The Yin and Yang of Conceptual Design
Conceptual design is the early part of the design process, which is often envisioned with post-it covered walls, smart interdisciplinary teams, and concept sketching. Conceptual design is full of energy and optimism. Until it is not. In this article I give a few tips – centered on the ancient philosophy of yin and yang – that help me keep conceptual design full of energy and optimism the whole time.
Context
Designers have two major jobs during conceptual design: (i) to create a wide variety of design options and (ii) to select one of those options for further development in the later part of the design process. Though fun and seemingly light hearted, conceptual design is not taken lightly by professionals. This is simply because, the choices made in conceptual design form the DNA for the final and fully evolved design.
Within the field of engineering design, creating options is often called Concept Generation. Concept generation requires skills in divergent thinking. The job to select an option is often called Concept Selection, which requires convergent thinking. These two kinds of thinking are indeed different. In divergent thinking, anything goes. We use divergent thinking to expand the possibilities, essentially without limits. In convergent thinking, however, we narrow the possibilities down to one by removing all non-sensical as well as many good and sensical options that are simply inferior to others under consideration.
Hope and despair
During concept generation, most designers find themselves full of hope. It is after all an activity driven by the hope of something new and better. The very attempt to engage in concept generation is a sign of optimism – that with some work, an improvement can be discovered.
The feelings during concept selection can be very different, even feelings of despair, especially for those less experienced with the design process. Despair tends to set in when their ideas are critiqued during the deep evaluation that should occur before selecting a final option for further development.
These feelings cause many to react to conceptual design as if concept generation and concept selection are diametrically opposed, when in fact they are the Yin and Yang of the design process.
Yin and Yang
Yin and yang is an ancient Chinese philosophy of dualism, which teaches that “seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent” [1]. A good way to think about it is that yin and yang are complementary opposites.
Though it appears that concept generation and concept selection are opposite and even competing forces, they should be viewed as complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. Doing so will keep conceptual design full of energy and optimism.
Tips for keeping a healthy perspective during conceptual design
1. When generating concepts shoot for a large number of ideas (go for 100). It’s very possible to do this in one hour [2]. Make sure those 100 ideas are diverse and noticeably different. If you find that all the ideas you have for a vehicle have 4 wheels, try to create some that have 6 wheels, or that have tracks, or that don’t have any wheels at all. Within those 100, see if you can generate some that are new things you’ve never seen before. Try to make sure the at least a 1/3 of those ideas could be good, that is they don’t all defy physics or cost a million dollars.
Doing this keeps the team from jumping to evaluation too early.
2. Remember that good ideas are not limited to just designers, just the engineers, or just the bosses. Anyone can have a good idea. When inviting people from outside of a traditionally creative field to participate in concept generation, many of us will unfairly bias our preference away from those ideas. Don’t do this. Try to disassociate as early as possible the quality of the idea from who’s idea you think it is. Ideas resulting from team ideation belong to the team, not to any one individual. Don’t label ideas as belonging to someone.
Doing this helps everyone have ownership for ideas and feel less frustrated when the strongest ideas are kept.
3. Remember that conceptual design is a carefully balanced system of both creative and analytical thinking. Know when it is time to be creative and when it is time to be analytical.
a. Generally plan to spend a good hour generating many concepts [2]. Don’t let any concept evaluation or concept selection creep into concept generation.
b. After you have 100 ideas, and after a break, put on your analytical hat and begin the triage. Consider each infeasible idea before eliminating it, so that it can be a seed for an improvement.
c. Temporarily switch back to concept generation to create a few new ideas based on those seeds if needed.
d. Get analytical again using simple judgement and experience (possibly captured by team voting), to remove about 80% of the ideas from the set. If a good idea is eliminated and you feel uncomfortable with that, see if an improvement can be made to it that allows it to replace one of the remaining 20%. If you can’t convince anyone of its potential after a round of improvements, let it be and move on. It is highly likely that one of the remaining 20% will do just fine. Eliminating 80% should take somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes.
e. Choose a structured approach to evaluate the remaining 20%. Something quick like a concept screening matrix can be helpful [3]. Spend about an hour getting the 20% down to about 5%, combining and improving along the way.
f. With the remaining 5%, do a more detailed analysis (possibly using prototypes), always referring back to what the design is supposed to do [4], not merely appealing to unstated unjustified feelings by team members that one concept would be better than another. Spending an hour on this should reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the top 5 ideas.
g. The identification of strengths and weaknesses can be used to temporarily return to concept generation to combine strengths to eliminate weaknesses and ultimately select a single concept that has high potential to meet the needs of the project.
Doing this helps minimize the misconception that a single pass through generation and selection is sufficient. These points help to effectively bounce back and forth between concept generation and selection.
4. When in concept generation mode, be optimistic, and see the good in any idea that is stated. When in the concept selection mode, be serious and realistic about how an idea will meet the requirements. Evaluate the concept not any person who may have initially pitched it. If during concept selection, you can think of a fix to eliminate the weakness of an idea, add that fix and consider it an evolved idea.
Doing this helps us get the most out of concept generation and concept selection.
Closing
My hope with the list above is that it would provide some actionable things each of us can do to keep conceptual design full of energy and optimism. Additionally, I also hope the list above shows that concept generation and concept selection are indeed complementary, interconnected, and interdependent, even though they may appear on the surface to be opposing forces in conceptual design.
References
[1] Wikipedia, “Yin and Yang”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang, accessed 31 Aug 2020.
[2] C. Mattson, “How to ideate as a team,” BYU Design Review, 2019, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/how-to-ideate-as-a-team, accessed 31 Aug 2020.
[3] C. Mattson, “How to get the most out of an evaluation matrix,” BYU Design Review, 2020, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-an-evaluation-matrix, accessed 31 Aug 2020.
[4] C. Mattson, “Sharing Your Design Work,” BYU Design Review, 2020, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/sharing-your-design-worknbsp?rq=sharing%20your%20design, accessed 31 Aug 2020.
