Episode 1 - Reflective Practice

Speaker 1 That's it right? Yeah. Do you want to do it again record again? Hello everyone. I'm Peter Lloyd. Hi everyone. I am me. Kevin Dubrow and this is our first podcast for this year's DTM course. The first of a series of podcasts looking at different aspects of design Theory and methodology. This first podcast is about reflective practice which is one of the ways that we're framing the the course. Yeah. So when we think about Theory and methodology, we often tend to think about specific methods that designers are using but the way that we think about the subjects is more broadly about how our designers actually designing. And the theory of reflective practice is a really useful Theory to look at how designers are designing and it's been used by a lot of both practitioners and researchers in the field of design. Yes, stays very close Speaker 2 The way that designers think about the way that they work, I think which is what makes it a useful sort of frame for the course. In terms of theory, there are quite a few aspects to reflective practice too many to explore in this podcast. If you look at the show notes, there's further references to follow up that you're here about. Speaker 1 But we're going to start with an interview with someone called case dorste taste doors. This is a professor who works at the University of Technology in Sydney. He's one of the key figures in the design research field when it comes to understanding how designers are designing and he has also used the theory of reflective practice in his work. In the 90s. He did quite a famous study on how expert designers are actually designing, how they are thinking and how they are working. So case is a an important person in the subject area. He's done a lot of really good work. I think especially in the area of design thinking, so cases are being To talk to I think. And he's also someone that has a history of being at delft. So I'm really looking forward to what he has to say. Speaker 2 Before we begin the interview, we should say that it's also in two parts. The first part is about reflective practice which will have an interview and then we'll have a Speaker 1 discussion afterwards Mica and I the second part is about something called coevolution which is a bit more about the process of design but that's in the second podcast. So we'll talk about that then. Okay, over T, Sydney. All right. Yeah. So we are in Sydney this morning. At the University of Technology Sydney. Which is where I used to work before I moved back to the Netherlands and started my job in delft. And I'm here this morning with Professor case toast. Or first of all, welcome case, thank you great to see you again and thank you for making time for us. Maybe first of all, you can can you say something about what you do here at UTS before we start talking about the design Theory? Speaker 2 Okay, so Well, just to introduce myself. So my name is Kay stores, I studied industrial design engineering in delft a very long time ago, but I also studied philosophy, and rather than, and mean fascinated in sort of doing design work. But sort of after having started my design firm. I sort of realized that I kept thinking about it too much. So I also started doing research into how does design actually work. And through sort of Many different things. I came to be interested in how expert designers think and how they solve their problems and what their strategies are and what their methods are. And particularly interested in looking at how they create new, approaches to problems, you frames actually using design and design thinking across many different fields and looking at design slightly differently by Design processes as hosts for practices from idiotic disciplines to come together so that's what I do. Okay, Speaker 1 so we're going to talk a little bit about that application of design outside the traditional traditional design field later. But I first want to go back a little bit because we're talking about how how designers design basically in this course. And one of the theories we going to use Is the theory of reflective practice developed by Donald shown. And I know you have used that theory quite a bit in your work, so, could you explain what that theory means? Speaker 2 Yeah, so happy to do that. So I've sort of met Donald shown and work with him a little bit early on in my career when I was still doing my PhD. And Don't mention his background is in philosophy, he then became a consultant and then he became a professor at MIT in Boston, in the urban planning department. So, he's got this philosophy and design background and he was really fascinated on how do people think about problems? How do people think about issues? And he realized that a lot of the education at MIT was very much, a classic engineering education, so lots and lots and lots of knowledge and then people would graduate and get into practice and actually have to learn the job more or less from the start up because they hadn't learned how an engineer thinks. They just learned to make the sounds. So he was sort of at MIT quite sort of a controversial figure because he said this is actually it should be about professional practice. But then we should learn what a professional practice is and what do practitioners actually do. So he studied many different fields if you look at the book that a reflective practitioner, there's doctors in there, this engineers in there, there's architects in their etcetera. So he was looking not particularly at design although he was close to design Fields. But at how this Reef, how does professional practice actually works? And he sort of looking at that thinking pattern from his Real perspective. He said, well, practitioners actually do several things. One of the things they do is what he calls Reflection In Action, which means that when you are doing something and you were skilled person, you very quick in adapting, what you do to the situation almost without knowing it. So on a very moment by moment basis, you're doing the right thing, that's what he called Reflection In Action, which is almost, it's very intuitive. It's based on experience. And then he said, what another thing that practitioners do is these professionals. Ew, Its Reflection on action, which is more explicit. So you're working on something. And at some point, you're wondering, am I going in the right direction? What do I need to do to change? Is this going to be fruitful, or I'm reading it ending up in a dead end if I pursue in this direction. So that's what he called reflection on action. And there's basically, if you read his books, This sort of it's a little bit of a process of four steps that sort of what according to Sharon first thing that a practitioner does, is he names the important elements in a situation. So what is actually the matter here? What is, what are the key things that I should worry about it as yet? That's as you take into account, then they frame the situation which means that they look for an approach into the area to sort of move. Forward, then they move. So they do those moves. So in design, work, that is they do design and then they reflect on those moves and say, is this going in the right direction? So, do I need to sort of look at different frames because this Frame isn't getting me anywhere. And by looking at all the important things or do, I need to go back and name other things in the situation and prioritize them as important or have a Just made a wrong move and do I need to loop back and sort of revisit that move. So that's how you steer through a process like that. So what he actually more or less models? These ionizes is a learning process because you go through many of these learning loops and Lou you more or less learn your way towards a solution. So that's the core of his Speaker 1 theory. So when you, when you talk about reflection in a Chao and is learning loops. You mention the four steps name, frame move, reflect that all still sounds quite abstract. Could you give an example of that? Speaker 2 Well, sort of he names a couple of examples in his book, but let's say we've done a project here in the designing out crime Center, which was about an entertainment area, Kings Cross. And the problem there were people named that problem regionally as this is about alcohol-related violence. So people go out people, get drunk, there's violence in the evening that's all sort of hang together, and that's a very particular Our frame already. Because if you say that something is alcohol-related violence, then you link the violence to the alcohol. And then if you want to reduce the violence, you do that by reducing the alcohol. In the end with the designing out, crime, Research Center, we went to Kings Cross. And one of the first things we realized was that the reason that all those measures didn't really help, didn't really work. Was that the violence that we saw, in case cross actually was not Alcohol related. So that's where having a wrong frame for a situation or a frame that is not fruitful actually sent you in completely the wrong direction. So that's where we started out by saying, okay, what other frames could be used to actually understand the situation better or in a different way. So that's sort of what's the start of our project there? So I think what I like about what don't show Does is that he highlights that you're always in a frame, you're always approaching something in a certain way and just being conscious of that. I'm doing this because I'm thinking about it in this way, already helps to question that and I think looking at what expert designers do. So my research was being sort of traveling around the world, visiting expert designers and studying what they do they spend an awful lot of time. Maybe 70, 80 percent of their Eject on looking at the problem because they know that once, they have an interesting and original entry point into the problem that once they've got a new frame, the solutions follow very quickly and they're all really good, because they are actually based in New thinking. So I think framing is a really important aspect of design and it's good that Dolce and has managed to highlight that. Speaker 1 So this, this is a really great example of how New frame was used in this context of the Entertainment District, and the crime problems there. Now, I'm not sure how many product designers would work on these kind of challenges either also examples from product design when it comes to Framing and how that works there. Speaker 2 Well, the funny thing is, I said, you're always in a frame. Yeah. So and a lot of the originality in product design, doesn't Come from a creative person brainstorming, wonderful solution. It comes from newer, approaches to problems. So you could almost say that. Almost every good design is an example of reframing, in that sense or there's an element of reframing in it, which is also why. If you look at design competitions, The people that win these ankle petitions are always, people that have taken the original brief a little bit for a walk and done something slightly different with clever. And they always get told off by the people that didn't win because they didn't hold to the brief yet because the competition was actually about creating new approaches into problems because that's what designers can bring. That's what designers bring time and time again. Speaker 1 Yeah. So the framing is really part of that. Reflection In Action part, or do you also use it in the what he calls the reflection Speaker 2 on action? You also use it in reflection on action because in reflection on action, when you realize that you're going somewhere, where there's not many solutions having to re frame is one of the key things that often happens. Yeah. So but it's, let's say that shone's theory when it first was sort of Published 1983 those kind of in those days. It became very popular with designers, very quickly because people sort of recognized, something in this description of design that they hadn't seen in the earlier phase models and more rational processes. Okay. It also fizzled out a little bit after a couple of years because yes, people realize this and recognize this ad. This is actually how I think this is somebody. I understands me which is really important Didn't. But then saying that everything happens in these learning loops it's not very practical because it makes it very hard to plan and shown as also being quite abstract in how he describes how people get two frames. He says that frames are based on experience, which could be true, but it's not very helpful because then to make a good frame, you just need a hell of a lot of experience probably. And if you At frames are an original that make calm be solely based on experience. Mhm. So on the one hand his theory really hit the design field as yes. Finally as somebody understands what we actually do because we don't recognize ourselves so much in these linear design model processes on the other hand. Now that we do that, do sort of see that recognition and see that understanding. What do we do with it? Mhm. So when you say these Speaker 1 linear, Design models. Those were the models that existed before this Theory came Speaker 2 out. Yeah, those were models. So they basically came from practice from people that had to sort of plan out design projects and actually show to their clients or show to their bosses. That what they were doing was not just a mess but was a number of activities, one after the other. So days, those became phase models of design and then Herbert Simon came up. With coming from an AI standpoint, they wanted to program design into computers. This is late 1960s, so not very sophisticated computers, but that means that you have to do a lot of thinking to do it. Well and he sort of rationalize that as a rational problem, solving process. So design was modeled as this rational problem solving process. And then shown said, well, you're missing the point about practices when you do that. So, you cannot, you can also look at designing these other way. So it was a very fruitful time because you had several competing theories and people had to think about it, decide or use one and then use the other. So that was sort of design research at that time was sort of based on these two paradigms. Speaker 1 And I know you studied those in your, in your PhD, which I think is quite interesting. Can you, can, you explain a little bit what you did in your PhD, and how you Speaker 2 studied, the story behind my PhD is that I was writing my own design firm. And I had this young designer that I've hired and he was in a conceptual phase trying to get a project done. And I realized that he was just messing about basically, he wasn't getting anywhere. And I also realized that when I wanted to sort of guide him a little bit and help him and sort of that, the only thing that I could do was basically say, I would do it differently, and I found that very unsatisfying that don't we know this. So, I went back to my professor in delft and I said, I want to know everything about how integration happens in product design. And then they said, well, we don't know either. So, That's called research and you can get a room and these probably the books that you need and figure it out. So I started doing my research into how this integration happen in product design, how is it possible that product designers? When you've got a very messy problem area, with lots of stakeholders and technology is their ergonomics is there. It's all these different things that product design has managed to make a fairly simple. In the end that actually encapsulates, all of those things and creates Great Value. So how do you come from all that complexity to a certain simplicity? So that's integration. So I was really interested in that and so that's I started studying integration and by basically giving designers an exercise to do our design brief and taping them and seeing what they were doing, it's called protocol analysis. And I saw them wrestling with integration, I sold them reaching integration. So I was completely fascinated as a practitioner but then I use the rational problem-solving way of looking at design to try and put race this pinpoint. Where does it happen? And I couldn't. And I thought okay that means that mean. These designers are obviously right there in practice, they are doing it but apparently our way of looking at it is limited in a way. That I didn't realize. And in that time delft as an education was really. My rational problem solving was basically what you learned at. This is design and I said, well, there must be other way. So that's when I met Donald shown and became fascinated in also, using that other way of looking at design. So in the end might be as the turned around and became the comparison between those two paradigms, with still integral integration as as As the point of comparison. So I still looking at integration from those two perspectives but it became much more about the paradigms themselves then about integration Indian. Speaker 1 So you compare to but Simon's Paradigm to Donald change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at how that played out. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 1 And what was your conclusion from that Speaker 2 study? Well, of course, they're both valid in their own way and they're both valid for different uses. Also that you shouldn't confuse them. Just putting them together in one thing makes it for a very messy thing. But it led for instance to let's say I see. As I said, one of the problems with the shown Paradigm reflective practice is that it's all learning loops and you can't plan anymore in the end. I To with a firm in Boston called Product Genesis and for them we made a hybrid planning model we're sort of. If you're a design firm you've done projects in a certain area for a number of years. And so you're actually know that there's areas within your design project that are quite linear, you're not going to learn their, you just going to do what you're good at. So we in that hybrid planning model, those are planned linearly and then there's these areas where, you know, that There's newness because you don't have the experience of we just don't know yet and that's where we planned in learning loops. So we try to actually accommodate also the learning because the problem with design planning zone, the whole is that if there are two linear all the learning is the really fascinating stuff, that's where things really develop that were originality happens. But if you don't plan that in and you plan design, just as a kind of best case scenario of activities, My problem to a solution you're going to do all that learning in the evenings and weekends and under the shower, Etc. Instead of being planned as part of the work that you do. And it's actually the part of the work where you have the most added value. So you should protect that and not just do that over the weekends Etc. I've always surprised. So I one of my design firms was in Eindhoven and you could sort of see the light. It's on and all these design firms in Eindhoven, very late in the evening. And also, when we needed information, we just used to call each other all the time until late in the evening because you knew that everybody was working. Late always and that's because basically everybody was had sold the project on linear planning but that's not how it works. Yeah. So you've been unrealistic and you don't have to pick up that slack by working in the evenings and over the weekends Etc. Yeah. Would you say that's the Speaker 1 one? The more practical uses of this theory that you can actually better plan, your design process and also explain to others what you're going to do in those learning Speaker 2 loops. Yeah, I think that's really really important and it's a in the ended. The second weakness of this shown Theory, at least that I saw was that he never told you where frames were coming from. So that's when I started studying expert designers, how do they get two frames? So that became a frame creation methodology? Okay. I really believe that what shown as done is very important, but there's a couple of big gaps in there. Yeah. That make it impractical. Yeah. And so let's try and make that more practical. So Speaker 1 the way you explained it now frame is really key to coming up with new Solutions as well. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. And what I sort of find one of the things that I found. Of doing this working with these expert designers studying, what they do is one of the things I found is that they never brainstorm because brainstorming is going random on the solutions. Trying did much sort of lots and lots and lots of different solutions which is fun to do, and it's very good and it's a nice team activity, but then the next step of course is clustering those and selecting which Solutions you go. Go on with. Well, if your view of the problem hasn't changed, you're going to use the old view of the problem as that kind of filter. So you're probably throwing out lots of possibly interesting things because you're not, you haven't thought about a problem in any new way. And what I found with these expert designers is that they so they take a long time but it's been a lot of energy and a lot of time on trying to New frames and then once you have a new frame every solution that comes out. Is interesting. Yeah, so they've got no need to go completely random on Solutions because they're quite focused and deliberate about. Okay, if this is the new frame, what does that lead to? Yeah, ideas wise. Speaker 1 Yeah. So you're saying this expert designers are really good at framing. So now if you're a master student studying industrial design, engineering, how can you can also become real? Be good at framing. Speaker 2 A lot of it is being aware that you're framing that you're always Framing and started to question that. So there's a lot of reflection that has to go on. And you can do The Loner, you can question each other. Yeah. And just ask why? And it's that mean that's more or less. The key thing, because the moment you start asking, why? And you go back to 0, this is the reason we do this, you can immediately See other possibilities coming from that mean, framing is something that people naturally do. And of course, in your normal life, you also reframe. Yeah. So it's not new in that sense. It's just that it's really important in design. And it's really important in design to recognize that that is happening because it's also happened before, you know, it the moment you use words like four Kings Cross alcohol-related violence, you've locked yourself in completely, there's Only one type of solution possible and people just use that to talk about it as as if that is the problem. Yeah. So be very aware of those frames and see whether you can shift them but that requires real sort of a moment's of stepping back and think. Okay. Why am I saying this in this way? Or if you're talking to a client or to a supervisor, why is that person talking in this way? What is the view? That they have behind is what is there, what Donald Trump would call the underlying background theory that they use to describe this? Because that's often, if you can break that one, if you could break into it, you can find other types of solutions that people that are within that theory, just can't think of Speaker 1 it. So he's just been listening to the interview I did last week with case and of course, I've been thinking about it and Peter also has listen. Yeah I thought it was really interesting. I thought we covered some some really interesting stuff from a design point of view and I think one of the things that he talks about Donald shown a bit but one of the reasons I like Donald shown and I think case Speaker 2 likes Donald shown to is that Speaker 1 he, he has these little phrases that really sum up, what it's like, Like to design. So one of his famous phrase is the problem of the problem, okay? So it's not just about the problem that you're trying to solve, there's an underlying problem that you're trying to get to. So that's, that's one of his phrasing. The other one that I like, is he quotes Plato actually, which is, how do you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know and it's that that really gets across the idea that you're you're exploring something in designing, you're trying to learn new things in order to know that what you find in the end is the this is the right thing. This is whole learning process that goes on, but there are various different types of knowledge I think in the design process. So this is so, you know, he's caged, mentions engineer's, get get knowledge. He I think he means sort of, fact, kind of knowledge. Yes, where is he? Saw the kind of process sort of knowledge and the knowledge about, you know, what you gain from experience. It's and that's what's what Donald Cerrone encapsulates in his in his book, the famous book, the reflective practitioner, but other other work to yeah, yeah, that's also what I The from first reading the reflection or reflective practitioner is one of the things that I really like that. I think shown describes in the first chapter is that we have a certain idea of how we are looking at what knowledge is and the kind of technical way of looking at knowledge, excludes a lot of knowledge that happens within design process. So Donald shown, he's explaining that the kind of all view of knowledge And practice is regardless of the profession that you're in, is that you go to university, you learn all this knowledge and theory and then once you go into practice, all you have to do is just apply that theory that you have learned and you will be fine. Yeah, so for example, doctors when they go to university, they have to learn about diseases and illnesses, and medication and treatment, and those kind of stuff things. And then, you know, all the evidence that's out there. And then, once they go into Medical Practice, I know how to do that. There's a whole practice of just doing the subject or you know, doing it professionally. I think exactly and at that actually doing it professionally is something that we don't traditionally regarded as knowledge or knowing and to see we of reflective practice basically X, clay explains that there is a lot of I think shown calls that knowing in the doing or theory in action. I think also a phrase that he uses Which I think is very, very useful because it's in that learning process that you get to an answer. So, very often and Doctor when there's a patient in front of them, they can't you say, oh, you know, the diagnosis is this because I can find it in this book and therefore the answer is that, it's not very often that a doctor also has to experiment and work out what's really going on. I think I think that's the basic, the basic process, that case, describe the naming framing. Moving in, evaluating he concentrated. A lot on Framing and how important friends are and that's that's true that is a but I think that that that process is one of experimentation. Yeah it's sort of you know, you're trying to understand something in a certain way and you're trying to see if your understanding makes sense by experimenting. So that's the kind of moving aspect of it. Yes. And Sean talks a lot about surprised. You know, when you try something out in designing and it doesn't quite go like you think it's going to go? Yeah, yeah there's an element of surprise, but But that surprised generates learning. That's right, that's what, you know, the learning process in design, I think is one of the most important things that shown really articulates. Well, and case talked about that, you know, there's an aspect of design where you learn your way to a solution, he talks about. And I think that's a, that's a nice phrase. It's like you start from a point and you don't quite know where you're going to end up, but you know, you're going to learn more at the end of the process and you did at the beginning. And that's that's that's an interesting thing to think about a thing. Yes. And I was also thinking about this whole idea of rational problem solving. So case was mentioning that at the time that he did his PhD, a lot of the design education was addressed around this idea of rational problem solving, which was when I was a student and to make That explicit what it looked like, it was for example, if I was going to design a water bottle, have a water bottle here in front of me, I was asked to To explore the problems the problem. Yeah. So you know what I what I don't want water bottles that are on the market. How much water do people want to drink? How do they want to clean it? And then you translate all that learning into a list of requirements. Then you do a Divergent face where you come up with different solutions through a rainstorm and then you select the best solution based on your requirements and then you go on developing That's solution through a more detailed process. So that's what we call the linear process. You go on your first, go to your problem list of requirements solution. I actually think a lot of that is still in the educational program. When I graduated that was still the the way I was thinking about design at the same time. You kind of as a designer you always feel like but there's something more right? And I like what case is saying like all this thinking that you know, happens in the end at night. It's and under the shower. I mean, I think that's really important to emphasize actually because I think he really captured that idea that, you know, it's all very well that design is about learning. And you know, you have these little insights in the process but you also have to plan. So you have to plant you know you're dealing with a client, you're working working in a team of people, they need to know what the plan is and fitting. Those two things together, the planning side of design which is the sort of more rational you know time planning process planning Nothing. And then the learning which is the bit more, you know, you. It happens in the shower happens in the bar somewhere somewhere where you're not expecting it or just as you're about to go out the house. Yeah. That trying to trying to plan that into the process. Yes. Is, you know, kind of very, very difficult. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean I've experienced that myself. I also had a design studio in Sydney alongside my job in the university. And you know just trying NG to sell the sign that is always difficult because you can never really fully plan the design process. But if I were going to design a water, water bottle, I would say, you know, if I would do that through a process of reflective practice, I would not start with the idea for water bottle because if you, if you ask for the design of the water bottle, but you will not end up with is something that looks like a bottle with water in it. But if you think about the problem behind, In the problem, you could say, well, this is something, it's people are looking for something that can get them to drink, water, wherever they are. Then you already start to think more broadly about about this idea. And then it could also be, you know, one of those water bubblers where you can just go in and get some water or it could be a bad cell service or a backpack with water. I thought that was interesting when case was talking about framing, yeah, one of the one of the things that Donald shown mentions is this idea of seeing as yes for the seeing one thing as another thing, ya know, as a way to understand a problem slightly differently is to get get underneath the problem and will actually come on to that in another car. So we're going to be talking that about more specifically. Yeah, I also want one of the other things was that case mentioned experience and expertise. He mentioned the idea that you know coming With a good frame is based on experience. But how do you get experience? Is that experience sort of paradox? Yeah. Interesting is guys are saying, well, one of the downside of shown since our shortcomings are saying change theory is that he doesn't really say how you get to a good Graham. Yeah. And then case is written this book frame Innovation, which he describes the frame creation method that he also mentioned in the interview. You in which he basically describes a method, a step-by-step method that he say, he says people can use to come to bed a frames and it's been so that's where you can start from. Basically, I think the, the idea of expertise is that the more experience you get the better? The freight, the more frames you can think of or the better, the more creative you are. The way you can view problems in a different way and things. Yeah, it's definitely something you can practice. So I've worked with this Frame. Methods quite a bit. And as a designer I find it very, very useful because it just helps me to explain where I am in the design process. It doesn't help people who are not designers to actually come up with good frames. So, even though, you know, it's got like nine steps in there, and it's been sold to people as being something that can help you to good frames. But my experience is really, is that you still need the experience. To actually use it in a to work with experienced people to, I think, you know. Yeah, that's it. I think in the reflective practitioner dollar Shawn's book, he he analyzes conversations between students and Shooters. Yeah. To see what's the, what's the tutor actually saying to someone? And yeah, and how are they understanding that thing? So that's a particularly interesting thing because for the students who are listening, if you have time and you are interested, that's an interesting chapter Insurance book because it's a After what she describes a discussion between an architect and student architect, and for me at this actually very difficult to understand what's going on. And I think it's because I am not an architect, and I don't understand the language of Architects and it really, therefore, shows the expertise of The Architects. Yeah, I think one of the things that he sort of says, is that tutors are very good at getting you to ask your own questions. So it's not necessarily Lee, you're not trying to solve a problem for someone. It's basically. Well, you asked me what question you want and then you and then you go away and find the answer to. So I think it's sort of, I think a lot of reflective practice is about awareness. It's about awareness of the different ways that you think and awareness of when things don't go quite how you think they're going to go you know how you respond to that. Yeah. And I think Case Case reference, some of that. Yeah. But I think I think a lot of the things that we the case She's on in this podcast and that we've also talked a little bit about will carry on in other. In other podcast to, I think the themes that will reoccur. And I think the reason that we chose reflective practice to start off, was it covers it, it covers a lot of the concepts that we want to talk about in the course, but in more detail. So we haven't touched on things like improvisation, and repertoire and process and dialogue and all these things are in reflective practice, but we'll come on to those in future podcasts, in more detail. Yeah. Okay. Thanks Mike. I thought that was a really great. Thanks for you and lots of insight and look forward to hearing more from case in the second part of the interview.