Design, Art, Craft, Science: Making and Creativity
Mark D Gross
Ellen Yi-Luen Do
Carnegie Mellon University
Georgia Institute of Technology
mdgross@cmu.edu
ellendo@gatech.edu
ABSTRACT
Richard Gabriel has compared software engineering and
poetry [6]. The software engineering and HCI communities
have followed the work of Christopher Alexander and his colleagues on A Pattern Language [1]. We agree that writing,
a craft, is a form of design. In the arts tradition, design is
taught in a studio setting, where mastery through practice,
continual critiquing, and incremental formalization of prototypes are the norm. Much has been written on the studio
tradition of design education, see for example Don Schön’s
The Design Studio [11] and the historical documents of design schools such as the Bauhaus [13] or Ulm [9] (where, incidentally, design methods pioneer Horst Rittel taught and
was once Dean).
This paper describes our observations and reflections about
the relationships between making and creativity, in the context of design and computing.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
D.2.10 [Software]: Design; F [Theory of computation];
H.0 [Information systems]: General; H.1 [Information
systems]: Models and principles; H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User interfaces
General Terms
Design
2. TOWARD SCIENCE?
In A People’s History of Science [2] Conner reminds us
that the achievements of science rest on the labor of unknown artisans and craftworkers, who through their experiments in making things reveal knowledge that, when gathered and structured, come to be understood as natural law.
It is reasonable then that a science of design would emerge
from the practice and experience of the people who have
been making things all along.
Keywords
Design, computing, making, models, creativity, HCI, programming
1.
INTRODUCTION
After several decades of research in design and design
methods, we are still far from a science of design. Much
has been written about design spaces, tradeoffs and optimizations, pattern languages, ill-structured problems, and
bounded rationality, and various systematic methods for design analysis and synthesis have been proposed in various
domains, and to differing extents, tried and evaluated.
Design is the art and science of making things, and in this
way design is bound up with creativity. That is because
creativity simply means the ability to create, to make. In
the popular view designers are seen as creative people, often
indistinguishable from artists. We would draw distinctions
between Art and art or artisanship (and, for that matter, between Design and design); yet, remembering that designers
are makers may yield some insights toward a more systematic understanding of design and design process—if not yet
a science, perhaps some sense about how that science may
be developed.
3. MATERIALS AND PROCESSES
Master makers understand materials. Knowledge of materials and processes, obtained through direct experience,
is fundamental to making things in any domain. A potter
knows clays and glazes and the various processes to prepare,
form and fire them. A furniture designer knows wood and
the tools that are used to shape it; steel and the forms that it
comes in, the hardware that is used to hold things together,
and so on. One cannot design furniture without a command
of the materials, tools, and processes that are used to manufacture it. There is more to know, of course: the human
body and its forms and postures; the society in which the
furniture will be used; the meanings ascribed to shapes, colors, and materials, and so on. Although modern systems
of production separate the roles of manufacture and design,
knowing materials and processes of making is essential to
successful design.
We may say the same for software. Of course, like any
industrial product, software cannot be produced through a
handcrafted process. Yet no less than design of furniture,
buildings, or automobiles design of good software requires
an intimate knowledge of the materials and process. Good
designs for software systems emerge from the hands of master programmers who know hardware and software, and the
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6.1 Owning the Problem
processes to conceive, write, debug, and maintain code. Certainly there is more to good design than knowledge of materials and process.
4.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Creative design usually comes from a need to be met or a problem to be solved.
A need or a problem stimulates creative efforts to satisfy the
need or to solve the problem. For example, the Digital Clay
[12] and VR Sketchpad [3] projects came from the need to
make and design 3D models from free hand sketching.
MODELS FOR CREATIVE DESIGN
Important components for a successful environment to facilitate creative making of design and computational artifacts would include at least: (1) understanding of materials
and processes, (2) studio laboratory environment, and (3)
the Leonardo model of knowledge integration.
How to teach creative design? We start from playing with
material, and making things. Creativity is the ability to
make interesting stuff, and therefore, it’s important to learn
about material properties and processes for making.
4.1 The Studio Laboratory Environment
The tradition of the atelier, the design studio or the research laboratory model both emphasize an environment or
space where people can do experimentation and to make
things. People understand and appreciate the idea of a
garage band, or the model of a warehouse hobbyist community. How might an environment nurture the spirit of
experimental making? Our research practice has been a
curiosity-based designer-as-maker approach. Problem solving and problem seeking encourage people to see no boundaries between fields. We encourage explorations by constructing (interface, interactions, software, and hardware)
as a process that creates.
Figure 1: Transform Isometric Sketch to 3D with
Digital Clay.
4.2 Knowledge Integration—
The Leonardo Model
Besides the creative community model that fosters teambuilding among people with different skill sets, we advocate the Leonardo Model. Individuals cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and learn to function in whatever fields
of knowledge they need to accomplish their goals. An artist
who has an idea for a game would simply build the game,
learning to program along the way.
5.
Figure 2: Create 3D Rooms from Sketches with VR
Sketchpad.
6.2 Design and the Play Instinct
Play is an exploration of materials and processes. Unlike
routine production, the creative acts of making may result
in new or innovative ideas. Our Gesture Modeling [8] and
Digital Sandbox [4] projects began with a frustration with
using WIMP interfaces to create form, and also the design
to ‘play with form by hand.’
SCIENCE OF DESIGN
What is the science of design? How can creativity (or
creative making) be measured? Can we describe both the
specification (features) and the performance of the designed
artifact? Science emerges from the learned practice of artisans and craftspeople, who learn about how the world works
through the experimental practice of doing things. The science of sword making involves intricate metal work and experimentation about the material and process of forging and
shaping the blade, normalizing, annealing, and tempering
the steel. The specification and performance of art and craft
(form and function) are both studied and practiced as an art,
and science.
6.
Figure 3: Playing with Gesture Modeling and Digital Sandbox.
CREATIVE DESIGN COMPUTING
All our design computing projects came from the practice and desire to ‘make things.’ We build computationally
enhanced artifacts that are objects to think with, to play
with, to contemplate ideas about design. Three patterns
of creative engagements emerge. They are: (1) owning the
problem, (2) design and the play instinct, and (3) building
tools to make things.
6.3 Building Tools to Make Things
Finally, we are less interested in making particular design
for a particular user, than in developing ways of working—
methods and tools—that can open up new design spaces.
For example, Space Pen [7] enables sketching and annotations in 3D virtual environment, Furniture Factory [10]
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7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
transforms design sketches into flat panels with joints for
assembly, and FlexM [5] project supports parametric modeling capabilities through the manipulation of physical objects
that are instrumented with sensors.
The material in this paper is based upon work supported
in part by the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance (PITA), and in part by the National Science Foundation under Grants IIS-96-19856, IIS-00-96138, and ITR-0326054.
8. REFERENCES
[1] C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, and M. Silverstein. A
Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.
Oxford University Press, 1977.
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[3] E. Y.-L. Do. VR Sketchpad: creating instant 3D
worlds by sketching on a transparency window, pages
161–172. CAAD Futures 2001. Kluwer Academic
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[4] E. Y.-L. Do. Digital Sandbox, Integrating Landform
Making and Analysis for Landscape Design, pages
165–188. Artificial Intelligence in Design. Kluwer
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[6] R. Gabriel. The poetry of programming, 2002.
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[8] A. Kemp and M. D. Gross. Gesture Modeling: Using
Video to Capture Freehand Modeling Commands,
pages 33–46. CAAD Futures 2001. Kluwer Academic
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[9] H. Lindinger, editor. Ulm Design. MIT Press, 1990.
[10] Y. Oh, G. Johnson, M. D. Gross, and E. Y.-L. Do.
The Designosaur and the Furniture Factory: Simple
software for fast fabrication, pages 123–140. Design
Computing and Cognition. Springer, 2006.
[11] D. Schön. The Design Studio. RIBA, London, 1985.
[12] E. Schweikardt and M. D. Gross. Digital clay:
Deriving digital models from freehand sketches. In
T. Seebohm and S. V. Wyk, editors, ACADIA ’98 Digital Design Studios: Do Computers Make a
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[13] H. M. Wingler. Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin,
Chicago. MIT Press, 1969.
Figure 4: Sketch Annotating 3D Virtual World with
Space Pen.
Figure 5: From Sketch to Fabrication in Furniture
Factory.
Figure 6: Parametric modeling with FlexM Construction Kit.
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