Lawson B. How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified

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the designer receiving a new commission is looking forward to

being able to continue exploring problems which were identified

in earlier projects. The extent to which the designer is allowed

this artistic self-gratification is a function both of the nature of

the problem and of the client–designer relationship. For this reason

there is inherently an element of tension in the client–designer

relationship. Both are dependent one upon the other and yet

both in their different ways are anxious of the other exerting too

much control. On the one hand the designer probably needs the

fee, while on the other the designer also has a reputation which

is largely the result of past work and is thus anxious to continue

developing a coherent body of work for all to see. The client on

the other hand cannot actually design but nevertheless may to

some extent know what is wanted and is anxious lest the

designer gets quite different ideas. Obviously the wise client

chooses a designer who, on the basis of past work, looks likely to

share an interest in the client’s problems. No one could have

ever expected Mies van der Rohe and Edwin Lutyens to have

designed even remotely similar houses for the same client on

the same site: as architects their own personal interests were too

different.

It is worth noting at this point that the distinction between art

and design is, like all such man-made conceptual boundaries,

rather hazy and easily blurred. Students, groping to establish their

role as designers are often confused by work which defies easy

classification. When Peter Cook produced his highly influential

‘Plug-in-City’ in 1964 it at first appeared to be a piece of design;

a city, admittedly imaginary and of the future, but which never-

theless looked like architecture and many of the drawings were

themselves very architectural. In fact the process and intention

behind such work is in some ways more akin to the artistic than

the design process. ‘Plug-in-City’ did not solve any immediate

problems, nor was it intended to be built. Rather it explored and

expressed ideas, beliefs and values, and asked provocative ques-

tions about the future direction of city design and patterns of life.

It is entirely appropriate that design students should be inter-

ested in, and influenced by such work, just as they might be by

poetry, prose, paintings or films about similar issues. But they

should not expect to approach real-world design problems posed

by clients in the more introspective and personally expressive

mode of the artist. Designers, unlike artists, cannot devote them-

selves exclusively to problems which are of interest to themselves

personally.

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Legislators

So far we have seen how design problems, whilst usually initiated

by a client, may be contributed to by both users and designers

themselves. Finally we must briefly turn our attention to another

generator of design problems, perhaps the most remote of all from

the designer, the legislator. Although frequently not involved in

the actual design itself legislators create constraints within which

designers must work. Such legislation and control may range from

standards and codes of practice to guidelines and recommen-

dations. Such standards may govern factors of safety, utility or

appearance. They may have to be satisfied in order to sell products

on the market, to allow conventional trade descriptions or to permit

building construction to commence. Design legislation today may

cover anything from the safety of electrical goods to the honesty of

advertising or the energy consumption of buildings. In many cases

complete bureaucracies exist to administer and interpret this gen-

eral legislation for each specific instance. The architect today must

satisfy the fire officer, the building inspector and the town planner

and in addition, depending on the nature of the particular project,

the housing corporation, health inspectors, Home Office inspectors,

the water authority, electricity authority, the Post Office, factory

inspectors, and so the list goes on. There is no point in disguising

the tension which exists between designers and those who admin-

ister the legislation within which society has determined they must

work. The designer may, at times, see the legislator as mindlessly

inflexible, while to the legislator the designer may appear wilful

and irresponsible.

This conflict is exemplified in Richard Rogers’s account of the

problems he encountered with the Parisian Fire Department when

designing the Pompidou Centre.

As this was the first public building of grand hauteur, every regulation

ever promulgated in the city of Paris since antiquity was applied in the

most stringent manner conceivable to the tune of 50 million francs,

some 10% of the total construction budget.

(Suckle 1980)

As Rogers himself puts it, no architect would want deliberately

to construct a dangerous building. However, often regulations have

to be applied in situations which were not predicted when they

were framed; since no designers had previously conceived such

extraordinary architecture as that of Piano and Rogers, it seems

unreasonable to expect this of the legislators.

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The different roles of the generators

of constraints

The first four building blocks of our model of design problems can

now be put in place. If we stack each of the four generators of

design constraints into a sort of tower, we can see that the con-

straints become more open for debate and discussion as we climb

the tower (Fig. 6.2). Each of the generators of design problems

identified here impose constraints upon the design solution but

with different degrees of rigidity. The most rigid being those

imposed by legislators and the most flexible those generated by

the designer.

For example in designing the layout for a shop interior, con-

straints will be imposed by each generator. In order to ensure

safety in case of fire the fire officer will require the surface materials

to achieve a specified rate of resistance to flame spread, and may

determine the number and position of escape doors and the width

of corridors and gangways. Other legislation may control the dis-

play and storage of food, the working conditions of staff and so on.

The client too will generate many design constraints connected

with the primary objectives of attracting custom and selling goods.

Unlike the legislator’s constraints the designer is able to discuss the

client’s constraints and establish priorities. Conflicts between the

design implications of the client’s objectives are not uncommon,

and here the designer is able to go back to the client and jointly

they may re-appraise the client constraints. For example, on the

one hand the client for our shop may want the display furniture to

be designed and arranged so as to make the goods look attractive

HOW DESIGNERS THINK

flexible

optional

rigid

mandatory

designer

client

user

legislator

Figure 6.2

The four groups of generators

of design constraints stacked

in order of flexibility

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and to tempt prospective purchasers. On the other hand it will

certainly be important to minimise the likelihood of shoplifting or

damage to unbought items. These two requirements are at least to

some extent in conflict. In Alexander’s terms they interact nega-

tively. However, the exact balance of satisfaction for such require-

ments may not be clear to the client until the designer explores the

various possibilities in physical three-dimensional terms. Our client

may not be able to say exactly what degree of risk of loss from

theft is acceptable in order to achieve effectiveness of display until

the designer actually proposes some designs.

Clearly from the designer’s point of view, client constraints are

not absolute as are legislator constraints. Rather they all carry a

relative value which is open to a certain amount of discussion. In

this example the designer too is expected to generate constraints.

Our shop designer is supposed to come up with an integrative

idea, an overall concept which organises and unifies the whole

interior. Thus designer-generated constraints may restrict the range

of colours and materials and establish geometric and dimensional

rules. The goods for sale in the shop may range from items as

small as buttons through books and stationery to clothes and fur-

niture. The shopfittings must be capable of displaying all these

goods and perhaps establish a distinct but related image for each

department. One design idea might be to devise a range of

fittings constructed of bent plywood covered in brightly coloured

laminates combined with curved chromium plated tubular frames.

Having established the constraint of these materials and forms the

designer would have to create actual fittings for clothes, food, jew-

ellery and so on.

It is obvious that these designer-generated constraints are com-

paratively flexible. If they cause too many difficulties, or just simply

do not work out the designer is free to modify or scrap them al-

together. Design students often fail to recognise this simple fact

but instead continue to pit their wits endlessly and fruitlessly against

insuperable problems which are largely of their own making. One

of the most important skills designers must acquire is the ability

critically to evaluate their own self-imposed constraints and we

shall return to this again in Chapter 11. For the time being it is

important to recognise the different contributions to the problem

made by each of the major generators of constraints. As we have

seen the legislator’s demand is fixed, the users may well not be

around to be consulted, the client may adjust priorities as the

design implications unfold and the designer may think of a new set

of constraints altogether.

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We should also add a word of caution here about the division

between these various generators of design. The discussion so far

has tended to imply the classical situation of a client commission-

ing a design perhaps on behalf of other users. However, this is by

no means the only way design can be done. In fact, as Roy (1993)

has pointed out in his study of product designers, much really

creative and innovative design is initiated by designers. He studied

the design of the innovative Ballbarrow, the Moulton bicycle and

the Workmate® work bench. In all these cases the designer started

with a personal need or involvement in the application area of the

product. The designer James Dyson was fitting a cyclone air filter

to his Ballbarrow factory and noticed that it worked all day without

clogging. He began to wonder why his domestic vacuum cleaner

was not made this way and so began the design of his highly

successful revolutionary cleaner which not only maintains constant

suction but also removes the need for disposable bags. In fact

Dyson found it impossible to convince any British manufacturers to

take on the production of his design and had to market it himself.

Thus he eventually had to become his own client!

We should also note that clients come in many sizes and shapes

and have many different motivations. They may be the future users

of the design or may intend to exploit it financially. They may be

single individuals or large committees. We shall see in a later chap-

ter that the relationship between designer and client can be very

varied, but that this relationship is more often critical to the success

of the project than is usually recognised by design commentators.

However, we must explore many other issues before getting

involved in such a detailed examination of these roles.

The domain of design constraints

Constraints in design result largely from required or desired rela-

tionships between various elements. For example, in housing the

legislator demands that there is a worktop on either side of the

cooker, the client might express a wish for both the kitchen and

living-room to open directly on to the dining-room and the archi-

tect may think it sensible to try to organise all the spaces around a

central structural and service core.

What links all the constraints in this example is their domain of

influence. All establish relationships between elements of the object

being designed, in this case a house. They are entirely internal to

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the problem and we shall therefore call them internal constraints.

Consider by contrast the following equally hypothetical, but quite

likely, set of constraints. The building regulations closely define the

permitted distances of windows from boundaries so as to avoid

the risk of a fire spreading to adjacent properties. The client may

have a strong preference for a living-room which overlooks the

garden and has a sunny aspect. The architect may think it important

to continue the existing street façade in terms of line and height.

Here the constraints establish a relationship between some element

of the house and some feature of the site. They relate the designed

object to its context, and in each case one end of the relationship,

the site boundary, the sun, the street, is external to the problem.

We shall therefore refer to these as external constraints.

Both internal and external constraints may be generated by

designers, clients, users and legislators. So far the model of design

constraints appears two-dimensional, the dimensions being the

generator and the domain of constraints.

Internal constraints

Internal constraints are the more obvious and easily understood in

that they traditionally form the basis of the problem as most clients

initially tend to express it. Thus, for an architect the internal con-

straints frequently comprise the majority of the brief. The number

and sizes of spaces of various kinds and qualities form the most

obvious client-generated internal constraints. The structure or

pattern of the problem for the architect lies in the desired rela-

tionships between these spaces. These relationships may be in

terms of human circulation and the distribution of services, or in the

visual and acoustic connections and barriers necessary to house the

various communal and private functions of the building. Architects

conventionally begin to grapple with these internal constraints very

early on in the process by drawing bubble diagrams and flow charts

which graphically represent the required relationships. The flow

of people into and around a building was a central issue of the

Beaux Arts architectural design process, and this was carried into

the ‘functionalism’ of the modern movement.

For the product designer, the internal constraints include the

problems of fitting an object together. Some relationships may

need to be quite close particularly where mechanics are involved.

However, other items which may need linking electrically may

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be rather more loosely connected. Thus in the design of a power

drill, the motor, gearbox and chuck are inevitably very directly con-

nected. The switch is linked to the motor but only electrically and

therefore loosely, while any reversing control is probably more

likely to be mechanical thus restricting its location rather more. This

central role of internal constraints is demonstrated by a study of

how Mike Burrows designed the revolutionary LotusSport bicycle

ridden to a gold medal by Chris Boardman in the 1992 Olympic

Games (Candy and Edmonds 1996). Throughout the process, it

was the relationship between front and rear wheel, saddle and han-

dlebars which had to be resolved. Eventually Burrows discarded

the traditional diamond shaped tubular frame and adopted a

monocoque structure.

External constraints

For the fashion designer external constraints range from the manu-

facturing process, whether it be handmade or mass produced, to

the human body itself. Off-the-peg clothes are obviously designed

around average bodily dimensions but for the one-off high fashion

designer the external constraints of a particular shape, personality

and occasion provide the inspiration for the design of unique

garments intended to be worn in one specific context. In theatre

design, neither the play nor the stage are under the control of the

designer, but a particular combination of the two might provide

the inspiration for a unique set. The dramatic demands of the play

together with the visual and acoustic properties and problems of

the stage comprise a highly significant collection of constraints.

Sometimes external constraints virtually determine the whole form

of design. What makes one bridge different from another are

the site conditions, the span needed, and the position and quality

of supporting ground. The Severins Bridge across the Rhine in

Cologne posed its own unique problems generated by external

constraints. The architect’s sketches show a concern about the

way a conventional two-tower suspension structure would have

seriously obscured the down-river view of the massively impressive

cathedral which dominates the skyline (Fig. 6.3). As luck would

have it there was conveniently accessible supporting ground in

shallow water about a third of the way across the river. The archi-

tect’s sketch shows his proposal to the engineer that they might be

able to design the structure with a single tower at this point.

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However, not fully appreciating the engineering issues his sketch

shows a catenary structure with its characteristic sagging cables.

The engineer replies by changing these to taut cables and an

‘A’ shaped tower. Finally the junction between tower and deck is

more satisfactorily resolved. Here then the external constraints,

combined with the architect’s concern not to destroy the Cologne

skyline, have resulted in an extraordinarily distinguished and fresh

solution to an age-old problem of civil engineering (Fig. 6.4).

Rowe reports several detailed studies of architects observed

during a design process. In one of these experiments the designers

were asked to work on a world bibliographical centre on a

waterfront site in Chicago. Rowe describes how the subjects recog-

nised the site as a major form determining influence or ‘primary

generator’. Rowe’s designers considered ‘establishing symmetry

by extending out into the lake on a pier structure, similar to those

(already there) adjacent to the site on the river side’ (Rowe 1987).

Only after this did these designers begin to explore the overall

shape of their building. Then attention turned again to the site

through a study of Chicago’s downtown grid pattern of planning.

Eventually the problem became one of resolving the two themes

of creating a waterside landmark and extending the grid pattern of

the surrounding city.

The scheme then developed as a linear grid-planned form termin-

ating in a rotunda-like structure protruding into the lake. Later this

was gradually altered as the actual requirements of the accom-

modation itself (internal constraints) were considered in detail. At

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Figure 6.3

The architect’s and engineer’s

sketches for a new bridge based

on protecting the vista

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this point the linear grid form disappeared only to resurface again as

an approach to the surrounding landscape.

External constraints can be just as influential and inspirational

at the other end of the spectrum of design. In his classic book

on graphic design, Paul Rand (1970) explains how what he calls

‘the given material’ forms an important starting-point in advertising

graphics. Rand’s ‘given materials’ are in essence the external con-

straints of graphic design. The product to be promoted, the format

and medium of the advertisement and the production process

itself. Such factors are not under the designer’s control, they

HOW DESIGNERS THINK

Figure 6.4

The actual bridge design of

the Severins Bridge owed its

unusual design to the external

constraints

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already exist and the designer must work with them. On the other

hand, the external constraints are the very essence of the special,

and possibly unique, circumstances which make a design different.

The modern movement in design has tended to play down the role

of the specific and special in its search for more general, possibly

even universal, solutions. In the 1990s we are returning to a period

in the history of design characterised by a greater interest in

external constraints. Nowhere is this more true than in architecture.

The great modernist Mies van der Rohe was one of the pioneers of

the modern movement international style with his clean minimalist

lines. Le Corbusier called for buildings to be like ocean-going lin-

ers keeping a uniform internal environment wherever in the world

they were constructed. In fact there was an alternative tradition of

modernism, championed by Hans Scharoun, whose famous concert

hall in Berlin demonstrated entirely site-specific architecture. Peter

Blundell Jones (1995) has pointed out that Scharoun’s predecessor,

Hugo Haring, actually shared an office with Mies and demonstrated

how they debated and contested the universal and the specific.

It is interesting to note that the universalists won the debate and

it is with the international style that the modern movement is asso-

ciated. Perhaps this has more to do with our own laziness in terms

of understanding design than with any particular merits of the

argument!

The role of internal and external constraints

The essential significance of the domain of a constraint lies in the

freedom available to the designer. Internal constraints generally

allow a greater degree of freedom and choice since they only gov-

ern factors which are under the designer’s control. Of course both

internal and external constraints can be generated by designers,

clients, users and legislators. We now extend our model of design

problems by adding more building blocks and creating a kind of

wall (Fig. 6.5).

To return to the housing example, in achieving the client’s desired

relationship between kitchen and dining-room the designer is able

to position both. External constraints are not so simple. The client’s

wish to have a sunny living-room is in a sense a more demanding

requirement, since much though at times they might like to, archi-

tects cannot control the movements of the sun! For this reason

external constraints, although they may sometimes only constitute a

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