Part of the development of expertise lies in the accumulation of experience. Something that distinguishes experts from novices is that the experts have been exposed to a large number of examples of the problems and solutions that occur in their domain. But a key competency of an expert is the ability to mentally stand back from the specifics of the accumulated examples, and form more abstract conceptualisations pertinent to their domain of expertise. Experts are able to store and access information in larger cognitive ‘chunks’ than novices, and to recognise underlying principles, rather than focusing on the surface features of problems.
Like learning a language, it is a matter of immersion and internalising different levels of understanding and achievement.
Gardner’s view is that there are six forms of intelligence:
- Linguistic
- Logical-mathematical
- Spatial
- Musical
- Bodily-kinaesthetic
- Personal
You are almost invariably brought in by somebody who has got a very elementary commercial motive. It’s extremely unusual to be brought in to approach it from this usability, this function theme.
For Kenneth, his innovative design work often stems from going beyond the original brief, and that experience helped form his sceptical attitude towards developing and following a tight initial specification. The designer’s job, he says, is ‘to produce the unexpected’. And that does not happen by trying to ‘get the brief right, go through the process in an orderly fashion, check that you have done what you have been told to do’. Instead, ‘It’s the little bits of inspiration, the little sort of byways and the unlikely analogies and things that eventually produce what you recognise as being the right thing to do. No brief of itself ever produced an unexpected market leader. Success lies in finding the chinks in the specifications and reaching through to the concealed plums.’
Architects use drawings as a design aid. The architects also use their drawings as a means of ‘thinking aloud’, or ‘talking to themselves’, ‘as a process of criticism and discovery’.
Given the complex nature of design activity, it hardly seems surprising that the structural engineering designer Ted Happold suggested that, ‘I really have, perhaps, one real talent, which is that I don’t mind at all living in the area of total uncertainty.’ The uncertainty of design is both the frustration and the joy that designers get from their activity; they have learned to live with the fact that design proposals may remain ambiguous and uncertain until quite late in the process. Designers will generate early tentative solutions, but also leave many options open for as long as possible; they are prepared to regard solution concepts as temporarily imprecise and often inconclusive.
Designers need to use sketches, drawings and models of all kinds as a way of exploring problem and solution together, and of making some progress when faced with the complexity of design. ‘I draw something. Even if it’s “potty” I draw it. The act of drawing seems to clarify my thoughts.’ Designing, it seems, is difficult to conduct by purely internal mental processes; the designer needs to interact with an external representation. The activity of sketching, drawing or modelling provides some of the circumstances by which a designer puts himself into the design situation and engages with the exploration of both the problem and its solution. There is a cognitive limit to the amount of complexity that can be handled internally; sketching provides a temporary, external store for tentative ideas, and supports the ‘dialogue’ that the designer has between problem and solution.