week 10. framing design in the third paradigm

Framing Design in the Third Paradigm

Salu Ylirisku, Virtu Halttunen, Johanna Nuojua, and Antti Juustila, ACM CHI 2009

1. p. 1131.
ABSTRACT:

"...the new design paradigm, which considers
designing as a situated and constructive activity of meaning
making rather than as problem solving."


...how design projects proceed from the fuzzy early phases
towards the issues of central relevance to designing.


A central concept is framing,...Several aspects of framing
are explicated, exploratory, anticipatory and social framing,
and related concepts of ‘focusing’, ‘priming’, and
‘grounding’ are explained.

2.
INTRODUCTION


A new paradigm is emerging within HCI. Harrison et al.
[14] identified three waves of paradigms within HCI, the
first being “Human Factors/Engineering”, the second
“Cognitive Revolution”, and the third “Situated
Perspectives”.



Innovation projects are those that aim at creating novel
products, systems, or services. The central dilemma in such
projects is the question “what to build”....While the first two paradigms
focused predominantly on the optimization of the
performance of man-machine systems based on identified
problems, the third paradigm promotes a view towards the
situated and emergent properties of interaction [14].


Already in the 1970s Rittel and Webber [27] problematized
the idea of the design problem. They contended that design
problems are “wicked” by nature and that every attempt to
solve a design problem frames the problem anew [27].



Due to the open-endedness and the explorative character of
innovation design, it is possible that a design problem does
not exist at the outset of a project.


Instead of design problems, the third paradigm promotes
meaning making to the center of focus [14].

Understanding designing as a constructive activity of meaning making
renders the terminology of problems and solutions obsolete (過時的).

p. 1132


The early phases of innovation therefore cannot be
grounded in the idea of design problems nor tied to the
traditional ideals of optimization, but new theoretical
understanding of the design process in the third paradigm is
required.


3. SITUATED FRAMING

‘framing’...This paper builds on Schön and Rein’s
[31] use of the term to refer to a process of perceiving and
making sense of social reality. These authors contend that
there is no way of perceiving and making sense of this
reality except through a frame [31]. Blumer [3] described
the issue within sociology: the “empirical world necessarily
exists always in the form of human pictures and
conceptions of it.”

"...Harrison et al. [14], who
acknowledge that the artifact and its context are mutually
defining within the third paradigm of HCI."


People create different framing
depending on their “disciplinary backgrounds,
organizational roles, interests, political and economic
perspectives” [30].

跨領域 framing 的問題:
Collaborative designing hence features great varieties of structurally interwoven, overlapping and
transitional frames in effect simultaneously.

Framing 的角色:

This complexity is perplexing when approached at once.
However, constructive frame-mediated interpretation
provides a path through the complexity. As underlying
“structures of belief, perception, and appreciation” [31]
frames help to narrow down the number of available
features by selecting “for attention a few salient features
and relations from what would otherwise be an
overwhelmingly complex reality.”



The dilemma of relevance


In this
paper ‘relevant’ refers simply to an idea that survives until
the end of the process, i.e. is not abandoned.


...improvised acting as described by Keith 
Johnstone [17]. He illustrates improvisation as walking
backwards into the future: The walker may not know what
lies behind (in the direction he is actually heading) but
knows the path from which he came [17].



Schön [30] described the dilemma as the “paradox 
of learning.” He wrote that “a student cannot at first
understand what he needs to learn, can learn it only by
educating himself, and can educate himself only by
beginning to do what he does not yet understand.” [30]
Designers must therefore act upfront, and relevance
becomes apparent afterwards.


According to Schön [29] designers develop framing through
experimentation, or what he calls ‘design moves’: “what if I
did this?” Schön wrote: “When [design] moves function in
an exploratory way, the designer allows the situation to
‘talk back’ to him, causing him to see things in a new way.”



TWO CASE STUDIES: Designing ideas for wellbeing at work, Design a town vision

 ...


DISCUSSION

p. 1137

Exploratory Framing:


This exploratory framing (formed mainly by ICTs and the Situated Make
Tools method) functioned as scaffolding that supported
collaborative experimentation, ideation and exploration
with the materials available in the design situations.
...

In short,
exploratory framing functioned as a platform for divergent 
thinking, which was grounded in empirical reality.




Anticipatory Framing:


The  anticipatory framing, which was grounded in these themes and primed
by the visits to the physical environment helped designers
to focus their effort on the relevant issues.


The process with anticipatory framing appeared
very efficient, as the teachers could successfully restructure
the entire urban planning project in a matter of a half-hour
session (Situation 2.4).




The framing also helped to design the Persona descriptions, in which the
design of the final concepts was grounded.

Social Framing:


Social framing thus refers to the conceptual
designing of co-design events for the co-designers.


One aspect of social framing is the role assigned to the codesigners. They may be framed as experts, who have the  capacity to judge, design, and guide the direction of a project.

p. 1138

Focusing 


Focusing refers to the iterative process of developing a
comprehensive conception of a design object.
...

When these structures, which
guide perception and appreciation, become available,
designers gain the ability to tell whether something is
relevant or not. This ‘sense of relevance’ is apparent in how
designers expressed their feelings about the value of the
photographs in the Kuntis case.


This ability
is precisely what the evolving frames provide designers
with. At the same time as frames structure perception and
sense making, they constitute what Schön and Rein [31]
call the “normative leap” from fact to values, from “is” to 
“ought.”  This leap is fundamental in designing, when
designing is understood in the spirit of the definition by
Simon [32] as the activity to transform existing situations 
into preferred ones.

The “normative leap” happens once
designers develop the sense of relevance.



(設計中的 normative leap 發生在 the sense of relevance 清楚之後）

Priming


The concept of priming draws attention to the timely
development of framing.



For example, the exploration,
ideation, and evaluation primed the reframing (Situation
2.4) of the whole project in the Kuntis case. Similarly the
whole set of consecutive design events and workshops
primed the conceptual restructuring of the mobile tool
concepts (Situation 1.8) in the Konkari project.


Sleeswijk-Visser et al. [33] called ‘sensitization’ the
increased readiness of the participants to express projectrelevant comments when they spend a period of time with a
sensitization package. Priming sensitizes, and more
precisely, develops initial and vague structures on which
sub-sequent design-cognitions can be grounded.

Grounding 


Grounding ultimately refers to the connection of designing
to the structures in empirical reality in which the designs
will eventually be placed. For example, the Personas in the
Konkari project were grounded in the knowledge about the
workers.

Priming 與 Grounding 的比較：

While priming promotes the timely
relation between events, grounding draws attention to the
hierarchical nesting of framing.

Grounding thus ties closely
to thinking while priming associates more with action.


Framing Artifacts (設計過程中, 用來幫助 framing 的人造物)


The ideas, forms, artifacts, which are
needed to (re)construct a framing, sustain from one
situation to another. This phenomenon is evident in the
studied projects and is facilitated by physical artifacts, and
both case studies reveal the role that the material artifacts
played in the reproduction of a certain frame at a later stage.
....

Artifacts were also utilized to frame memories for the
service of design.
...

Zimmerman et al. [41] claim “design artifacts are the 
currency of design communication.” Framing artifacts have
a similar value. Framing artifacts also feature a mnemonic 
function in the reconstruction of framing as the above
examples illustrate.