Lawson B. How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified

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(Gregory 1966), maps of the process (Markus 1969), and proposed

methods of working (Page 1963). These sorts of investigations are

now generally regarded as rather vulnerable to the personal per-

ceptions of the investigator. However, they undoubtedly created a

valuable stimulus to the nascent field of design research.

Later we saw research that effectively put the designer in a la-

boratory so as to observe the process under more objective and

rigorous empirical conditions. Examples of this sort of work include

very artificial and highly controlled conditions in order to abstract

designing sufficiently to compare the way non-designers might

tackle the same sorts of problems (Lawson 1979). Other more

recent work tends to allow designers to work in a more normal way

but nevertheless in a controlled and monitored session (Cross et al.

1996). This may represent a very respectable form of research

but it is extremely difficult to conduct with a sufficient degree

of realism to be relevant to what those designers actually do in

practice. The designer is still effectively in a laboratory rather than

the normal studio. Timescales are compressed, collaborators and

clients are absent or simulated, there is seldom open access to

design precedents, no other activity takes place in parallel so there

is little time for reflection and so on.

We have also seen work that simply observes designers at

work in the field, or rather in the studio. An example of this is the

recording and analysing of their normal conversations (Medway

and Andrews 1992). While this technique offers more realism it

inevitably misses much of the real action. Unfortunately the really

interesting things that happen in the design process may be

hidden in designers’ heads rather than being audible or visible. If

we simply listen to what designers are saying or watch what they

are doing we are likely to be missing some significant data.

More recently we have seen an increasing use of the simple

technique of asking designers to tell us what they do (Lawson

1994; Cross 1996). This might be by interviewing them or reading

what they have written about their process. Although a simple

idea, the skills and knowledge needed to carry out such inter-

views are not easily acquired. It is also difficult to know how to

analyse the data since what designers write or say should not be

entirely trusted. The writings of designers are notoriously mis-

leading and this may be for several reasons. First, designers are

often not natural communicators with the written word. Second,

they may be writing in order to impress rather than explain

and are unlikely to reveal their doubts and weaknesses. Third,

because designers are used to ‘selling’ their designs to clients

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they seem to develop a post-hoc rationalisation for the process

which conceals all the blind alleys which they went down and

shows only a logical inexorable progress to what they now wish to

present as the ‘right’ answer. Interviewing designers not about

individual projects but about their process as a whole in a confi-

dential way can eliminate some of these problems, but it requires

even more skill, as well as extensive knowledge of the designers

and their work, to carry out meaningfully and is therefore also

very time consuming. However such techniques do have value in

that they can be applied to experienced, expert and even famous

designers who are unlikely to be willing to take part in laboratory

experiments.

There is one further group of research methods that we can

use to investigate design processes. Often they are stumbled

upon more or less by accident. We can try either to create tools

to help designers, such as CAD, simulate design with computers

or imagine how computers could be made to design. There are

signs that cognitive science is increasingly interested in design

because of the challenges that it poses to such models of mental

processes (Goel 1995). So far such techniques have tended to

reveal the shortcomings of computers and of the computational

theory of mind as much as they have provided insights into

human designing.

Is a model of designing possible?

Designing is far too complex a phenomenon to be describable by

a simple diagram. The early process map diagrams seemed at one

time to be logical but turned out to be misleading once we

had some empirical data. We have seen that the word ‘design’ is

applied to an extraordinarily wide range of activity including at one

extreme something that could also be called ‘engineering’ and at

another something that could be called ‘art’. We have seen that

design is a highly personal and multi-dimensional process. We

have seen that designers often collaborate in teams and that indi-

viduals may play quite specialist roles in such teams. Some may be

particularly good at early conceptual ideation whereas others may

be more skilled in forms of representation such as model-making

drawing or computer modelling. Others still may be more skilled in

the technical realisation of ideas or even in the actual making of

designed objects themselves.

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A model of design thinking then must be able to allow for all

this richness and variation. At the end of Chapter 6 we developed

a model of design constraints. That model is simply one way of

representing the possible combinations of constraints that allow for

an apparently infinite variety of design problems. Over the years

many readers have kindly told me how it has helped them to design

and to understand and improve their own design processes. In fact

some, on hearing I was writing yet another edition of this book,

have even expressed concern that I may have abandoned this

model and sought to persuade me not to. Others have rightly criti-

cised the model. Not only is that their right but it reveals yet

another of its purposes which is to create a framework within which

debate about design can take place. It is very much in that spirit

then that I advance another rather looser model but this time not of

problems but one of design activity.

The scope of a model

From all we have learned it is clear that there are several groups

of activities that take place when we are designing. At the end

of Part 2 of this book in Chapter 7 we listed a number of the

features of design problems and solutions and of the design

process. Now it is time to try to list some of the features of design

thinking and the range of abilities that designers need to have. In

a seminal paper Nigel Cross summarised the knowledge in the

field at the time of writing (Cross 1990). He listed many of the

things that designers typically do and from this drew up a list

of the abilities they must have. According to Cross, designers

‘produce novel unexpected solutions, tolerate uncertainty, work

with incomplete information, apply imagination and constructive

forethought to practical problems and use drawings and other

modelling media as a means of problem solving’. One way or

another we have covered all those aspects in this book. Cross

however goes on to list the abilities designers must have. ‘They

must be able to resolve ill-defined problems, adopt solution-

focussing strategies, employ abductive/productive/appositional

thinking and use non-verbal, graphic and spatial modelling

media.’ All this suggests that Wittgenstein may have had a point

when he claimed, in the quotation at the head of this chapter,

that designing is more difficult than philosophy. Cross has a very

useful and demanding list here of skills that we have discussed

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one way or another in this book. So in general this book supports

the conclusions Cross arrives at. However we shall now try to go

just a little further.

In an attempt to impose some sort of structure on all this it

may be useful to think of these design skills under some head-

ings. The most obvious set of skills employed by all designers

are those to do with making design propositions. As we have

seen designers are often solution focussed and work by gener-

ating ideas about whole or partial solutions. These solutions are

sometimes developed and sometimes abandoned. We might

see this whole group of skills as to do with making moves and

we shall therefore refer to them as ‘moving’. These moves are

most often made through some form of representation. They

may be described in words or put into computers or, most

common of all, visualised through drawings of one kind or

another. We shall call these skills ‘representing’. All through this

book however we have seen that there is an intriguingly close

and yet complex relationship between design solutions and their

problems. Another set of skills are clearly those to do with

understanding problems and describing them. We shall refer to

these as ‘formulating’. The way moves are regulated is most

obviously through the use of some kind of evaluation of them

against some set of criteria however precisely or vaguely under-

stood. There are then clearly a whole range of skills which we

shall refer to as ‘evaluating’. In addition to all this there is clearly

some group of activities which oversee the whole process and

provide support for it. A more or less conscious effort is needed

to keep the whole design activity on course towards its target.

In addition to this designers seem to be very actively looking

at and thinking about design even when not actually designing.

Donald Schön has most famously written about a range of pro-

fessionals who seem to depend upon this continuous monitoring

and learning process and he calls them ‘reflective practitioners’.

We shall refer to these skills as ‘reflecting’.

Our model of designing is beginning to appear then. We

have groups of activities and skills that are all needed and are

commonly found in successful design. They are ‘formulating’,

‘moving’, ‘representing’, ‘evaluating’ and ‘reflecting’. Through all

this somehow designers seem to be able to negotiate their way

to a comfortable, or at least satisfactory, understanding both of

the problem and the solution and to give their clients and users

at least workable and occasionally beautiful and imaginative

designs.

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Formulating

1 Ways of understanding design problems

Right back at the beginning of this book we explored the idea of

the design process as a sequence of activities. Logically it seemed

getting a brief and analysing the problem came before the synthe-

sis of solutions. In Chapter 3 however we saw that such a simplistic

model is neither accurate nor helpful. However there can be no

argument that designers must be skilled in finding and stating

problems and in understanding and exploring them. This group of

activities is perhaps best called ‘formulating’.

2 Identifying

In the problem-solving view of design these skills include the

ability to reformulate and give structure to ill-structured or wicked

problems. In the conversational model of design explored in

Chapter 15 we saw how designers have to identify, or as Schön

would put it, ‘name’ elements in the design situation. It is almost as

if characters are being introduced in a story and their roles and

personalities are being explored in order to understand how they

will react to events and behave as the story unfolds. Whether we

think of it as the reformulation of problems or the identification of

elements, making them explicit and developing their characteristics,

it is clearly an important and central design skill.

3 Framing

This book has introduced the notion several times that problems

can appear different when looked at from different points of view.

Perhaps the most important contribution made by Schön and his

followers to the debate about design is the idea of ‘framing’. This

activity involves selectively viewing the design situation in a par-

ticular way for a period or phase of activity. This selective focus

enables the design to handle the massive complexity and the

inevitable contradictions in design by giving structure and direction

to thinking while simultaneously temporarily suspending some

issues. The skill to create and manipulate frames is a central one

in determining how the process will unfold.

In all the original literature by Schön himself there remains a lack

of clarity about exactly what a ‘frame’ is and what it is not. However

if we take his notion of a frame almost literally we can image this

to be a selective window through which can be seen only part

of a wider world beyond. In the problem-solving view of design

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we might see this as a window on the problem space or a way of

expressing and formulating the problem.

If we return to the literature on creative thinking reviewed in

Chapter 9 we can now see that much of this deals with how such

frames are established. In particular many of the more popular cre-

ativity techniques are designed to maximise the number of frames

that become available. This might either be through the use of the

different perspectives that naturally occur in different minds (brain-

storming) or by using deliberate methods of shifting the individual

mind into different positions (for example much of what might be

found in the writings of Edward de Bono). All this suggests that

we should see the skill of ‘framing’ as one of the most critical and

central in the design process.

Representing

1 Ways of representing design situations

Although it is perfectly possible to imagine design taking place with-

out any externalisation at all, in practice designers almost always

externalise their thoughts prolifically. Indeed designers are often

characterised by their habitual use of these activities. They draw,

write, model, make and compute representations of their inchoate

ideas for the design they are working towards. They also shuffle and

represent to themselves information about the brief or problem.

2 Conversations with representations

As Schön has so eloquently put it designers interact with these

representations in a conversational way (Schön 1983). The repre-

sentations are thus far from being incidental outputs but are rather

central inputs to the thought process. Clearly then the ability to

execute these representations and manage them is one of the

central skills in designing. A designer who cannot sketch is likely

not to be able to ‘converse’ freely with the situation. Drawings are

undoubtedly amongst the most central and important of all these

forms of representation and those drawings come in several types

including most crucially design drawings, diagrams and visionary

drawings.

In Chapter 15 we also saw how important words and texts are in

the process of thinking about designs. Although textual inform-

ation is seldom recorded during designing in the way that sketches

inevitably are it clearly plays its role in the design conversation.

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We also briefly examined the way computers have started to play a

role in design thinking too. However the challenge to really make

them assist in the design conversation remains ahead. So far their

primary role in design has been at the presentation/production

drawing end of the process. Computer models like physical models

are labour intensive and slow in production and so far remain

rather remote compared with the sketch.

The point here however is that the forms of representation used

and the skills in using them are likely to have a huge effect on the

design process. It is hard to imagine Santiago Calatrava working

without his model-maker or Frank Gehry working without his

computer modellers. In both these cases the process is highly

dependent on both team-working and specialised and skilled

representation methods. One only has to look at the architecture

of Calatrava and Gehry to see the effects not only on the process

but also on the final product.

3 Working with multiple representations

What distinguishes the modern design process from the vernacular

design process that we studied back in Chapter 2 is that designers

do not actually make their designs, but rather they make representa-

tions of their designs. They make drawings, computer models, textual

descriptions, physical models and so on. In a way the whole point of

such a process is that it enables change and experimentation at much

lower cost than would be incurred by making the designs them-

selves. Such a process then is based on the reduction of risk to the

designer. Unfortunately what we have often seen is that the risk can

be transferred to the client who pays for the representations to be

made real. The skills of choosing and making representations that

minimise this risk and that represent the finished design as accurately

as possible to the client and to users may also be ones which are criti-

cal in the success of real design processes. These skills and the asso-

ciated risks are often difficult to replicate in design education which

may come in for some justifiable criticism at times for this very reason.

We have also seen that drawings, words, computer models and so

on all have their own advantages and disadvantages as means of

representing emerging design solutions. Some experienced and

expert designers have developed and refined their processes and

have become selective in the range of representations they make.

For most of us this may be dangerous. It seems likely that a key skill

for designers generally is not just the ability to make a variety of rep-

resentations but to select them appropriately in order best to further

understand the problems surrounding the current design solution

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state. Again because of the conversational nature of the relationship

that designers have with these representations, it seems appropriate

to see representing as another central and crucial skill in design.

Moving

1 Creating solution ideas

So central to design is the activity of solution generation that

the word ‘design’ is sometimes only used to relate to this group of

activities. What we have seen now is that there are several activities

under this general heading of making design moves. First and most

obviously, a new move may be made which has not been seen

before in this process. A feature of the solution is placed, or given

some shape or some relation to some other element or given

some characteristics. Second, a move may alter or develop the

existing state of the solution. Where do such ideas come from? We

shall develop answers to that question under the section entitled

Reflecting.

2 Primary generators

We have seen that designers often develop early ideas about solu-

tions long before they have really understood the problem. This is

often done through what Jane Darke called the primary generator

(Darke 1978). In turn that is often influenced by the guiding prin-

ciples we discussed in Chapter 10 and to which we shall return in a

later section here. Just as a frame can be seen as a window on the

problem space, then a primary generator can be seen as a window

on the solution space.

3 Interpretive and developmental moves

Not all moves in design are entirely original to the process.

Margaret Boden’s distinction of ‘h’ and ‘p’ creativity is partially

helpful here (Boden 1990). We have four possibilities in a design

process. An idea may be entirely novel in all of history (h). Actually

such events are relatively rare in our developed and sophisticated

world. It might be entirely novel as far as the designer or design

team are concerned (p), it might be entirely novel as far as this par-

ticular process is concerned and finally it might derive from another

idea that has already appeared in this process. Design moves then

are frequently the result of reflections on the represented inchoate

design and are interpretations of them. Goel refers to such a move

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as ‘lateral’ (Goel 1995). Here we shall use the word ‘interpretative’

to describe this activity in the sense that the word appears in

Laxton’s model of design learning which appeared in Chapter 9

(Laxton 1969). Such an activity involves the transformation of an

existing idea into a different one albeit carrying through some of

the original characteristics.

Goel’s distinction between ‘lateral’ and ‘vertical’ moves allows

us to introduce our final type of move. Here the idea is developed

further and given clarity, more detail or substance, or embellished.

In a sense the idea is being moved nearer to a realisable and

definite form. Goel calls this a vertical move, but here we shall

describe it as ‘development’. Edison’s famous adage of genius

being ‘one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspir-

ation’ is of relevance here. Throughout a complete design process

we are likely to see more episodes of interpretation than of initi-

ation, and more episodes of development than transformation.

However it may well be that what we recognise as originality or

creativity in design depends more on interpretation than develop-

ment and more on initiation than on interpretation. It may also be

the case that each designer has different relative levels of skill in

each of these activities and that design teams depend on comple-

mentary combinations of these skills to be really effective.

Bringing problems and solutions together

1 Problem and solution are inseparable

In the conversational view of design we might be less inclined to

make the distinction between problem and solution. Indeed we

might see frames and primary generators as ways of negotiating

between a problem and solution view of the situation in order to

bring about some resolution between what is required and what

can be made. In some design domains the problem may be very

clearly stated and success easily measured and thus the process

may be more one of moving from problem to a solution which

might be almost thought of as optimal. At the other end of the

spectrum of design domains the problem may emerge more from

an exploration of solution possibilities. Most design domains that

we have explored in this book are between these two extremes

and, as a result, problem and solution are better seen as two

aspects of a description of the design situation rather than sep-

arate entities.

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2 No clear order of appearance

One of the most persistent themes that can be found running

through this book is the idea that, in design, problems do not ne-

cessarily precede solutions in the way normally expected in conven-

tional problem solving. In Chapter 3 it was argued that designers

are often solution focussed. We saw in Chapter 7 that design prob-

lems cannot be comprehensively stated and the information you

need to tackle a design problem rather depends on your way of

solving it. In Chapter 11 we have seen the idea of the primary gen-

erator as a way of getting on with solution production and through

that developing more understanding of the problem. In Chapter 15

we have seen the idea of selectively framing the situation so that it

is more amenable to solution. Thus we have seen a whole clutch of

ways in which thinking about solutions and thinking about prob-

lems seem inextricably interwoven in the design process. Recent

research has tended to strengthen and support this notion.

3 Briefing is a continuous process

Contrary to the wishes of many who have tried to establish route

maps of the design process, briefing appears to be a continuous

process. It is certainly not something that happens exclusively at the

beginning but rather represents the problem formulation aspects

of designing which are often greatly influenced by the emerging

potential solutions. However this may well offer us one useful way

to distinguish between different design fields. Some design fields

have very clearly defined problems that can be quite well described

and understood at the beginning of the process or very early in it.

Others may characteristically have more open-ended problems that

can only be very loosely described and only vaguely understood at

the outset. However is seems far better to assume that briefing can

continue to take place throughout the process than to assume it is

simply an early stage never to be returned to.

4 Parallel lines of thought

We saw in Chapter 12 that designers appear to be able to develop

parallel lines of thought about the problem–solution situation.

Each line of thought seems to respond to a frame to restrict the

view of the problem and to rely on a primary generator to develop

ideas about the solution. It seems probable that highly creative

designers may be able to sustain several of these parallel lines of

thought and allow them to be incompatible or even apparently

irreconcilable for periods. Judging when to drop some of them

or try to resolve the conflicts between them seems to be one of

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