Between idea generation and physical embodiment: Exploring the ‘fuzzy
middle’ in conceptual design
Tomas Hellström
1. Introduction (1 page)
The part of the design process that runs from initial ideation or design brief to physical
embodiment, has been referred to as the ‘conceptual phase’ (Tovey, 1997). This phase,
which precedes the engineering and production stages, typically involves the generation
of new ideas, both of a technical and a non-technical nature. Rationally, the conceptual
design phase has been said to be represented by a task clarification phase involving
problem and market analysis, a conceptual design phase which includes generating and
assessing alternative solutions in order to arrive at a design concept, and finally an
embodiment phase, where more coherent tests can be made and manufacturing issues can
be assessed (Lofthouse, 2004; Roy, 1996).
However, while much is known about the initial processes of ideation, as well as
about the externalizing processes involved in team work, less is known empirically about
the informal and often highly personal process that occurs between the very early stages
of design, just when a design brief has been put forward or a general concept has been
formulated, and the time when this idea is becoming embodied, for example in a mock-up
or some other type of representation. It often happens that the first stage of ideation occur
in some social setting, where brainstorming or concept discussions are taking place. The
designers then ‘incubate’ these images in different ways, refine them and when ready
presents a new version to the group. This may happen slowly or fast, and express itself
differently in different contexts. This ‘in between’ phase will be referred to as ‘the fuzzy
middle’ of conceptual design and the focus of the present paper is on how this process
functions and how it may be structured.
The idea of the ‘fuzzy middle’ of conceptual design is that while initial ideation or
design brief as well as embodiment/presentation offer social and formal anchoring points
for the designer, the intermediate period between these two is more personal and
subjective; less amenable to steering and management, and more influenced by the
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personal characteristics and tacit knowledge of the designer. Consequently, the empirical
study on which this paper is built has aimed to capture the specific, qualitative
experiences of a number of designers who operated in one project, and their process of
passing through the ‘fuzzy middle’, both at a personal specific and a general structural
level. To this end a phenomenological deep-interview technique was employed. This type
of study typically focuses on a small set of subjects in order to facilitate a rich qualitative
account of personal processes. The results suggests a three-stage model of the […]
2. Theory (2 pages)
While the conceptual phase may be very socially dynamic and interactive, especially in
the early phases of ideation where for example brainstorming sessions are often used to
expand concepts, this early stage soon gives way to an incubation period where the
individual designer melts the impressions and starts a kind of mental sorting process, only
to return to the group with a new concept. This is in many ways a journey from an initial
elusive concept, to an externalized conceptual object of some kind, or a first embodiment
to be put up for social evaluation. At this last stage of conceptual design, sketches, mockups, models etc. together with preliminary evaluations of aesthetic and use value are
addressed in a social setting, before the next step of the product development process
begins (Roy, 1996). This ‘in between’ period of mainly individual incubation is here
referred to as the ‘fuzzy’ middle of conceptual design, since unlike design brief, idea
generation (ideation) and presentation of an embodied concept, which are fairly well
anchored in shared practices, this phase is often individual and private. However, it is
easy to see how this stage, where the individual designers go off to think and tinker with
the concept, is crucial to the way that a tentative set of concepts end up becoming
embodied design alternatives.
What is going on in this phase of design? We will look at this question by drawing
on some of the received views on design thinking. It has been suggested that what
signifies the role of the designer in this general phase, usually the domain of the industrial
designer rather than the design engineer, is a concern for the expressive aspects of the
future product, that is what it says about its user and what values it conveys ‘about itself’
(Svengren, 1997). This type of people-centered or user-centered mentality has been said
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to exist among industrial designers involved in this phase, as opposed to the technologyorientation typical of later stages of the product development process (Ulrich and
Eppinger, 1995). There are however good reasons to believe that these designers too
operate with a level of technical involvement in generating and assessing candidate
concepts (Lofthouse, 2004). The mix of divergent and convergent thinking discussed by
Lawson among others exists also in this phase, as fairly unstructured and expansive idea
generation based on aesthetic inspiration, new functionality concepts and imagination of
possible users mixed with a technical, logical and evaluative mode of though (Lawson,
1990).
Dietrich Dörner (1999) has suggested that this process may proceed from an initial
concretization of a design brief on the basis of available analogies and previous solutions
from other fields, which produces a vague idea of what the final product may look like. It
then enters into sketching or modeling phase which further clarifies the characteristics of
the product. This phase may produce a number of dead ends but also a ‘stockpile of
ideas’ for future use. A parallel process is that of the ‘picture-world cycle’, where images
and words are combined, to the effect that the designer put ideas into words for
him/herself as well as for others. According to Dörner, rephrasing might open up new
avenues for though and specify a concept, but it may also prematurely destroy the
dynamics of thinking about the design. Yet another step is the process of ‘mental
simulation’, where the designer tries to elaborate on the design by looking for
contradictions and possibilities by mentally running the machine/product and asking
questions such as ‘what will happen if…?’ and what side effects will result from this
change…?’.
All these aspects of conceptual design really combine divergent and convergent
thinking in different ways, and thereby exemplify how the two modes need to be
entangled with each other to be truly efficient, at least in this ‘in between’ phase of design
(Lawson, 1990). The ‘disciplined’ generation and evaluation of concepts throughout the
design process was emphasized by Pugh, who also pointed to the fact that as the process
evolved the number of solutions gradually decreased, as did the space for ideation (Pugh,
1991). Cross further emphasized that while concept design contained deliberate
divergence for the purpose of searching for new ideas, the process as a whole was
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characterized by convergent thinking by its very nature (Cross, 1994). These two authors
have been read as together suggesting two centrally desired features of the conceptual
design phase (1) the design process benefits from following a multiple divergent and
convergent approach, and (2) the number of concepts generated in this process is
gradually decreased to the point where only a few are left (Liu et al., 2003).
Liu and Bligh have suggested that this divergent-convergent process can be
further characterized by (1) the number of levels of abstraction at which divergenceconvergence take place, (2) the order in which these happen, and (3) the maximum level
of divergence (Liu et al., 2003). In the case of the first of these points, the authors refer to
Lee et al., who suggest that designers may reduce complexity by bundling design criteria
together and considering many of these at once. Bundling several single criteria together
in this way creates multiple levels of abstraction, depending on the number and type of
criteria one chooses to combine, and this may aid in tackling complex design
requirements (Lee et al., 1992). This also appeals to the insight that designers must
reduce the number of candidate solutions simply because they are […]
3. Method (0,5-1 pages)
3.1 The methodological approach
In order to address this question, this study employed an approach based on interpretative
phenomenological analysis (IPA). The typical aim of this method is to explore in detail
how a person or group engages in an experiences an activity in the sense of assigning
meaning to this activity. The approach is phenomenological in that it emphasizes the
meanings of particular events, states and experiences as these hold for the participants
(Smith and Osborn, 2003). The researcher works out interpretations to large extent
already present in the expressions of the participants, i.e. the subjects own elaborations
and sense-making (Smith, 1996). Because of the focus on meaning structure and personal
experience, the standard measures of representativeness of sampling is replaced in
phenomenological analysis with an attention to detail of expression, and a probing
attitude with regard to the interview itself and its resulting material. In addition to this the
phenomenological approach usually also a focus on creating a homogeneous sample with
regard to the phenomenon under study (Smith and Osborn, 2003). […]
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4. The empirical study (4-5 pages)
The interviews revealed three general categories or phases of the conceptual design phase
which were often put, more or less consciously, in a temporal-causal narrative by the
designers. Schematically this process tended to proceed as follows: After initially
ideating a concept or a set of candidate concepts, mental experimentation and
conceptualization where often ‘incubated’ in the form of an internal conceptualization,
where images were elaborated, evaluated and refined in the ‘mind’s eye, as thought
processes in the individual designer. After that, these internal images became developed
into more representational conceptualizations, for example in terms of sketches; however
these were still very much in the individual cognitive domain. As a third step, the idea
was externalized socially, into what can be referred to as a social conceptualization,
where other designers (e.g. team members) were presented with the idea and engaged in
its further elaboration. This activity would then ideally launch into a phase where the
designer works as part of an organized effort to further elaborate and realize the concept.
However, as stated above, this study dealt with the intermediary process of
conceptualization between initial idea generation and focused team work. These three
stages will now be further elaborated and exemplified with quotes from the interviews.
Figure 1 serves to structure these categories, how they were expressed by the
interviewees (boxes under each category refer to representative meaning units from the
interviews), and their temporal progression.
-----------------------Figure 1 about here
------------------------
4.1 Internal conceptualization
The interviews revealed how, following the generation phase, design brief or initial
ideation, there was an early, individual phase of internally conceptualizing the design
idea. This phase involved a mix of mental manipulations, which seem to have the
function of testing the scope, as well as the integrity and the ‘ecological feasibility’, of
the idea. In the first place, the commonly known exercise of functional separation or
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breakdown of concept was combined with concept expansion, where the functions of the
future artifact were mentally isolated and then imagined in a variety of alternative ways.
One of the designers explained it like this: “I had an idea about a baby chair. Then I
though, a chair should be safe. What can safety be? What represents safety? Secondly, I
though about the sitting surface. What can a sitting surface be? What is it supposed to
do?”
The concept breakdown/expansion procedure was also achieved on a higher level,
in the sense that the conceptualization of the idea was goal oriented with regard to
function as well as to emotional qualities. In the interviews, these two aspects seemed to
be conceptualized informally on this stage, as part of the same ‘mental package’, e.g. “I
was thinking about the technical function but also about how to communicate this
function and how to load it with a value… how to mix the product with an experience or
an emotion that makes one want to own it”. These processes in a way represent a
hypothesis generating mode, where the different aspect of the idea are conceptualized and
reconceptualized in order to arrive at a richer inner picture of what one is going to work
with. A part of this process also involved attempting to finalize images of the future
artifact, albeit not necessarily realistic such images. One designer reported on the
importance of visualizing the perfect artifact; a flawless design devoid of any problems,
which directly corresponds to one’s inner image: “It’s a feeling you have about what this
thing could ideally be, and it turns into a picture in your head. This picture has no boring
or difficult aspects; one chooses oneself what to put in and what to leave out.”
The ongoing mental refinement of the concept however continues, partly by
imagining alternatives and ideal end-goals but also, significantly, through mentally
falsifying alternative solutions: “I constantly tested the idea in my head and searched for
limitations and flaws. It was never like: Oaw there it is. More or less I tried to pressure
test the idea at this stage.” It seems as if this stage is a very volatile place to be for an
idea, and several participants expressed the need to quickly get the concept out and into a
more visual form, for example by sketching or making notes. One participant expressed
the limit to mental imagery in the following way: “I have to get it out fast, and onto paper
or something otherwise I forget it… I can’t develop it in here [pointing to head], I have to
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get a three-dimensional understanding, so that I can see it properly. After that one may
discover that ‘OK this didn’t work’”.
This is where the idea goes from an internal to a representational concept, and this
is the phase to which we turn next.
4.2 Representational conceptualization
The most obvious type of representational conceptualization is experimentation on paper,
or sketching. All of the participants referred to sketching as central in this phase of
conceptual design, which is not strange since it permeates the whole design process. In
this phase the designers typically tried out several representations quickly, e.g. “ideas ‘fly
around’ on the paper. They move around in the head, and come out directly through the
pen.” In this sense it may be difficult to separate sketching from the previous phase, since
the mind and the hand seem so closely connected. Later we will look at the particular role
paper experimentation can play in this phase. Several participants referred to alternative
ways of creating the first external representations of the concept, which did not involve
sketching, but rather the creation of ‘symbolic triggers’ which could serve as external
focus points for ideation. For example: “I took several photographs of the interior which I
then put together in different ways to see what materials could be used and what forms
could work in the context.” The use of photographs as a source of inspiration after the
concept has started to take shape may fill a similar but less committal function to that of
externalizing by sketching. This function is also related to an aspect complementary to
sketching, which also seems important in this phase of externalization namely that, as one
participant expressed it: “apart from visualizing shapes, this part of the work is lot about
picking out materials and solutions, more or less consciously.” Sketching is here seen to
be combined with other visual aids as concept refinement moves from shape and structure
towards qualities of look and feel.
The interviews illustrate how representational conceptualization through sketching
and other aids may generate solutions, more problems or new concepts, by a branching
out from the original idea. The generation of solutions is exemplified in the following
quote: “I go from two-dimensions to three-dimensions and so on, and new solutions
appear the whole way. In all sketching I’m on the look-out for a solution and this solution
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happens on the paper.” This is a clear illustration of how the material representation
affects the ability to generate solutions. It also generates new problems, as is illustrated in
the following statement, which depicts the move from internal to external
conceptualization: “First I have an idea and I go to sketching. But as I visualize it, new
constellations of problems become clear to me. As I continue to sketch more problems
occur, especially in the move from two to three dimensions.”
These two outcomes of representational conceptualization are related to another
typical characteristic of this phase, namely that concept sketches generate new concept
sketches, which are not simple specifications of the original idea but rather a branching
out into new but related concepts. Most of the respondents touched upon this
phenomenon, but there was very little understanding of how this branching came about.
One designer said for example that: “I have a picture in my head, I get it down on paper
and I’m sketching away on it. All of a sudden I’m sketching on something else, which
may be somewhat related. I get more ideas from the sketching. It’s like the sketching
creates these new ideas.” However, as these ‘semi-external’ conceptualizations mature,
they require new forms of validation, particularly that of the team or the group. The
participants all recurrently refer to this stage as a fairly traumatic one, where one has to
take a concept which has now been fairly ‘personalized’ to someone else or to the group
for further pressure testing and falsification attempts. This step is also part of the
externalization process (social externalization), as the concept is now re-represented ‘as
communicated’ in a social setting. This stage may be referred to as ‘social
conceptualization’.
4.3 Social conceptualization
The first steps towards representing the concept socially may be taken informally, after
the concept has fermented for a while, and gone through some of the processes elaborated
above. One designer described this as the concept gradually passing through a ‘filter’,
where it becomes more and more exposed to peer judgment: “I have to give the idea a
few days to go through the filter, I talk to people, more or less informally. Little
exchanges, just to see if it carries. Sometimes it doesn’t.” As the communication of the
concept becomes more and more formalized, e.g. when the designer prepares to ‘pitch’
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the idea to his/her colleagues, the verbal externalization becomes more expositional in
nature and this creates clarity and overview. One participant explained it like this: “Then
I was in a situation when I had to present this to the others, and something happened to
the idea. I got a better perspective. Maybe I had been too narrow in my focus, but when I
tried to explain I started to see flaws and also new benefits.”
This process may be reductive/analytical, going from the general to the specific
elements of the design. One participant who had earlier been explaining the role of
imagining the ‘perfect design’, described how “as one starts to communicate this image, a
lot of noise is appearing. Reality comes into the picture and one has to start wrestling first
with the concept as a whole, and then starting going into the details. That’s a special
problem.” The initial social process of specifying and concretizing by communicating
and articulating the concept seemed to […]
5. Discussion and conclusions (2 pages)
The thematic structure outlined above will now be discussed in more general terms, and
conclusions will be drawn for each of the identified phases of conceptual design’s fuzzy
middle.
After initial ideation, the first conceptualization phase appear mainly as an internal
process where symbolic aspects of the future artifact are distilled and then emoted and
visualized in various ways. This ‘mental molding’ of the concept seems to involve
convergent as well as divergent processes. However, it is not easy to separate these.
Rather they appear to co-evolve in a few distinct ways, for example through a functional
separation of the concept (an analytical and reductive process), which simultaneously
leads to a concept expansion (a more open explorative process). This intertwining of
divergent an convergent thinking was also apparent in the way that goal orientation
emerged as functional and emotional at the same time; achieving functionality criteria,
which is more of a traditional problem-solving task, while seeking emotional goals
involving for example aesthetic values, which is a more open ended process. The
statements about visualizing a ‘perfect artifact’ is also a curious example of this duality,
for while the ‘perfect artifact’ is convergently structured in the minds eye, it also
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represents a form of unconstrained design hypothesis, and must therefore be seen as a
divergent exercise.
These observations are supported by authors like Lawson, who retain the
analytical distinction between convergent and divergent while seeing the two as
intertwined in the process of ideation (Liu et al., 2003; Lee et al., 1992). In the present
case we can see how the two processes become intertwined as a result of the designer
bundling criteria together in the early phases of conceptual design, and actively
collapsing criteria of various levels of abstraction in order to evaluate diverse alternatives
more economically and flexibly (Lawson, 1990). The representational conceptualization
phase illustrates how externalization of concepts, i.e. the first steps towards embodiment
of the design, can be diverse as well as creatively generative in their own right. The
interviews suggest that this process can take on various modalities. The modalities of
representation illustrated in this study involved paper experimentation (i.e. sketching),
and the creation of external pictures to capture ideas (through photography). The last
category can be viewed as representing ‘symbolic triggers’ which act as focus points for
sketching and other representational forms of ideation. They are symbolic in the sense
that one picture can trigger many different concrete design alternatives in the sketching
process. This can be viewed as a version of the ‘picture-world cycle’ discussed by Dörner
(1991), however here ‘images and words’ are not combined, but rather the ‘syntax’ of
sketching is being infused with a ‘semantics’ of images, where such images are partially
interpreted through sketching. Similarly to what Schön and Wiggins (1992) are
describing as the ‘seeing-moving-seeing’ cycle, pictures are symbolic and elusive images
of what the designer aims to accomplish; sketches are concretization attempts, which are
then tested against the images, in a cyclical movement. Representational
conceptualization is clearly also a very focuses generative process. As was evident from
the interviews sketching created new problems, solutions and concepts in a branching out
movement which was not simply a convergent specification of alternative solutions to the
original idea, but one that created new concepts as well.
Finally, the first steps towards embodiment proper are taken when the design
concept is aired in a social setting. This part of the process implies a testing of the various
aspects of the concept against new and possibly unexpected criteria raised by the group.
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The pressure on the designer to present an emotionally as well as logically appealing
narrative about the concept […]
Finally, the first steps towards embodiment proper are taken when the design
concept is aired in a social setting. This part of the process implies a testing of the various
aspects of the concept against new and possibly unexpected criteria raised by the group.
The pressure on the designer to present an emotionally as well as logically appealing
narrative about the concept forces him/her to higher levels of expositional prominence
than was necessary before, and in this sense social conceptualization is a creative if
mainly convergent phase. There were indications that this process could be preempted to
a certain extent, by exposing the concept to peers gradually, through informal interaction.
This supports both the notion of ‘thought synchronization’ among designers (Valkenburg
and Dorst, 1998), and illustrates one way in which designers may handle previously
observed desires to keep communication targets small (Chiu, 2002). Both these issues
refer to an observation made in this study, that confirmation of a concept, as important as
it is to the designer, is always accompanied by the risk of falsification and concept
elimination.
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