What Services? What Technologies?

The Case for Parameter Analysis

What can engineering design possibly have to do with graphic or interactive design? By focusing on conceptual design, we virtually shape ideas—even if we do not use a computer. This virtual shaping—in hand with design implementation can be used in any design. Virtual shaping allows the designer to bridge distances between the components of what he or she is designing—which exist in the real world--- by bringing them together on a single piece of paper (in the planning stage), through sketching, drawing, or image-compositing.

The first phase of design could be considered data-collecting or research. We decide on the needs of our customer or ourselves. In both cases the question of audience or users of the design we must consider. In engineering design, the next step is technology identification: Which technology is appropriate to solve—with some tweaking—the design problem? In interactive design, we also identify technologies when we decide to use Illustrator, PhotoShop, Flash, or Dreamweaver: Do we need drawing ability, drawing with vectors or rasters, sophisticated photo-manipulation, or Vector animation and web page authoring?

After research and technology identification, comes parameter analysis. That parameter analysis is commonly used is an ideal; that you will always need a conceptual innovation in practical tasks, is not actually the case. The issue revolves around design optimization and design conceptualization.

Design optimization happens when research has been completed, technology has been identified, and the solution presents itself, through manipulation of existing design variables. An example would be the size of ink reservoirs in fountain pens. By changing the size, the designer changes the force and weight of the ink, and thereby changes ink flow. This reservoir is an existing design variable, and by changing it to improve the functioning of the design object, the fountain pen, we optimize the design of a fountain pen.

Now what if instead of working with the design variables of fountain pens, a leap was made to a different technology for writing script, such as ball point pens? In this instance, the designer has the history of their design process, which affects how choosing a different technology after redesigning a fountain pen, makes the change in technology a shift in concept. The design leaps from all the specific types of fountain pens to another trajectory in the design space, to that of ball point pens. This is illustrated in the following diagram:

It is conceivable that a designer will not always have to make the leap to the new concept space, although this usually makes for a better design. What is apparent is that whether the designer is working with existing design variables or new concept spaces, he or she can use parameter analysis to work through the procedures of design. In use of existing design variables, the designer switches from new realizations of size, quantity, and capacity of those variables to the original concept space of the design. For instance, after changing the fountain pen reservoir size, and becoming stuck in the particularization phase, the designer might look at schematics for a range of fountain pens, and look up the tested ratios between reservoir size and ink flow, in the design as a whole. This allows him or her to rethink on a higher level of abstraction, the underlying principles of the lower level particulars.

So what about in leaps from one concept space to another? Because parameter analysis goes from conceptualization to realization to evaluation, it is possible that the original design concept can be thrown out in the evaluation phase. In this case, the designer is, through evaluation, leaping back to the concept space and rethinking, outside of the original concept and at a level higher and more abstract than this original concept, a new solution to a problem that underlies both the original design and the new design. But the new concept space has clues to how the new design might be a better design.

Parameter analysis consists of parameter identification, creative synthesis, and evaluation in a three-part cycle or loop. Parameter identification is the process by which any issue, fact or, concept, or influence plays a part in understanding the design problem. Creative synthesis, is the result of the recognition of new parameters, and it develops a configuration, or specific design example or version of the solution. It also informs how we identify new parameters, and therefore feeds back into the parameter identification phase. And when we consider how the physical manifestation is a solution to the entire problem. Kroll, Condor, and Jansson emphasize that the majority of the work of design is to be done in parameter identification, and that creative synthesis, is only necessary in the continual movement of the design process forward—necessary, but the configuration does not necessarily always have to be a "good" one.

So what are the implications for interactive design? Say you are designing a sub section for an architectural web-site. Research would involve looking at the current web site and maybe older versions, reading an architectural basics text (if one is not already familiar with architectural concepts), and studying the demographic for the design audience or user. Once technology is identified—i.e. this design requires photo-manipulation, and Flash, the next step is to look at which images to use. If we use a Mies van der Roe image or a Frank Lloyd Wright image, is this a site that focuses on Modernist or modern architecture? Or if we use a Robert Venturi image, is it a contemporary avant-garde architectural site that is looking at relatively recent movements in architectural deconstruction? Every choice is symbolic of external determinants on the design—political, social, economic—and visual and experiential. The design realization focuses on the visual and experiential, but the concepts are of political, social, and economic. Thus the structure of external influence, parameters, and factors, and that of creative synthesis in engineering design and graphic design is the same: they bring together concepts in documents of Users, Meaning, and Services, if in fact as interactive designers, we stay there, navigating the space of the screen to have an effect on politically motivated audiences. Part Two: Design Values