Ambiguity and Design Freedom
“If you only remember one thing from this article, remember this: When you’re asked to do design work, what is asked of you will be ambiguous to some degree. That’s OK! Without ambiguity, there is no design freedom. Without design freedom there is no decision-making. Without decision-making, there is no design. ”
One of my mentors, Robert Todd (BYU Professor Emeritus), often said that “the essence of engineering is design”. While I love that and believe it myself, it can be difficult for engineering students to make sense of design amid engineering classes that have a heavy emphasis on mathematical analysis. Put simply, mathematical analysis can generally be thought of as having one right answer. To help students have enough information to get the right answer, all ambiguity is removed from the typical analysis problem. Many engineering students have chosen their major because they are good at solving these kinds of problems.
On the other hand, design problems have many correct answers (don’t be mistaken, there are also many wrong answers). In order to allow for many right answers to a design problem, design freedom is introduced into the problem. This freedom manifests itself as ambiguity in the problem statement.
Two examples:
The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates and encourages the next generation of design engineers. The design brief (problem statement for a design problem) for this competition is often very ambiguous: “Design something useful”. Designers who wish to participate in this competition will have various interpretations of the word “something” and the word “useful”. They’ll have to use good judgement relative to those words if they will win the competition. Is that ambiguity good or bad? It’s good. Without some level of ambiguity there is no design freedom, no decision-making, and not much of a design competition, since there is no design.
How about when your engineering supervisor says she’d like you to design a mechanism to raise and lower the cutting bit on a particular tool in the model shop? You see ambiguity in the words “design” and “mechanism”. Does the ambiguity allow for you to buy an existing mechanism? Can you use a standard mechanism type, or do you have to invent one altogether? Embedded in the word “mechanism” are many possible solutions; a 4-bar mechanism, a linear actuator, a slider crank, or a simple lead-screw. Is that ambiguity good or bad? It’s good. Without it, you’re simply a machine to carry out precise instructions: you have no freedom to be an agent in the design process. Without it, you’re not designing anything. Think of it this way; if the person commissioning your design work knew exactly what they wanted, they wouldn’t need you – not for your design work anyway.
Here are two healthy ways to deal with ambiguity:
Seek clarification by asking good questions.
One of the most valuable characteristics of good designers is that they are curious. They ask questions. They touch materials and components. They make measurements. They try to find out what’s in the mind of the person who commissioned the work. They do this in pursuit of a design their client wants not the design they themselves want. I find it useful to ask a mix of open-ended and specific questions at the beginning and throughout the design process.
a) Early on, you might ask the client/boss, “What would a great design look like to you? For example, how would someone use it? Would they just walk up and press a button and the cutting bit would move to the right spot? How about setting the height on a smartphone app? Would that be good or bad?” Even if you have your own answer for these questions, let them answer. These are just conversation starters. In many ways you’re not looking for specific answers to these questions but instead you are looking for everything else that is said while trying to answer the question.
b) As you try to understand what an acceptable solution would be, it’s ok to get a little bit ridiculous. It can be a fast way to establish the limits of the design freedom. For example, you can ask, “If you had a magic wand, what would you do to solve this problem?” Further, you can get ridiculous when you hear stuff like “cost doesn’t matter here”; you can ask “so is a $100,000 cutting bit lifter an acceptable solution?” Because you chose a ridiculous number you’ll get a response like “no, no, what I mean is that this thing better cost us less than $600 or so”.
Now what was ambiguous is becoming less ambiguous through asking good questions. To avoid being super annoying to the person who commissioned your work, it’s a good idea to imagine that you have a certain amount of question capital you can ask before it is simply taking too much time to respond to you. A good starting point is to take 5-10 minutes of their time early on, and 5-10 minutes a week as the project progresses.
2. Seek feedback by sharing and learning from simple prototypes throughout the design process.
Part of what is happening throughout the design process is that you as the designer are helping the client converge on what they want. There are few substitutes for frequently showing the client simple prototypes and gauging their reaction. These could be sketches, looks-like prototypes, works-like prototypes, graphical user interfaces, color schemes, and a number of other things. Whether through words or body language, these interactions will help you better understand the limits of the design freedom you have to work with. As you do this, abandon what you hope their reaction will be, and try to observe what their true feelings are. Use this to improve the design by nudging the design in a direction that aligns better with the client’s hopes. Again, be cognizant of the time you are requesting for feedback. A few minutes a day, or a few minutes a week, are good starting points.
In the end, our job as designers is to create the future. What an exciting job that is! The future, however, is uncertain, which means that every design project we face will be full of ambiguity. Is that good or bad? It is good! In fact, I believe it’s beautiful. Without ambiguity, there is no design freedom, no decision-making, and no design. Therefore, we should embrace ambiguity and consider it our job as designers to thrive in that environment.
