploit uncertainty as a means to facilitate design thinking, innovation and creativity. As design intentions are explored through the use of designerly tools such as sketching, design activity remains divergent, iterative and uncommitted. This ambiguous uncertainty facilitates design thinking and the exploration of often ill-defined design problems. In short, there exists a unique relationship between uncertainty and design activity. Because to design is to engage with an exploration of ideas towards the yet to be. Understanding this relationship is important if we are to develop our understanding of what it is to design.
So, what is uncertainty and what contribution can it make to design activity and design thinking?
In order to understand uncertainty as it relates to design activity it is important to first attempt to define it. The Oxford English dictionary offers the following definition:
This suggests uncertainty is a human state or emotion, a reaction to situations that are or appear to be unknown or unclear; the ambiguous. This definition of uncertainty has implied negative connotations—the natural response to uncertainty is to employ a course of action with the purpose of resolving the uncertain state; to seek the truth. In the natural sciences, where the objective is to understand the world as it is, this makes good sense. Through scientific enquiry we discover truths about our natural world. We are able to develop an understanding of how the world is.
But what if our purpose is to develop strategies, ideas and thinking towards that which does not yet exist? How should uncertainty be approached and what can this then tell us about the unique nature of designerly ways of knowing? Before addressing these questions it is worth spending a few moments to consider the slippery subject of what it is to design.
It has been well documented in previous attempts to define ‘design’ that the word immediately throws up challenges in coming to a consensus of its use and meaning. Ironically, the meaning of design remains uncertain! This is not the time or the place to engage in a discussion of the various semantic meanings of the word. However, for the purposes of our discussion of uncertainty in design activity, we will refer to the word design as a verb; as in to design—we are referring to the activity of designing. We can also say that the act of designing has, at its core, a requirement to adapt an existing system, process or object in a new way or to describe a new system, process or object. The designer is a futurist—they must explore, develop and present concepts and ideas towards that which may be, but does not yet exist.
So engagement in an activity of design is characterised by the exploration of the yet to be. As a result of this, design activity involves engagement with not only the unknown, as in the pursuit of knowledge in the sciences, but that which cannot be known because it does not yet exist. It is because design activity involves an exploration of the yet to be that design is unique in its relationship with uncertainty.
Related to this uniqueness, design problems may be described as ill-defined or wicked, where the solution to the problem or outcome is unknown or unclear at the start of the process. There may be more than one ‘correct’ solution to any given design problem. The designer’s role is to explore alternatives, finally coming to the specification of a best or optimal solution.
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