TRANSCRIPT OF QUESTION TIME

Professor Nigel Cross - Chair.

First I should say congratulations to Alec for arranging today. It has been a constructive, instructive and stimulating day so far for me.

Two particular themes which seem to have emerged today, designing for the user, and 'communication'.

Designing for the user is a topic that we used to talk about in the late sixties and early seventies when we had conferences on 'participation in design, as we used to call it then.

Designing for the user emerged out of many contributions of today's presentations, and is an important and apparently growing aspect of designing, whether this as the visitor experience or the customer experience or the user experience, or for those with special needs and so. All seem to be of relevance today as well as the need for interdisciplinary design for user needs and requirements.

The other main theme was 'communication', whether between members of these multidisciplinary or cross disciplinary or interdisciplinary teams, or between designers and suppliers, clients and users, company hierarchy and so on. Being able to communicate is crucial because designing is now a global enterprise.

On top of that are the changes in industry, and changes in society, and in the kinds of products.

One of the things we talked about today was the change in products that use 'intelligence' or have 'responsiveness' built into them, so to speak, and require interdisciplinary design. The products themselves are integrators of different disciplines.

So that is a bit of feedback from me.

Alec advertised the Question Time to me as , 'As seen on TV', when he asked me to Chair this Question Time. So I am supposed to be a Dimbleby figure (UK TV commentator), who picks up these questions and deftly asks members of the audience to ask their questions, and the speakers to respond.

We will start with some of the more specific questions.

Audience Q. to Nick Farmer.

Q. The skills of your employees appear to be formed around mechanical engineering and graphic design, does this not limit the kind of projects you can do?

NF. I just picked that project as an example as we have recently completed it, and I guess there is quite a lot of engineering in that one because of the Robot Professor , which is a machine. We are currently making as 'ass' for a Shakespeare company play, which is made of fabric and brings in softer skills than engineering.

We make a quite of lot of animal and creature products as well as machine hardware. Yes we have other skills as well.

Audience Q. to Jeremy Myerson

Q. What methods did you use to find the needs of partially sighted group at Heathrow Terminal 5? How big was the group?

JM Only eight people were involved, and we did a lot of pre-research. We had people who were older than average, with the usual deterioration of the eyes for focusing and needs for light to see clearly; some with a particular impairment and partial disabilities, and others very specific ones such as tunnel vision. We did a lot of work before hand.

But we never work with large groups and the research process is what I call 'provoked observation'.

The method was that we told them meet in the airport, and therefore they had to get to the airport, and we asked them to buy a coffee and a copy of the Times, and then go and check on the plane times. We followed them at a discrete distance with a video recording everything, and after we played it back to them and interviewed them. We asked them to comment on what was happening and what they were thinking.

You cannot go into this unprepared so there is much planning and thinking before hand. They were not a large group but a carefully selected group. It took weeks of planning to get the best out of the day.

Audience Q. What were your criteria when you chose the people?

JM. They were all to do with way-finding and relating to such questions as 'Can you carry out these tasks? How confident were you? Did you feel like leaving the situation, and so on?

You see patterns of behaviour. One question we had from observing what happened was 'Why were they spending so long in the loo? We found that they were listening to sound.

It is not quantitative information, it is qualitative feedback which is a trigger to how designers think. Our architects immediately thought 'would not it be great to have something in the middle of the concourse like a loo'. And out of that came the concept of a sound shelter to be provided in the airport concourse.

Another observation was that they always went to the wrong terminal because they followed the main route. Out of that came a design principle that you should have a fork in the road with equal alternative routes, rather than a main road with a side street off it. This makes a person think -'Oh look, a fork in the road. I have to make a decision'.

It meant focusing down on that route architecturally.

LW. It is interesting to refer to quantitative and qualitative data because that is where interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work is in concert. Designers are comfortable with qualitative data. But a lot of disciplines we deal with are uncomfortable with it. They need quantitative data, which gives them the answer. Qualitative date means you to come up with the answer yourself.

Cognitive scientists try and get numbers on everything, they are scientists, they want to say 'it is not me telling you the answer, it is this data that is giving you the answer.' Designers look at the information and interpret it and then make the leap. They take a small amount of information and expand it to give potential solutions. An interdisciplinary team needs both approaches. Neither is right and neither is wrong.

SS. It is fine to use different methods for different reasons. A lot comes down to how important information is and whether it is generalisable or not, or even if this is not necessary, does it stimulate you to go in a different direction. Is it just design for those eight people or for everyone?

NC. It is surprising that this kind of research is not done more often in the world of design. Some very simple experiments can provide some very useful insights about directions to go in. Simple user trip experiments, as we used to call them, are helpful with a few people, then to ask do answers apply to a larger number of people.

JM We presented this to the British Airports Authority (BAA) Board of Directors and they did not say 'you only talked to eight people'! We were invited onto the project because they have the scientific form of research coming out of their ears. They have endless market research and hundreds of people with clip boards. They know what the problems are, but they wanted a lateral way of thinking.

If you chose people right-on-the-edge in a situation, and solve problems for them, you are solving the problems for all people inside the envelope. That is the view they took and they accepted it. They have quantitative date coming out of their ears. They want qualitative data that designers are good at, and they want a different perspective to get answers that they were not getting from science types.

NC You can do some simple research wherever you are. I observe that seven of the eight panel members are wearing glasses here. What can that tell you?

Audience Q. (AV) to Steve Scrivener. How do you think multimedia environments as a meeting place could improve interdisciplinary relationships?

SS It is complex. The whole business is. In my talk I outlined some of the values of asynchronous communication and synchronous communication. There is some evidence that multimedia environments, in relation to meetings, can be more democratic, or, you can design out the possibility of one or more people to dominating a meeting. If you have systems that log or record the dialogue people have time to go back over all the ideas presented. There is evidence people feel less conscious of themselves and status is levelled. But also you can get other people controlling the process and you can get a lot of drift in concentration as a result.

LW. We have multimedia synchronous communications in the form of video conferencing at Xerox. We can link four sites and if it is the only alternative you have to meeting so be it. It is not as good as having people in the same room because you are dealing with different disciplines and the cultural differences can be quite valuable.

People used to video conference operations are at an advantage and those who are not used to it can come adrift. It should not replace face-to face. People think it is better but it is not, for example, multimedia video conferencing can dampen down important cultural differences. Countries that are not use to the technology are at a disadvantage. Also in some cultures more business is done on the social interaction than on the formal meeting. As soon as you have a medium and you are going through it, it formalizes things to some extent.

SS If you are coming from the direction of ' Is multimedia better than face-to-face communication the answer is No. If you are coming from the direction of 'Is it better than fax, or the telephone then there is evidence to suggest it is. For example, if someone is interrupted during a telephone you don't know what is going on but with multimedia you can often see what is happening.

People are getting used to asynchronous communication as it allows then to plan their day. They don't have to respond immediately like on the telephone. This may be because they are increasingly too busy with many things to deal with synchronous communication as much as they used to. It is partly a control thing. Work today is too complex to organise seeing people. There are more complex projects and more in different countries. We will have to get better at asynchronous communication because the pressure of work is making this happen. So rather than meeting someone, your boss, in a corridor who says 'do it now', when you have to say 'cannot as I'm too busy' asynchronous communication allows you to deal with this.

It is a question of which mode is appropriate in a situation for interdisciplinary design.

Audience Q. A broad question anonymously submitted. Was it you Alec? (laughter) ! (No). Is design-research the same as research-design?

JM No, research design is working out the methods you do the research. Design research is looking into design, or through design to develop knowledge. There is tremendous confusion about the two, and it is an interesting subject. However, everyone is engaged in research-design who does any research, and great claims are made for it.

Audience (PDD) An interesting point, as I see that today maybe for those doing a Ph.D.

I am trained as a designer but I work in the research dept at PDD, a design consultancy in London, and I do 80% research and 20% design. Design research is not just for design trained people. Psychologists participate it in as well where I work. They are no longer doing psychological research as they are modifying their processes for design purposes. Designers are doing the same, and re-evaluating the way they research. A hybrid kind of activity is coming about, and techniques are neither one nor the other. We use the title Design Research.

NC There has been a distinction between designing and researching but are these distinctions merging together?

Audience (PDD) Yes, I think so, as the crossovers are happening, and we have a hybrid situation invoked in design and creative work. I call it all design research not design, and not anything else like behavioural research, but it requires psychologists, sociologists and designers.

We use what is called design-ethnography because we have adapted it from pure ethnography.

Audience Q. (DM) Is not this how the discipline is developing? It is developing it's own distinctive tools from bringing together tools from elsewhere. A new toolkit is being developed. You are creating a profession and a discipline, and are ahead of your time in a sense. You are creating a new expertise and we don't have a tag for it yet. It is an exciting time for us.

NC. The discipline of design is maturing as part of our progress and maturing as an inevitable part of this process.

AR. I think the jury is out on the whole issue of research -design and design-research. I think the original question refers to the term research-design as used by Dr Ranulph Glanville in DDR2 from 1998 on the Design Research Publication, when he stressed his view of the importance of doing research as design.

There are methods of going about design inquiry yet there are traditional ideas about research. The DRS has a long history of taking on board the issues, and will do so again at a Conference in September called 'Common Ground' hosted by Brunel University. I would like to keep the situation fluid. New types and definitions of research will be taken on board as the design discipline matures.

SS The question of 'What is design research?' has been debated for I guess over the past ten years. What does design-research mean? I think there is a big different between research design and design-research. There is an issue of whether we are talking about research with a big 'R' or a small 'r'.

The small 'r' research is anything you do to find out information that is relevant to your task on a specific design project. Research with a big 'R' provides something everyone did not know before or provides something that did not exist before, or some understanding of how better to do things everyone did not understand before. There is general application too.

CG The link between design research and design can be very close, and more than other areas. Design research is a major hope of design whether a small or big R. They seem to be coming together.

We are not doing much research into the development of design, to make things better for designing.

Audience- (DM) Can I suggest designers don't know what they are doing because they can't articulate the process.

CG They know exactly what they are doing because they are doing it. You are taking in an academic view. Why have you to talk about it to make it real? They are doing it. They find it difficult to communicate about it from one world to another. The other is the bigger one, unfortunately.

People are not used to idea of design research or understand it. But you don't know the value of it till you have done it, for example linking new technology developments to what are new design opportunities.

LW. I am very encouraged about designers bringing research and design together. A year or so ago we had a large research group and they did the work on what we should be doing. They produced huge amounts of information in bound reports and videos etc. They said to the design dept 'now design some new products'. They did, but they bore no relation to the research. I send designers out with service engineers to watch the process.

Audience Q. Are designers becoming researchers when they are inspired by users and inspired by other products and going all over the world to get information?

LW Cross-fertilisation with other specialists is resulting in an appreciation of just how shallow some design has been. We have not always been addressing the real things that need addressing.

Audience. They have been doing it, but now designers are doing it more formally.

AC. Translation of research is difficult when designers step into the research world with a small or large R. Designers tend to and use research information in a watered down way, but often don't seem to know how to translate it into a design or artefact. If it comes out of the artefact world, where will research information go? An artefact might not result from it, and designers get anxious with this situation. Designers have been trained for dealing with material tangible things, where if they were 'Good with wood' meant becoming a furniture designer.

Audience Q. (LH). If we agree interdisciplinary design is important why is it not reflected in Art & Design taught education?

Audience Q. (TM) Should we educate designers through team working?

AC. A cross-faculty study project was done recently at Kingston University with 350 people in an interdisciplinary project concerning the design and health. It lasted for three weeks and was done with the Faculty of Health Care. Good solutions and wonderful designs came out. But it was not realised that there was a need to have lectures on interdisciplinary working so it could be done effectively. It shoved people together without getting to grips with the need to train people in interdisciplinary working and asking 'What are you trying to achieve? Research into multidisciplinary working and interdisciplinary teams is being carried out.

LW The problem is tough because tutors are not good at teamwork in the colleges. I'm linked to 4 or 5 colleges and specialist tutors in fashion, design management and product design do not get on well as they are used to their own disciplinary working methods. They are the wrong people there to teach teamwork.

SS It is good that we are looking into this here. In the West at least it is not common in the Art & Design Schools to do interdisciplinary work. In my degree it was what you exuded from yourself that counted. Like Michelangelo, it was expected that if you chip away bits from a material out will come the creative bit. I went to Taipei recently and they had final year projects as team work. It would never happen here in final year projects. Even where you have it individuals say that 'this is my bit. My bit is the wheel. Is not it great?'.

CG I was recently a judge in the RSA Student Competition. The Bursary winner was a team. The individuals had to share the prize. (Laughter)

Professor Nigel Cross Thanks to the speakers for this session. I have enjoyed it. We could have gone on much longer but we have a schedule to keep to. Alec... over to you.

AR. The discussion has brought out some issues and highlighted some key points in the presentations. I hope this is a start for on-line visitors to add their points too.

For those interested in the issue of the nature of 'design research' two papers can be accessed here.

"Design as a Discipline" by Professor Nigel Cross.
"Challenging the 'scientific' research paradigm for design" by Dr R. Glanville.