Get real: The need for effective design research

Visible Language, 2003 by Nemeth, Christopher

The basis for communication design to add value has changed in the past twenty years. New electronic media have also popularized the skills that designers once considered their exclusive turf. Personal computers now enable any individual who has the right software to create the products of visual design. Design's traditional claim to form giving has now become a commodity and no longer serves as the standard for success in design. Emphasis has shifted to other issues. For example, Edward Tufte (2001) sets the standard of web page success at whether the layout has eighty percent or more content, not on its visual form.

More complex concepts such as interactive software require designers to cultivate the ability to analyze a problem, to develop a solution direction and to evaluate how well the solution solves the problem. Nemeth (2003) accounts for impediments to problem solving that all disciplines face, both as individuals (failure and lack of expertise, fixation, set and motivation, confirmation bias, availability and conjunction) and organizations (role in the project, culture, characteristics of problems, events, installed base of product and resources).

Design practice is also hemmed-in by practical constraints.

* Time is allotted according to what is cost-effective, not according to the character and scope of a problem. If there is money, research can be done. If the money is inadequate for research it is not performed, however important the questions are.

* Designers respond to client guidance. A talented designer will challenge client conditions but will rarely run counter to them. Client guidance is subject to competitive pressures. As a result, design activity tends to be market-driven. The challenge for the conscientious designer is to perform research at a level that is appropriate to the problem, yet to still fit within client and commercial constraints.

* Designers are rewarded more for performance that is related to form and style rather than substance. This leads design attention away from significant problems, which are often complex and require a substantial amount of time and patience to understand them.

Design must change or risk being co-opted by other disciplines. How can design practice evolve into the role that new media and opportunities call for? How will communication design add value?

NEEDED CHANGE

As a practice, design can be assessed along five considerations: language, process, role, applications and tools.

Language

Those who insist that design deserves to be a peer among other professions such as medicine and law have it backwards. A discipline does not become valued through its own practitioners' insistence. Rather, it becomes valued by others who find that it meets needs that other practices do not offer, or do not offer as well. The value of a discipline needs to be expressed in terms that others can understand. Among Howard Gardner's (1983: 60-235) seven intelligences, designers tend to rely on spatial intelligence. However, other technical staff members tend to rely on logical-mathematical intelligence and management favors linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences.