**4.1 The model**

158 Industrial Design – New Frontiers

Consequently, designing complex systems cannot be tackled through problem solving in a

On the positive side, one can say that the process incorporates natural moments of reflection. For example, in the beginning of the synthesis phase, the designer is stimulated to diverge and develop many solutions, reflect on these ideas, converge and finally work towards one solution. As can be expected, these moments of reflection are guided by the requirements set within the analysis phase, which is again too limiting for our approach.

Schön introduced in 1983 the reflective practitioner to stress the importance of the training of practitioners in the profession and to link the design process and task in a concrete design situation. The implicit 'knowing-in-action' is important, but this, hard to formalise, knowledge is difficult to teach. Therefore, Schön introduced reflection-in/on-action, in order to train the 'knowing-in-action' habits. In this process the designer goes through four steps:

Given the importance Schön attaches to implicit 'knowing-in-action' and reflection in and on action, the starting points of reflective practice match our conclusions in chapter two. It integrates knowledge, skills and attitude. It stimulates and acknowledges the ability of design professionals to know, reflect and learn in and on action; to learn by doing, and through reflection gain an understanding that arises from experience. Schön respects a designer's intuition, by letting her enter into an experience without judgment and respond

So, why create a new design process and not adopt Schön's process? Firstly, the design process is rather global and it appears to offer insufficient support for our students to develop their vision and stimulate reflection. The moments of reflection are triggered by surprise during the process, which seems not enough for novice designers, because they have to develop their 'knowing-in-action' habits. Moreover, the design process is still sequential starting with naming and framing, which are both related to the analysis phases of the basic design cycle. So, in that sense, the analytical skills seem to prevail, even though Schön shows the importance of experience, making and intuition for reflective practice. Finally, although the design task is

Although there are many more design processes and approaches than we can describe here, we have concluded that most existing processes have positive and negative aspects for designing disruptive innovative intelligent systems, products and related services. Most processes use a sequential approach to gather information; a formal analysis phase precedes the creative conceptual phase. Moreover, the majority regards design action as something

Since a design process is merely a model of reality which emphasises certain values and downplays or even ignores other values, we have created a new process to help novice

to surprises through reflection, which is the way to learn from our actions.

that implements knowledge instead as something that generates knowledge.

unique and context-dependent, the process as such is not flexible.

linear or cyclical controlled process, like the ones described above.

**3.2 Reflective practice** 

**3.3 Concluding** 

Fig. 6. Reflective practice design process.

Developing design solutions, which are placed in the centre of this model, can be seen as a process of taking decisions based on too little information. The breadth and complexity of

Fig. 7. The Reflective Transformative Design process.

Designing Disruptive Innovative Systems, Products and Services: RTD Process 161

that are central to academic thinking and action, consisting of analysing, synthesising,

The first strategy revolves around design action, both synthesising and concretising, such as building experienceable prototype (left circle). Synthesising is the merging of elements into a coherent composition for a specific purpose. It goes from small to large. When concretising, one applies a general viewpoint to a specific situation or case. This action goes from large to small. This making strategy produces experiential information for the other activities in the design process. Design making enables the designer to use her intuition and through making the designer can open up new solution spaces that go beyond imagination.

The second strategy revolves around academic thinking: analysis and abstraction (right circle). While analysing, one unravels events, problems or systems into smaller subsets with a certain intention. So the activity goes from large to small. Abstracting does the opposite, going from small to large. It aims at making a viewpoint such as a theory, model or statement, relevant for more cases by bringing it to a higher aggregation level (Meijers et al., 2005). Academic thinking produces a more formal kind of information that (again) feeds into the connecting activities. Both strategies are valuable and should frequently alternate

Dependent on the person, context, or phase within the design process, designers determine where they start, and the order of the activities. This way the process supports flexibility, diversity and individuality, and it can even enhance chaos and going from a disequilibrium to a (re)equilibrium. The designers also determine how often they swap from one activity to another, although a high pace is recommended, especially during the early phases of the design process, but also during the later phases since this enables the designer to get a fast and good insight to what is happening within interaction in a diverse social context and market. As said, the RTD process is also an instrument to learn novice designers to become aware of values like openness, diversity, flexibility and craftsmanship. Moreover, the model actively supports reflection in, on and for action. The RTD process supports them to make their activities explicit and thus have an opportunity to reflect on those actions. When performing an activity within a circle, a student is stimulated to reflect in and on action, and an opportunity for reflection occurs every time the student switches activities. Therefore, we stimulate frequent changes from one activity to another, because this could help novices to

Fig. 9. A visualisation of the RTD design. The five circles were translated to rows and every

activity was placed within, showing the relationship between activities.

abstracting and concretising (Meijers, et al., 2005).

throughout the entire process.

**4.4 Overall approach** 

Reaching quality through making quantity supports decision-making.

the solution domain, and the interdependence of individual solutions, the design brief and vision make it impossible to determine beforehand if a decision is the right one. Therefore, we consider design decisions conditional. That is, a designer makes decisions to the best of her experience and knowledge. These decisions are not necessarily correct decisions, it is possible that further insight into the design challenge invalidates a decision, forcing the designer to rethink certain solutions and come up with more appropriate solutions. So decisions can change over time depending on the developments and emerging meaning. In a sense this links to characteristics like openness, uncertainty and being (partly) out-ofcontrol. So instead of using a linear controlled process, the RTD process uses an open, explorative approach.

Fig. 8. A linear controlled process (left) versus an open, explorative process (right).

The RTD process knows two axes: vertically we distinguish drives and horizontally we distinguish strategies for information gathering to direct design decisions.

#### **4.2 Drives (vertical axis)**

We view the design process as a process where insight into design opportunities and the solution domain is achieved by continuous information gathering. Next to the design solution itself, we see two drives for information gathering.

The first drive is information gathering to direct the design decisions through the designer's vision (top circle). It focuses obviously on development of disruptive, innovative solutions to transform the behaviour and experience of users and society as a whole. Therefore, the RTD process encourages (novice) designers to create a vision on transformation from our current reality to a 'radical' new reality through an intelligent, open and/or complex system, product or service. This transformation can refer to personal, social and societal transformation. In the beginning of the project this vision might still be small and captured implicitly in the design brief if there is one. During the process, the vision can be developed and sharpened.

The second drive is information gathering to explore and validate design decisions in a real life context with users even beyond launching the system, product and services in the market (bottom circle). Because meaningfulness, value, and transformation are person- and context-related concepts that emerge in interaction, the possibilities and solutions have to be explored and tested extensively through experienceable prototypes and designs in the real life context. The emergence of meaning can preferably take place throughout the entire process, and later on also over a longer period of time, thus supporting co-evolvement and adaptive behaviour.

#### **4.3 Strategies (horizontal axis)**

The drives are incorporated within two strategies that generate information and that reciprocally provide focus for each other. These strategies are indicated as the basic activities that are central to academic thinking and action, consisting of analysing, synthesising, abstracting and concretising (Meijers, et al., 2005).

The first strategy revolves around design action, both synthesising and concretising, such as building experienceable prototype (left circle). Synthesising is the merging of elements into a coherent composition for a specific purpose. It goes from small to large. When concretising, one applies a general viewpoint to a specific situation or case. This action goes from large to small. This making strategy produces experiential information for the other activities in the design process. Design making enables the designer to use her intuition and through making the designer can open up new solution spaces that go beyond imagination. Reaching quality through making quantity supports decision-making.

The second strategy revolves around academic thinking: analysis and abstraction (right circle). While analysing, one unravels events, problems or systems into smaller subsets

with a certain intention. So the activity goes from large to small. Abstracting does the opposite, going from small to large. It aims at making a viewpoint such as a theory, model or statement, relevant for more cases by bringing it to a higher aggregation level (Meijers et al., 2005). Academic thinking produces a more formal kind of information that (again) feeds into the connecting activities. Both strategies are valuable and should frequently alternate throughout the entire process.
