روانشناسی و فرآیندهای طراحی

The paper is concerned with the way in which designers tackle the process of design and the insights which can be gained from a psychological approach to this question. It discusses and advocates more research into the process of design decision-making, into creativity and design and problem solving in design as an individual and group activity.

In writing about the topic of design and psychology, I find myself in a situation which I call the “reversed Jonas trap”; I am attempting to swallow the whale. After all, design is such a prolific human activity and psychology has an important say in all human endeavours. If we define design as a human activity “where the physical artefact or a part of it, which is under design, is not currently existent, but is believed to be so in the future” (Pohjola, 2003, p. 181), then basically any future planning is encompassed herein. Even the planning of a vacation falls into this definition. But also such heroic or mundane activities as infrastructure and city planning, architectural design, design of everyday products, interior design of furniture and apartments, motor car design, organisational structuring, creating fashions, planning and construction of complex nuclear and chemical installations. There is a large body of literature concerning aesthetic design; a small example is formed by the many publications by members of the Bauhaus tradition and its offshoot in the US: Black Mountain College. But psychology also addressed the topic early on. In Hugo Münsterberg’s Berlin lectures of 1912 (Münsterberg, 1913) he addressed, in one of his last chapters, the issues of shop window display from a design angle. General psychology, more specifically psychology of thinking, followed suit in the early 1920s in developing what was called “construction rules” such as “be critical”, “stick to proven solutions”, “be careful with rule of thumb solutions” (Meyer, 1926). Furthermore there was the important contribution of gestalt psychology in relation to the creative elements of design. It should be quite evident from this short list that it is impossible to treat all these aspects in one paper or even one book. Hence, self-restriction is inevitable. The most fundamental issue for any design is to pursue a strategy which guarantees that the final design product matches user expectations in terms of the product’s usability, functionality, safety, and requisite user competencies. This paper limits itself by illustrating this problem with reference to three separate but interrelated major themes, which draw on the earlier papers in this special issue, so forming a first reflection on its themes, in a psychological context: 1. The design of highly complex socio-technical systems with high hazard characteristics. 2. The processes of everyday product design in teams. 3. The theoretical aspects of design and creative problem finding/solving.

The foregoing review and reflections pursued mainly a psychological perspective. It may be useful to conclude with some suggestions about desirable research directions which follow from such a point of view. Although they are by their very nature interdependent, they may loosely be assigned to the headings of theory, methodology, and practice. From a theoretical point of view it seems important to clarify further the relationship between creativity and successful design. Such an endeavour would most likely involve taking seriously the notion of design as a problem-solving proposition. As the other side of the same coin, would have to be considered the question concerning the cognitive factors which impede creative solutions to given design problems. Therefore, promising avenues for research strategies might be a combination of modern cognitive psychology with received gestalt psychological insights. The development of criteria to evaluate the adequacy of mental models a designer and a user have of a designed product, process or installation appears to offer yet another theoretical problem needing to be resolved. After all, only if these models have some isomorphic structures can the design be considered a success in terms of usability and user satisfaction. At issue here is to identify what may be considered the requisite elements of isomorphism. Furthermore, an intriguing theoretical question is whether design for occupational safety can be considered to follow the same or different premises as system safety design. Similarly, equivalence or difference of design is evoked when we consider the design of material artefacts as opposed to the design of less touchable symbolic or normative designs of action plans and normative systems such as strategies and procedures. More methodological considerations are called for when we analyse or try to plan the optimal sequence and interrelationships of phases for successful design processes. Thus, completely different process stages seem to be on the order when we deal with relatively simple product designs as opposed to the design of complex socio-technical systems. Further, a special methodological difficulty arises from designing user friendly products in the sense of providing user-product interfaces which constrain the user to only appropriate manipulations. Gibson’s concept of affordances (1977), intellectually attractive as it may appear, nevertheless poses considerable challenges to their adequate implementation. Different issues may be raised from the point of view of practice which may be clarified through targeted research. We know, for instance, that the availability of certain new information and communication support systems often have such qualities as to seduce people to use them even though they may be inappropriate for a given design project; e.g. the easy access to a methods data bank may be liberally employed where different approaches are called for than offered by the design tool at hand. A thorough understanding of possible constraining effects of such support systems which limit the search for adequate solutions would be an important caveat for design processes. In this connection it would be beneficial to know more about the frequency of design mistakes which contribute to dysfunctional uses or even incidents and accidents. Furthermore, little is known about the optimal mix of co-operative versus individualistic approaches in different design tasks and design phases. This problem relates to the above mentioned alternation of individual and collective creativity sessions during design activities. Finally, engineers will in all likelihood continue to carry the main load of design tasks. Therefore, our institutions of higher education in engineering need to develop educational programs of teaching, how to incorporate a proper understanding of end user needs and capacities in their designs such that user friendliness results in their products. Psychological inputs will necessarily have to be incorporated in such ventures.