Design Practice: Transform Problems, Experiences and Ideas into Solutions

Design Practice is the process through which abstract intentions are translated into concrete decisions, configurations and evaluations. In this handout, we will examine design experience, distinguishing lived, remembered and recounted experience and analysing its instrumental, aesthetic and affective dimensions.

We will then explore problem framing, showing how needs, obstacles and different interpretations of the same situation can lead to very different design directions. We will also study design creativity, understood as the ability to combine repertoire and imagination to generate ideas that are both new and appropriate to the project. Finally, we will examine generative design, where the process does not begin from an existing problem but from an aspiration or possibility that is progressively made concrete through proposals and prototypes.

From Definition to Practice

From Definition to Practice Download

Key points

Experience = episode unfolding over time through perceptions, actions, interpretations, and states, which can subsequently be remembered and evaluated as a whole.

Lived experience ≠ remembered experience ≠ recounted experience: the first is directly undergone, the second reconstructed through memory, and the third selectively communicated.

Peak-end rule → under certain conditions, the most intense moments and the ending disproportionately influence retrospective evaluation; this is not universal.

Experience cannot be directly designed → designers configure artefacts and conditions that may influence what recipients experience, without determining their actual responses.

Quality of experience = overall character of how a subject experiences a situation, encompassing instrumental, aesthetic, and affective dimensions.

Instrumental quality ≠ aesthetic quality ≠ affective quality: these concern goal achievement, how an artefact presents itself, and the emotional states experienced.

Aesthetics = qualitative way an artefact appears, behaves, and takes on meaning in experience, rather than merely its visual appearance or beauty.

Visceral ≠ behavioural ≠ reflective dimensions: these respectively concern immediate sensory qualities, the perceived character of interaction, and attributed meanings and values.

Artefact properties ≠ aesthetic qualities: designers configure measurable characteristics, while aesthetic qualities emerge through perception and interpretation and require verification.

Pleasantness ≠ liking ≠ beauty: pleasantness is positive affective valence, liking is positive overall evaluation, and beauty is positive aesthetic evaluation.

Aesthetic appropriateness = consistency between perceived aesthetic qualities and the project’s purposes; neither beauty nor pleasantness is universally required.

Experience evaluation → examines relevant functional, practical, epistemic, symbolic, relational, social, and temporal aspects through observations, measurements, and subjective assessments.

Instrumental value ≠ autotelic value: instrumental value derives from achieving an external result, while autotelic value lies in undergoing the experience itself.

Need ≠ problem: a need identifies a desired or necessary condition, while a problem arises when obstacles impede its achievement.

Problem formulation = selective interpretation of a problematic situation, identifying relevant needs, current conditions, and obstacles to establish possible points of intervention.

Problem reframing → changes how a problematic situation is represented, revealing alternative interventions rather than merely reformulating the same question.

Problem ≠ desired outcome: the problem identifies what the project intends to address, while the desired outcome specifies what should happen to recipients.

Corrective design ≠ generative design: corrective design addresses discrepancies in existing situations, while generative design explores possibilities that need not originate from problems.

Corrective mode → need → problematic situation → problem formulation → idea → solution, evaluated against the need and desired outcome.

Generative mode → aspiration → possibility → idea → proposal, making hypothetical conditions concrete enough to experience, understand, discuss, and evaluate.

Proposal ≠ final product: a proposal may generate knowledge by making a possibility testable, even when the possibility is ultimately rejected.

Idea = initial representation of a possible design configuration, connecting a problem or possibility with a conceivable way of addressing or realizing it.

Technology = organized means for intentionally producing effects, comprising techniques, tools, and procedures grounded in relevant knowledge.

Creativity = ability to reorganize elements of one’s repertoire through imagination, generating ideas that are both new and appropriate to the project’s purposes.

Creativity ≠ technology: creativity expands what can be imagined, while technology expands what can be realized; their interaction contributes to design ideas.

Idea ≠ design configuration: an idea proposes an initial possibility, while a design configuration emerges through development, prototyping, evaluation, and revision.

Effective design → connects recipients’ conditions, desired outcomes, available technologies, creative possibilities, and evaluation criteria rather than starting from artefact characteristics alone.