Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Design: Context and Opportunities
Introduction
The design of ‘interactions,’ ‘services,’ and ‘experiences’ often include combined and coordinated application of communications, products, and spaces. Therefore, collaboration between the graphic design, industrial design, and interior design disciplines (along with others) may be required. As well, a human-centered research approach is often employed in the above activities, so that those who will engage with the eventual designed outcomes can participate in their development processes.
This panel session includes faculty members representing design programs where human-centered, collaborative, and interdisciplinary classroom experiences have been developed. We hope that the opportunity to compare and learn from current teaching efforts exploring this potentially more ambitious approach will be valuable to those educators who wish to consider similar projects in their programs, and to ultimately broaden the design experiences of their students. This short paper will provide an overview of contexts and opportunities related to this larger area of activity.
A scale of disciplinary approaches
An easy way to consider various disciplinary approaches is on a scale that moves from no interaction and collaboration between disciplines on one extreme, to high levels on the other. Four distinct approaches can be identified and are explained below. Fairly simple states of each approach have been represented. As the various terms related to disciplinarity are often used incorrectly, basic definitions for each have been provided.
Disciplinary
This term refers to a single-discipline or ‘silo’ of knowledge. A stand-alone academic unit that resides with no other design disciplines would reflect a purely disciplinary approach. The diagram below represents a single-discipline, isolated design unit.
Multidisciplinary
Multidisciplinary design exists when two or more disciplines are located in an academic unit. If no significant collaboration between disciplines exists, then interdisciplinary design should not be claimed. The multiple disciplines represented in the below diagram include graphic design, industrial design, and interior design, along with animation, apparel design, and architecture.
Interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinary design requires significant collaboration between disciplines, and often results in shared learning experiences that address overlapping areas of concern. The Department of Design at Ohio State, where both I and one group of presenters in this panel teach, represents one approach to interdisciplinary design, with collaboration between our three disciplines. In our case, we provide a series of collaborative, interdisciplinary courses in our programs, including one such course that will be presented as part of this panel session.
We also actively look for areas of concern that overlap our programs in graphic design, industrial design, and interior design. For example, product controls and interfaces concern both graphic design and industrial design. Physical human factors, and the design of compact spaces for trains, buses, airplanes, etc. concerns both industrial design and interior design. Exhibits and way-showing systems concern both graphic design and interior design.
Finally, areas that overlap all three disciplines include larger, integrative topics such as interaction design, service design, and experience design. Informing all of these core interests is a human-centered research approach that enables both designing ‘for’ and ‘with’ various stakeholders to determine effective final outcomes.
Transdisciplinary
Transdisciplinary inquiry involves several disciplines, and the space ‘between’ the disciplines, with the possibility of new perspectives ‘beyond’ those disciplines. Transdisciplinary approaches typically involve a variety of disciplines assembled to address large (or even ‘wicked’) problems than none of the single disciplines could effectively address alone.
One example of possible transdisciplinary inquiry might be the problem of ‘big data,’ or ‘data analytics,’ as currently defined by various institutions of higher learning. Obvious disciplines such as Computer Science should be included in inquiry devoted to this topic, along with various scientific disciplines that typically generate massive amounts of data through their research practices.
But if data is to be transformed into useful information that can be acted upon, disciplines such as Communication and Design should be included to provide additional expertise. As well, it may be possible that some data can only be properly understood via the use of time-based media. In that case, expertise from the Animation discipline might also be required.
Other possible approaches
Reality can be much more complex, of course, and academic units may find themselves between two of the states represented — or with a combination of disciplinary approaches existing. For example, a few design disciplines in a multidisciplinary setting may collaborate with each other via an interdisciplinary approach, while the others do not. Or, one design discipline existing in a interdisciplinary setting may be engaged in transdisciplinary inquiry with other disciplines outside of design, while others are not.
Interactions, services, and experiences
The IxDA professional association defines interaction design (IxD) as “the structure and behavior of interactive systems. Interaction Designers strive to create meaningful relationships between people and the products and services that they use, from computers to mobile devices to appliances and beyond.”
The Service Design Network defines service design as “the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between service provider and customers. The purpose of service design methodologies is to design according to the needs of customers or participants, so that the service is user-friendly, competitive and relevant to the customers.”
Jacob Nielsen and Donald Norman (Nielsen Norman Group) state that user experience “encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
While these three activities can be considered emerging design disciplines, it seems clear that each can easily involve communications, products, and spaces, and that coordinated efforts of graphic, industrial, and interior designers come into play. There also appears to be significant commonality between the three definitions cited above, and that their boundaries are fairly ill-defined. Although such terms and definitions may change in the future, it appears that these more encompassing approaches represent significant directions for design practice and education.
Human-centered design research
Joseph Giacomin, of the Human Centred Design Institute at Brunel University in the UK, states that human-centered design research “is based on the use of techniques which communicate, interact, empathise and stimulate the people involved, obtaining an understanding of their needs, desires and experiences which often transcends that which the people themselves actually realised.”
My colleague at Ohio State, Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, Ph.D., has put forth a model of the human-centered design research process that may prove useful to understanding the various activities involved. She breaks the process into two main phases. The first is referred to as the ‘fuzzy front-end,’ or what may have been previously called the ‘pre-design’ phase. The second is the typical design development phase that many of us are familiar with.
Sanders and co-author Stappers state that “The goal of the explorations in the front end is to determine what is to be designed, and sometimes what should not be designed and manufactured. The fuzzy front end is followed by the traditional design process, where the resulting ideas for product, service, interface, etc. are developed first into concepts, and then into prototypes that are refined on the basis of the feedback of future users.”
The above diagram represents the process moving from ‘divergence,’ or consideration of many possible approaches, to eventual ‘convergence,’ where promising design directions are developed and refined for eventual introduction. Throughout this process, significant human-centered research with stakeholders occurs. The first phase is devoted to co-creative and participatory activities to generate ideas worth exploring, and the second phase is devoted to developing, evaluating and refining design directions based on stakeholder feedback.
Conclusions
There are, of course, many ways in which interdisciplinary collaboration can occur in design education programs. The examples presented via this panel session represent approaches that are logical to the programs where they’ve occurred. Design educators interested in exploring similar approaches may wish to consider specific opportunities that exist within their own programs and institutions, and to develop those further. There are inherent difficulties that exist with any interdisciplinary collaboration, but the broader learning experiences provided to students seem to far outweigh the challenges.
Sources
Austin Center for Design. “Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving.” WickedProblems.com. https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php (accessed 23 June 2014).
Giacomin, Joseph. “What is Human Centred Design?” HCDI.org. http://hcdi.brunel.ac.uk/files/What%20is%20Human%20Centred%20Design.pdf
(accessed 23 June 2014).
Holistic Education Network. “Transdisciplinary inquiry: incorporating holistic principles.” Hent.org. http://www.hent.org/transdisciplinary.htm (accessed 23 June 2014).
Interaction Design Association. “Definition of IxD.” IxDA.org. http://www.ixda.org/about/ixda-mission (accessed 23 June 2014).
Nielsen, Jacob, and Donald Norman. “The Definition of User Experience.” NNGroup.com. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/ (accessed 23 June 2014).
Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N., and Pieter Jan Stappers. “Co-creation and the new landscapes of design.” MakeTools.com. http://www.maketools.com/articles-papers/CoCreation_Sanders_Stappers_08_preprint.pdf (accessed 23 June 2014).
Service Design Network. “What is service design?.” Service-Design-Network.org. https://www.service-design-network.org/about-service-design (accessed 23 June 2014).
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Originally delivered during the “Intersections in Interdisciplinary Collaboration” panel at New Ventures: Intersections in Design Education, AIGA Design Educators Conference, 11–13 September 2014, Portland, Oregon.
Keywords: collaboration, disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, interactions, services, experiences, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, human-centered design research.
