Brief Introduction to the Design Process from Design Situation to Design Opportunities

Introduction to the Design Process

The design process is a journey that starts with a design situation and ends with design opportunities. This blog post will guide you through each step of this process, using real-world examples and interactive elements to make it engaging and easy to understand.

Steps in the Design Process

Identifying the Design Situation

Every design process begins with a design situation. This could be a problem or a need that exists in the world. For example, in a kitchen, a common design situation might be the difficulty of opening a tightly sealed jar. 

Research Methods: To understand the design situation, we need to conduct research. This could involve observing people in the kitchen, conducting interviews, or even shadowing someone as they go about their kitchen tasks. 

Defining the Design Need

From the design situation, we identify the design need. In our kitchen example, the need might be for a tool that makes it easier to open tightly sealed jars.

Research Methods: To understand the design need, we might conduct surveys to find out how many people struggle with opening jars, or we might experiment with different methods of opening jars to understand the challenges better.

Uncovering Design Problems

The design problems are the specific issues that need to be addressed to meet the design need. In our example, the problems might include the fact that some people don't have enough hand strength to open jars, or that some jars are sealed too tightly.

Research Methods: To understand the problems, we might use the "5 Whys" technique to get to the root cause of the issue. We might also conduct more interviews or surveys to gather more data.

Discovering Design Opportunities

Finally, from the design problems, we identify the design opportunities. These are the potential solutions to the problems. In our example, a design opportunity might be to create a jar opener that uses leverage to make opening jars easier.

Research Methods: To identify design opportunities, we might use techniques like brainstorming or mind mapping. We might also look at existing solutions and see how they could be improved.

Decision Making in the Design Process

After conducting research at each step of the process, we need to make decisions about how to proceed. This might involve choosing which design opportunity to pursue, or deciding how to refine a design to better meet the need.

Research Methods: Decision making often involves further research. For example, we might need to test different design ideas to see which one works best. We might also need to gather feedback from potential users.

Conclusion: Understanding the Design Process

Understanding the design process and the importance of research and decision-making is crucial for successful design outcomes. By applying these methods, you can become a better designer, able to create solutions that truly meet people's needs.

Quiz

1. What is the first step in the design process?

2. Why is research important at each step of the process?

3. Can you think of a design situation in your own life? What is the design need, what are the design problems, and what are some potential design opportunities?

Application Questions

1. Choose a room in your house (e.g., the living room, kitchen, toilet, storeroom, bedroom). Identify a design situation in that room, and go through the process of identifying the design need, design problems, and design opportunities.

2. Think about a common household item (like a jar opener). How could you improve this item? What research would you need to do? What decisions would you need to make?

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Two Common Blunders with regards to 'Identified Problems'

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TWO MOST COMMON BLUNDERS OF (THE SO CALLED) IDENTIFIED PROBLEM

1) The most frequent blunder when a student identifies a 'problem' situation and then follows through it without finding out if that was worth pursuing. Why so?

For most of the time, if the student were to do some research, he/she will likely find out that there are already existing product(s) or solution(s) in the market for that 'identified problem'. 

When a (right) product (the solution) is not there on-location to resolve the scenario it does not mean GO MAKE. It should prompt you to do some research for any existing solution.

These students, instead of finding out the probable existence of a solution to alleviate the problem, he/she ends up making something that is not really needed to be made. A product that is not authentic in solving a problem. Most of such attempts to make a product rarely value-adds anything.

Take a look at the following examples and learn how you can go about it:

• Books are messy? Ask Why. GO GET the right shelve!
• Shoes are messy? Ask why. GO GET a shoe rack! Cheap ones, designer ones, expensive ones. Anything. One that is of the RIGHT SIZE. RIGHT MATERIAL, etc.
• Cannot find your pencils? GO GET a good storage system, or get your memory upgraded! LEARN to be NEATER.

The following sketch shows a typical common identified problem as design opportunity. If it is simplistically tackled , the project is busted:

Before you go say go make an 'innovative' (or whatever) bookshelf, have you thought about 

1) Why there is overcrowding in the first place? More about the Five Whys later. 

2) Is the shelve the right size for the additional books that you just bought? If not why.

3) Is the problem with you who is messy by nature and therefore the mess? 

The solutions for the respective questions we just generated could be

1) Minimize overcrowding by getting a new shelve for other genres of books. No space for a new shelf, then perhaps you should consider not getting anymore. Donate your books and keep those you really need! etc.

2) Maybe it is time to upsize your shelve. IKEA has lots of them.

3) Buckle up your own attitude and learn to be neater when you store those books.

The problem is not the lack of space, not the lack of bookshelves, not the lack of bigger book shelves, not the issue of too many books, the problem is the USER. Solve the heart and mind problem and you solve the physical problem.

That being said, if it culminates to a Design Challenge to design or redesign or to revolutionalise the 'functionality' and 'use-experience' of a traditional bookshelf, taking in consideration to work towards 'novelty' or 'cleverness' of a new idea , it is another matter altogether. And very legitimate for a potentially good project.

A Deeper Analysis of the Bookshelf Example:

DESIGN SITUATION

A design situation for the graphic example may look something like the following:

"I have many books. And the books are very messy. I cannot find my books and sometimes my books get lost. The book shelf is too small for all my books.

DESIGN BRIEF

It will also typically end up with the following Design Brief:

"Design and make a bookself to store all my books".

Let's Analyse the 'Problem'

The is nothing really wrong to write the the situation or the brief like so. What is really wrong lies in the fact that this finding is the attitude of being too 'simplistic' - one that does not engage a thorough thinking-through process to determine if the proposed design situation is really a need area that requires another product to solve.

What Next? A Solution to Move On...

Use questions to help you look at the same problem in new perspectives:

I will ask "Is the book shelf designed to store more books than it is designed for?" If not, then if you choose to pile your books and overload the bookself with books, of course it will be overcrowded and untidy (assuming if you had not bothered to tidy them up)!!!

Use the '5 Whys'...

The '5 Whys' should lead you to where the root problem may be... and more often than not, you may end up discovering that the real problem lies on the individual who is just too lazy to tidy things up and therefore ended up with mess and untidiness. If that is the case will designing and making another book storage solve the problem?

An example of asking the 'Five Whys'

Very very long ago I had a student who came to me and wanted to design and make an egg tray. Very cute proposal isn't it?

I asked what the egg tray is for... and he told me that the egg tray will be used to store eggs in the fridge. How brilliant of me....

If you are his teacher, what would you do?

Do you go ahead and design an egg tray??

So, I started probing further by beginning with a first why, I asked,

Teacher: "Why do you need to design and make an egg tray for the fridge?

Student: "There is no space to put eggs in the fridge".

Teacher: "Why there is no space in the fridge to put eggs?"

Student: "My sister filled up the egg tray with her sweets".

Teacher: (*With amazement*) "Why did your sister fill up the egg tray with her sweets???"

Student: (*pause*) "Because there is not space in the fridge to put her sweets".

Teacher: (*WIth more amazement*) "Why isn't there space in the fridge to put her sweets???"

Student: "The fridge is full of stuffs. Crowded with food and fruits and everything else".

Teacher: (*Curious*) "Why are there so many food and fruits and everything else?"

Student: "My mum buys many food items that had been in the fridge for a very long time..."

I do not need to continue much further to conclude that if I allowed the student to design and make a WONDERFUL and INNOVATIVE egg holder, it would not help solve the problem, not even a bit.

Finally I'll bring back one of the point I mentioned above: 'That being said, if it culminates to a Design Challenge to design or redesign or to revolutionalise the 'functionality' and 'use-experience' of a traditional bookshelf, taking in consideration to work towards 'novelty' or 'cleverness' of a new idea , it is another matter altogether. And very legitimate for a potentially good project.'.

2) Not Considering "Why didn't the GREAT company, the REAL Designers think of that (my problem)?"

If you think you just found a great problem to solve or a great solution to a problem (when you do idea generation), always stop and take the step to understand why they are not made and/or selling in the market from the perspective of business or product design business in the first place.

Could it be that the designers / companies overlook this problem or did not find the solution that you found? Or there might be reasons why they did not (want to) go ahead with the solution - for some economical or practical reasons. Products that generate profit for the company is all that matters in business. Many things can be made, but many would end up too costly from research, to prototyping to manufacturing that yield little returns. In some cases negative returns. Think about these things. Your teacher may be able to help you with this second concept.

Get this step done, and you'll most likely be working on a real good deal.

Conclusion

Are you convinced that it is important to identify a GOOD and GENUINE design opportunity to work on? It requires some effort. But that will save you from spending the next few months designing something that is meaningless and does not improve the situation.

How to identify REAL 'problems'? Revisit a classic post

Save you hours of confusion frustration and useless works.

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If you are short of time and didn't want to read a load of junk below simply click here: Two Common Blunders with regards to 'Identified Problems' to read this classic post.

Just as situations happen all the time and everywhere, and as long as there are more than one person in a space, there will always be conflicts or problems. This is human nature. We are probably the only intelligence on the planet that has caused most, if not all the problems we have in this world. Isn't it?

Most problems we encounter are self-created or self-imposed. There is a difference between lifestyle and basic needs deprivation. Many times we feel miserable or short-changed because we don't have this and that. My friend has a better phone. My colleague drives a nicer car. That family eats in a fancy restaurant. The cat has a better life than me. But we failed to recognise that we are all probably living in the most prosperous times in human history. A hundred years ago or more people probably have less than you have right now. No elevator, no escalator, no TV, no internet, no phones, no cars, and no fancy gadgets of all sorts. But were they any less happy or joyful? No. But you are miserable and sad because you did not have some of these things. Are you any less a human being than our ancestors? No. 

Unless you are really starving or live in a life threatening situations that is a different story. That requires compassion. Giving you a 100" TV with unlimited  5G internet data for all the movies in the world will not help.

So, some of the problems you may have identified from you little mindmap attempt, if you think hard enough and pay close enough attention to each one of them, they really aren't anything at all. Some passing whining about things that did not go your way or as you expected. Isn't it? Oh my desk is messy. I cannot find my pencil. The books are falling down. I cannot pick up tennis balls quickly. I need somewhere to hold my Gucci Bag. The dustbin is too far. Students are bored doing homework. I have nothing to do. The table is wet. The toys are all over the place.

All those problems listed above, yes to a certain extend brings us some inconveniences and some little irritations. But if you know how to handle yourself and your emotions, the solutions are just very simple and need no gadgets or new products. You can walk further and take that as an activity. You can stretch your arm. You can think of something else. You can take a slightly longer time. You can put things elsewhere. Buy less stuffs. Seriously what is the big deal here? Nothing. Maybe you don't have the right things for the right job. Maybe you are just lazy.

Think outward. Be more aware to being more inclusive to the people around you. What generally are people struggling with? Most people aren't even aware of problems around them and they go about doing the same thing again and again. What are those things you see are causing some of the problems you have observed? How can we make people's life better? What really are essential for a meaningful and joyful life? What aspect of our products can be made to enhance that and value-add? 

Pay attention to details. Ask 'why' to get to the root cause of any problems you initially find. You will be surprised you'll find something else that is bothering everybody.

Ok that being said, if that is too profound for you, you can really design and make just about anything. Just make sure that the situation and the problem you have identified is worth your 20 weeks of fun and toil. It must be a situation that is meaningful to you at least, and one that somehow most of your friends (and your teacher) agree that is something nice and neat to work on, and is something within your capacity and capability to transform it to reality.

Cheers. All the best.

Pictorial Theme Definition to Design Specifications

*Updated in January 2022*

What you'll see in this post are visual examples on 

1. Theme Definition (Optional to read but NOT NEEDED from 2021 D&T Syllabus)
2. Mindmap on the Theme (exploring the theme)
3. Theme Board (Optional to read but do this ONLY IF needed)
4. Tips on how to use a mind map to identify Design Needs/Situations
5. Identifying and drafting Design Needs/Situations 
6. Selecting Design Need / Situation for coursework
7. Design Brief
8. Design Considerations
9. Design Specifications
10. (a) Pictorial Idea Generation and Development (Using SCAMPER) (Click here)
11. (b) Pictorial Idea Generation and Development (Using Attribute Listing / Morphological Method) (Click here).

Use them as a reference and a guide to start or to improve your journal. Make informed choices on your own on what your takeaways should be after looking at the materials in here. Do not copy. 

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Theme Definition 

!!! Do this ONLY if absolutely necessary !!!

For example if you need to understand terms in more detail in order to progress.

Define the theme using either online or physical dictionaries. Use a variety of sources for richer scope of definition.

Including synonyms and antonyms helps. Antonyms give the opposite meanings of the defined word - which is exactly what you need for exploring design opportunities. 

Add photos and images to substantiate some keywords - images also serve to spice up the page - makes understanding the definitions faster at a glance.

Mindmap on the Theme (exploring the theme)

Every stage in the design journal is build up from the previous section. If you understood them theme perfectly, you will have little problem mapping out the theme.

End the mindmap with identified products / objects followed by a brief description of the problems or issues associated with them. 

These 'comments' at the end becomes your identified design need and situations. Which you simply extract and write them formally in your Design Needs and Situations section.

Theme Board 

(Do this ONLY IF needed)

A theme board is a collage of images/products/activities to illustrate what the theme means. There is no need for annotations or descriptions in a theme board. 

Remember that you got to know and understand the theme first before doing this. Use the keywords you discovered about the theme and find related images for the theme board.

You can use the completed theme board to help you in your mind map later (see below). Use the same theme board to help you identify potential problems or issues.

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Tips on how to use a mind map to identify Design Needs/Situations

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Identifying and drafting Design Needs/Situations

Identifying and drafting your Design Needs and Situation section should not be difficult because all the information you need are already in your mind map (see above tips on how to use a mind map to identify design opportunities).

Pick and choose the information you need and rephrase them in a paragraph or two stating clearly the context and the problems / issues. Finish off with a 'wish list' - that will pave your way to writing a design brief (see below).

Selecting Design Need / Situation for coursework + Design Brief

You may use a modified Plus, Minus and Interesting (PMI) method to help select a Design Situation to work on later. You can use any other decision making techniques to do this.

Here the Design Need and Situation is repeated. Fine tune your paragraph if needed.

A design brief is quickly drafted by rephrasing the 'wish list' at the end of the Design Need and Situation paragraph.

Design Considerations

The design Consideration and Limitations (or constraints) is where you list out general points on what should be considered during the Ideaiton stage. Begin a mind map surfacing very general areas like e.g. functionalities - then move on to describe what do you expect in terms of functions.

The further you are from the core (centre of the mind map) the more specific you become. You'll reach a point at the far end where you need to research for data to be included. e.g. if it has to hold some pens, then research how many exactly do you need. 5 pens?

These quantifiable specific data / information you have at the end of the Design Considerations and Limitation mind map (again) automatically becomes a preview of your Design Specifications (see below).

Design Specifications

Remember you read in the previous sections that whatever comes after in your design journal stage, some, if not most of the information should come from the previous section. 

If you did your Design Considerations and Limitations as suggested above, making a list of Design Specifications is a breeze. All the information you need and want is already available and researched. 

Extract your quantifiable and researched data / information and then transform them into Design Specification points. Categories and order your Design Specifications beginning with Functional specifications. A typical design specification begins with 'The product must...'

Note that these points in turn becomes your guide for Ideation (see below).

Pictorial Idea Generation and Development (Using SCAMPER) 2016 (Click here)

Situation and Problem and the differences, and how to identify the best NEED to solve

Welcome to another new year of coursework in 2021. In this post we will look at what a situation and a problem is. And end with three simple questions you can ask yourself, so you may know if you have identified a design need that you can solve.  

A Situation:

A Situation is set of events that are happening (e.g. someone sweeping the floor in a windy condition), and the conditions (e.g. peacefulness, frustration, chaos, anxiety, etc.) that exist at a particular time and place, in which one finds oneself. Something is happening. What is it? Who is involved? What’s the atmosphere like?

Situations happen everywhere, all the time. A Situation is just... a Situation. Something involving someone took place. There is no good or bad Situation. Just Situation. When and how does a Situation become a Problem?

A Problem:

When one have yet to know how to handle a Situation, the situation becomes a Problem. When we have a Problem, unpleasantness / uncertainty is a natural consequence of that. People get anxious, irritated, or frustrated. 

It is very IMPORTANT to establish which is the real Problem? The Situation or the Person or the Product he is using (or should not be using), etc.? If you cannot get the Problem right, you aren’t solving any anything even with the best Solution. 

You can use the 5 Whys to help you get to the root cause of a problem.

When a root cause is found, we have an identified the NEED - the Solution to the Problem for the Situation.

A Need:

(Verb): refers to when someone requires something because it is essential or very important rather than just desirable, 

(Noun): a circumstance (in the Situation) in which something (e.g. a Solution to the Problem) is necessary.

THREE Questions you use to figure out if you have the BEST Design Project

Before you sprint all out with mindmaps after mindmaps with your newly found Theme you need to understand that there are so many unlimited situations you can identify. 

So where do I begin? How do I manage my work to be concise, precise and down-to-earth? 

You can answer the following THREE questions below to help you decide what is best:

1) Is the situation where I spend most of my time in? / Am I familiar with the situation?

    If no, consider choosing another situation. 

    If yes, move on to question 2.

2) Will I be able to realistically and conveniently test & evaluate my model(s), mock-up(s) or prototype? 
 

    If  no, consider choosing another situation. 

    If yes, move on to question 3.

3) Will I be able to gather researched information conveniently, truthfully and readily?

    If  no, consider choosing another situation. 

    If yes, go ahead. Or you can choose another one or two for consideration and comparison, and  

    finally find the best project for the best bang for your time.

If you do not choose a situation from which you spend most of your time in, or often enough, what chance do you have to be familiar with the situation? The exception is that you must be very good with your research to study an unfamiliar but equally promising situation and its concerns very well. Otherwise stick to what is closest to you according to your experience.

If you chose a situation where it will be very challenging for you to gather sufficient data, e.g. very difficult to get an appointment to observe / interview / talk to your target user(s), the place is too far or out-of-bounds or very limited accessibility, etc, again what is your chance of knowing your situation well enough to solve a problem?

Finally, if are not competent to complete the project within the deadline then you are not being realistic and not ready to take on the identified need - regardless if it is a good or bad one. You need to know your strengths and weaknesses. The graduation year is not a time for your to learn how to do things for most of the time. You ought to be applying what you have learnt and practiced instead.

Start well, maintain your momentum and end your coursework well.

All the best. mrdanielsos

To Make Progress you Need a Focused Mind to Look Out

Keep your eyes open and your mind focused on looking out for things and issues related to your theme and you'll automatically find. It's the same with the subsequence progress of your coursework. If you keep your mind focus and thinks about it often, you will get somewhere naturally. 

Anyways this voucher from Manhattan Fish Market above was found in my mailbox today. I browsed through the pages and liked the 1-for-1 deals. However it's the inner first page that caught my attention more than the rest. 

It's about observation and identifying a critical issue of how many family (or friends) behave in meal outings whose hands could not stay away from their phones. 

What's a gathering for if everyone is so glued to their smartphones. It's a nice piece of solution they have there. A fun way to encourage  family interaction rather than each staring into their smartphones. An entertaining way to keep hands off the devices and start having real family time. To top it off, the value-adding catch comes with an incentive to be rewarded with a SG$5 return dining voucher. But with one simple condition.  The box must remained untouched where all the phones will be kept in throughout the meal. Though it's a strategy to bring customers back again, it has nevertheless tackled an important issue about what family time should have been.

Dollar Key Tag Project - Part 1 - Design Situation to Research

The Dollar Key Tag Project Schedule

Schedule for Design Situation writing to Research for Idea Generation

You are to write your own Design Situation based on the (given) Design Brief.

Your design situation should include a description of your observation and your own grocery shopping experience and the use of the shopping cart.

You can:

1) Go to a supermarket and observe how people respond or react when they retrieve the shopping cart, and or
2) Recall your own experience when you need a shopping cart for your shopping in the supermarket.

The example above shows one way you can prepare to write your design situation. In the form of a mind-map you can start noting the issues with retrieving the shopping cart and the experience of having or not having a dollar coin.

Notice I sketched a scene of two persons at the shopping cart holding area and their conversation about having a dollar coin for the cart. A simple sketch like this to illustrate the situation (or context) can be extremely helpful in explaning what is actually going on and makes it so easy to understand. Sketches of a sequence of events may be helpful too.

Alternatively you may wish to take photos of the situation. Note: In a public place, always ask for permission from the store before you take any photos. If you are taking people, it is also polite to seek their permission to do so. Otherwise take photos yourself and your friends in the situation.

Above is an example done in 1N1

Below is an example done in 1N2
Design Considerations and Design Specifications

Note: When you prepare to list your design considerations and limitations, always remember to list areas that is consistent with your design situation and design brief.