The Life and Death of Design Ideas

Abstract

The paper explores the question why a design process ends up with a particular result. We analyze a collaborative design process where different stake-holders design an urban site using a participatory design tool. Our analysis is based on Schön's view of design as a process of 'seeing-moving-seeing' combined with the concept of choice from Schütz. Analyzing the case provides an understanding of the ways in which ideas 'move' a design. We describe the dynamics of collaborative design work where design ideas are moved forward or deliberately blocked from being pursued further. We point to how design decisions are interlinked, making it possible to see how some design decisions are more important than others. Our analysis is narrative in character, but we also present a technique for visualizing the 'life and death' of design ideas. 16.1 Introduction Why does a design process end up with a particular result? Why do some design ideas 'survive' and others just disappear during the process? What influences the design result? Understanding how design ideas are created, selected and concretized is interesting for educators as well as for practitioners of design, and for participatory and user-centered design in particular: how do users contribute to design? This paper provides an analysis of a collaborative process of creating design ideas for an urban site by means of a participatory design tool. It provides insights into the role of design ideas in decision-making in design and how the power relations in the design team influence the design result. Design is often used as an 'umbrella term' for practices in different domains, e.g., architecture, urban planning, product design or software development that are in fact quite diverse and varied. Common to all of them is that they deal with 'wicked problems' [26], problems that are ill-defined and ill-structured. Since the problems