During the first part of “Four Square” design, I did some independent brainstorm based on the keyword “order”, determined which composition I would like to create and started designing process right away. When it came to the second part, I collaborated with two more teammates. First of all, we all played the “explorer” roles and brainstormed together until someone came up with an idea. Then, some of us played the “critic” roles and evaluated this idea. Based on the critique, we decided whether to adopt this idea or how could we improve it. After that, we went back to brainstorm for another idea. When we came up with six ideas, we stopped exploring and started creating the compositions.
According to my experience, there are two differences between independent and group designing process. The first one is that we follow role play steps during group work, but I tend to skip those steps when designing alone. Since the whole process from brainstorming to the generation and evaluation of the idea happened in my own mind, the boundary between exploration and critique was not very clear. In fact, it’s so easy to “get blinded by our own myopic view” (Mountford, 1990) that I didn’t spend much time evaluating my own ideas. However, letting someone else critique my ideas improved the design a lot. I realized how other people understood my design, whether I conveyed the meaning behind my work and how I could improve it. For example, when we created compositions for the concept “tension”, I thought of an idea that we could stick three squares together in a line and left some space between the third and the fourth squares. It would look like four squares were hanged by a string but the fourth one was dropping down. However, my teammates thought it was not apparent enough to convey “tension” to the audiences, and they suggested we could turn over the squares and move the fourth square on the top so it looked like four boxes stacked together and the top box might drop at any time. Their comments were so great that the design looked much more tense. The second big difference is the collisions in brainstorm when we discussed within a group. I got lots of inspirations from my teammates which helped to shape my own ideas, and was encouraged to think more broadly and openly at the same time.
In order to propose a “process” that might be used to enhance these roles, there are three problems to address. The first one is that designers can not always be objective towards their own work. They spend a lot of time and energy developing ideas and designing so that it’s hard for them to say no to their own work. Therefore, when critiquing ideas or products, the designer should be excluded. That is to say, you can evaluate other teammates’ work during the process, but not your own work. In that way the critic can be totally objective. The second problem to address is how to communicate better among team members. Mountford mentions “a good diagram can explain more than the prose one would use to describe it” (Mountford, 1990) Our experience in the designing process also proved it. Before sticking squares on paper, we used a pen to draw the draft first, and revised it again and again based on our critiques. That diagram became a great communication tool and also the blueprint for our design. The third problem is how to be creative. I noticed that it was in the exploration phase that we generated lots of amazing ideas. When we started to judge those ideas, we limited our thinking and it was hard to open our mind again. Therefore, instead of “alternating roles between the four described characters every 7 minutes” (Mountford, 1990), we should extend the time for exploration.
Reference:
Mountford, J. S. (1990). Tools and techniques for creative design. In B. Laurel (Ed). The art of human-computer interface design (pp. 17-30). Reading MA: Addison-Wesley.