Sketching, Prototyping and "Design Thinking"
Bill Buxton | January 2008
Buxton is a human-centered design researcher, currently a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Labs. We spoke with him about how design methods like sketching and visualizing ideas are essential for exploring and choosing among strategic options.
(Vincent LaConte): Let's start off with semantics and then get into the substance. First, the terms "design" and "strategy" are both huge suitcase words (i.e. containing many different meanings). Can you give me your thumbnail definition of them both and a bit about how you think they relate?
(Bill Buxton): Design: At least in the way I speak about it, "design" has to do with a particular way of thinking/working. Fundamental is the notion of multiples. I have a simple way of describing it: design is choice, and there are two places where you can apply creativity. First, in the creativity that you bring to generating/ enumerating the repertoire of potentially viable meaningfully distinct options from which you choose. Second, in the creativity that you bring in deciding upon the heuristics/criteria according to which you choose from among those options. There is a whole set of behaviours and techniques that typify how designers go about this, but this is the essence.
Strategy: Unfortunately, more often than not strategy is what you change every time something goes wrong. It is the line that follows the bouncing ball of ever-changing and never-met objectives. It is what breaks when resolve fails and when you're afraid of risk. Strategy is that thing which is far more fun (just think of the off-sites and team-building exercises) to formulate than it is to execute. Strategy is discipline coupled with insight and homework, stirred together with more than a dash of creativity.
I'm particularly struck by your definition of strategy, which rings ruefully true. All too often an elegantly designed strategy fails for mundane operational reasons. Is there anything in the nature of your definition of design -- generating and choosing among multiple options -- which an organization can use to help it through the long grind of tactical execution? Should design be developing more methodical ways of solving tactical problems as well as strategic ones? What would such methods look like?
I am struck by how well my thoughts about design and design thinking fit in with Roger Martin's ideas about management, as expressed in his book, The Opposable Mind. He argues against the forced choice among existing alternatives/models which dominates management thinking today and suggests that the key is to hold two or more (often seemingly opposing) ideas in mind, in order to generate a non-obvious new alternative that captures the best of the other known alternatives.
Now, one could say that by arguing against making forced choices, he is in conflict with my notion of design as choice. But, of course, we are saying much the same thing - just in different ways. Understanding this, I hope, points to a way that my notions can apply to tactical and strategic problems.
Remember, what I say is this: Design is choice, and there are two places where you can exercise creativity: (a) in the creativity/innovation/insight that you bring to enumerating the alternatives from which you chose, and (b) in the creativity/innovation/insight reflected in the criteria/heuristics that you use in choosing among them - which might first lead to looping back to (a).
It seems to me that the "lazy" management strategy (how not to do it) involves taking the status quo as the basis for doing (a), and investing most of the effort in simply choosing from that limited, established, and obvious set of alternatives. In so doing, one can have the illusion of having done thorough analysis and still miss the boat, having never considered what might otherwise have been a far better option.
What Roger argues in his book is essentially the need to push on the (a) part of my formulation and, more implicitly, on the (b).
On the one hand, it could be argued that all of this reduces to common sense and is over simplistic. On the other, my theory about such things is that models should always be simpler than the things they are modeling, and if there is a simple, clear, and memorable basic model, backed up with a good example as mnemonic, then it has a chance of being understood, remembered, and acted upon. I also don't believe common sense is common. So every little bit helps.
Who do you think is using design effectively in their strategy right now?
Apple and Nintendo are the obvious examples. Actually, if I am permitted to look back a bit (and perhaps even forward a bit), I think that Dell may be a better example. In the past, at least, their creativity is not manifest in the material sense - as in their product; rather, it was in their process. Looking forward, I see them nailing it on both counts, in a methodical and disciplined way.
In your new book, Sketching User Experiences, you describe an approach to generating and choosing among multiple options (i.e., design), which you hope will be useful far beyond the design department, presumably including the vaunted halls of strategy. Tell me about your definition of sketching, how it is distinct from drawing, or even what some call (quite loosely) prototyping, and why it is valuable.
Sketching is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. It is all fine and dandy to spout off about how one should generate and evaluate lots of meaningfully distinct alternatives for every question, it sounds even more wonderful and altruistic if one adds the caveat that we must also buy into my mantra, which is as follows:
Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell -- rather than the individual, social, and cultural experience that they engender and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.
But this is all mom and apple pie and about as useful as saying that we should have world peace and zero carbon emissions if it is not coupled with some realistic mechanism to follow through and execute on the ideal. Sketching, as I use the term, is the way forward. I intend it to be understood to mean any technique that lets us explore a concept, and its associated experience, in a way that is quick, timely, and inexpensive. All of this means that I can afford to do multiples. In this, I distinguish sketches from prototypes. But sketches have some other attributes that are really important. First, they must not be too detailed. They have to be like Swiss cheese - full of holes to allow a place for the imagination to thrive. They must be ambiguous. They must not suggest a degree of refinement that is beyond where one's thinking is.
Now all of this might sound strange. After all, we are looking for answers, are we not? Well, yes, but trying to get there by the direct path is almost always sub-optimal. Design thinking assumes that the indirect path is always more efficient in the long run (so to speak), leads to a better result, and is far superior in terms of building collective understanding.
The reason is rooted in the purpose of the sketch, versus a prototype. The purpose of the sketch is to provoke the dialogue which will bring one to an answer. It is not intended to be the answer itself. Hence, its purpose is to question, not answer; to be evocative, not didactic; to explore, not refine; to propose, not test; to provoke, not resolve; to suggest, not describe; it is tentative, not specific; it is noncommittal, not a depiction. Yes this may all sound fuzzy. But that is the point. The biggest mistake that we make in management is committing to the wrong idea too soon.
We know from philosophy 101 (and first year math) that notation is a tool of thought, that how we represent a problem has a huge impact on our ability to come to a good solution. So is it here. If one can not only come up with multiple distinct viable alternatives to a problem but represent them in a way that does not commit prematurely and at the same time represent the ideas under consideration in a way that invites creative thinking and open-mindedness, we are far more likely to check our biases at the door and move forward in a way where we have collective buy-in (since we have all participated in the conversation) and confidence. We may still have made the wrong decision. That is just human. But we will have done everything that we can - using the most powerful techniques - to mitigate against that happening.
In my opinion, this is all a way to put into practice what Roger speaks about and helps form a more explicit bridge between the worlds of management and design.
Lately, designers seem to have found a lot of resonance with the business community simply by using the word "innovation" in place of or alongside "design." BusinessWeek created an on-line channel and quarterly print edition called "Innovation & Design" which makes no attempt to differentiate the two. More recently, some designers have started using the term "design thinking" to describe the value of their work as broadly as possible. There has been a predictable backlash from other designers, who see this as a dumbing-down and/or an overpromising of their specialized skills. See for example
"Innovation is the New Black" by Michael Bierut and "The Revolution Will Not Be Designed" by Alix Rule. Is this all just semantics, or do you think it reflects a deepening schism in the design profession? Is design entering dangerous territory, or is it just finally "growing up?"
I am all for business rethinking its process and even its culture, and I am also all for taking potentially promising ideas from anywhere that they may be found – even (or perhaps, especially) from design. I certainly cannot think of any good argument against improving our general creativity and capacity to innovate.
But having said all of that, literally every decision along such a path has beneath it a corpus of value judgments. The question is, despite all of the best intentions, how well-equipped are those who aspire to go down this path to recognize these judgments, much less make informed decisions around them? The accumulated depth and breadth of knowledge required to be a competent executive or designer is such that it is a lifetime pursuit to acquire. Executives and designers are also different. Hence, contrary to what my friend Roger Martin says, I don't want executives to be designers. I want them to be great executives, and part of that – which is where Roger and I agree – is understanding and respecting valuable and distinct skills that the designer brings to the table.
This is a long way of saying that I wish that I had written the essay by Michael Bierut.
So what is going on here? I think that we can gain some insight by looking at the history of industrial design in North America. This arguably began between 1927-29 when Teague, Drefuss, and Loewy first set up shop and when Harley Earl joined General Motors. That all of these companies were still in business after WWII struck me as interesting. After all, these studios were still tottering when the depression hit. Not only did they survive, they thrived. (In fact, the only one not still in operation is Loewy's.) What more should one need to convince themselves that design had to be bringing real economic benefit to the clients and not superficial luxuries?
I spoke with Wayne Cherry (past executive vice president of design for GM) about this. I was trying to understand how things changed after WWII. He had a great insight. His observation was that those firms were so successful because in each case, the designer was brought on by a very senior executive, if not the president of the company. It was Lawrence P. Fisher, general manager of the Cadillac division, and Alfred P. Sloan, president of GM, who backed Earl, for example. Since design had proven itself, after the war larger companies started to open up their own design studios. Over time, what happened is that the design department moved further and further from the direct sponsorship and management of the senior executive. It went further and further down the food chain so that it became a service bureau of engineering or marketing. Its value to the corporation dropped significantly.
Now, with the new trend of design as a management tool, design is cool again, but with a few exceptions (such as the revitalized Apple) there is little connection between the internal design department and this new trend in management. So, since the companies already have a “design” department, and the executives want to be “designers,” some clever consultancies (such as IDEO) re-branded themselves as “innovation consultancies.” With the new label, they don't compete with the internal departments of their potential clients, and by charging hefty fees they ensure that they are hired by the senior executives who are happy to pay for innovation, since that is the “new black”. Their success, I suspect, has less to do with interdisciplinary teams (my reading of Dreyfuss and any of his contemporaries shows that this was always the case – just look at their own personal backgrounds) and more to do with the fact that professional designers (regardless of what they labeled themselves) were again working within the proper level of the organization.
In short, designers and executives need each other, but don't let that confuse you into thinking that they are one and the same thing.
Tell me what you can about how Microsoft is thinking about design and strategy today. How has the company's approach evolved recently?
Microsoft is an evolving company. No surprise. That is a sign of health. In terms of this conversation, the key dynamic is a concerted effort to bring design onto an equal footing with technology. There is an acknowledgement that the most important thing that we design is not any of our products, but our culture and how we work. In this work-in-progress, we have been doing a lot internally, as well as bringing in some outstanding new people at all levels of the organization. The message from the highest level is that our future depends on our changing our culture to one where all of our products and services are driven by innovation in integrated, interdependent and interwoven threads: business, technology and design. It is remarkable to see how an organization of this size can embrace cultural change. So far, it is one of the most interesting two years of my career.
What else are you working on right now?
To keep myself honest and grounded, I am keeping some time on smaller projects such as I have done my entire career. If I feel beat-up by corporate stuff, or frustrated at the rate of change, these let me work with a small team and get stuff done. At the same time, I am spending a lot of time reading and traveling – it is just good to get exposed to other ways of working and thinking. I am fascinated by trying to understand alternative ways of doing business and how other values might be integrated into this. So let's let my final word be a gift - a pointer to one of the most interesting and unknown/underappreciated and important books on design and business that I have read in years, Yvon Choinard's unfortunately titled Let My People Go Surfing. It should be compulsory reading.
About Bill Buxton
Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher concerned with human aspects of technology. His work reflects a particular interest in the use of technology to support creative activities such as design, film making and music. Buxton's research specialties include technologies, techniques and theories of input to computers, technology mediated human-human collaboration, and ubiquitous computing. Prior to being appointed Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in December 2005, he was Principal of his own Toronto-based boutique design and consulting firm, Buxton Design, where his time was split between working for clients, lecturing, and trying to finish a long-delayed book on sketching and interaction design. As well, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he still works with graduate students. He currently splits his time between Redmond and Toronto.
Buxton began his career in music, having done a Bachelor of Music degree at Queen's University. Designing and using computer-based tools for music composition and performance is what led him into the area of human-computer interaction. From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, (now part of Autodesk) and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc.
More about his latest work at www.billbuxton.com.