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[forthcoming] Vial, S. (2017), “The Specificity of the Project in Design Thinking”, in Darbellay, F., Moody, Z., Lubart, T. (eds), Creative Design thinking: Interdisciplinary perspectives , Springer.
The Specificity of the Project
in Design Thinking
Stéphane Vial
PROJEKT Lab, University of Nîmes, France ACTE Institute (UMR 8218, CNRS/ Paris 1 University) stephane.vial@unimes.fr Stéphane Vial is an Associate Professor of Design and a Doctoral Advisor at the University of Nîmes, France. He leads the University’s design research activities in the PROJEKT lab, a research center for social innovation by design. Stéphane is also a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of French-speaking design research journal Sciences du Design published at Presses Universitaires de France. Abstract : Design is fundamentally linked to the project. But design does not have the monopoly of the project. However, the goal of this paper is to show that there is a specificity of the concept of design project and to propose a definition of it (section 1). Going back to the origin of the project in the Renaissance as methodical design, we will show that design belongs to projectual logics rather than to projective anticipation logics, although one may be inferred or induced by the other. We will then argue that the project belongs to design by essence and we will propose five distinctive characteristics of the design culture specific to design as well as a definition of the design project (section 3). In addition, we will conclude with an examination of the recent contribution of IT to the theory and methodology of the project, particularly through agile methodology, which has the potential of inspiring designers. Keywords : project, design, method, project cultures, project disciplines, project logics, project methodology, design project, architectural project, IT project. *. This chapter is a translated and adapted version of a journal article previously published in French, but never in English : Vial, S. (2014), « De la spécificité du projet en design : une démonstration », Communication et organisation , 46 | 2014, 17-32.
1. Design and tropism of the project: defining the problem For a designer, nothing seems more natural than the concept of project. In design schools, it is what one calls the design work that engages students in the studio. “As the place where, in principle, one teaches and learns the act of design and project management in design, the studio is considered a strategic place in all design schools” (Findeli & Bousbaci 2005, p. 39). In the professional world, it is also the name given to a work in progress, but also (more surprisingly) completed achievements. So much so that most design or architecture agencies, both in France or abroad, dedicate an entire section to ‘Projects’ on their website or in their portfolio. In the field of design, project is the name given to a unit of design work — whether completed or not. While the artist creates work for the public, the designer creates projects for users. Therefore, from the point of view of practice, not only does the concept of project seem more natural in design but also more structural. It is as if there was a fundamental and founding assumption that is summarized in the following equation: “making design = making project .” In this perspective, one can call it a tropism of the design project, in the sense that design is entirely focused on the project. Design and project are seen as somehow synonymous, which seems to be confirmed by the most advanced literature on the subject (see for example the following formula in Findeli & Bousbaci: “theories of project in design (or theories of design),” 2005, p.38). Yet, as everyone knows, design has no monopoly on project. Everyone makes projects. People often ask “ What are your plans for summer?” (in French, we way 'faire des projets' for 'to make plans') in the sense of: “What do you intend to do this summer? ” On this point, the lexicographical data is clear: first appearing in the 15th century, ‘project’ is a term of everyday language, both in French and in the ‘main’ European languages ( progetto in Italian, project in English, projekt in German)^1. From the Latin pro-jacere (to throw forward), which led to the old French word pourget or pourjet (1470), which then became project (1529) and projet (1637) 2 , its etymological sense is thrown (-ject) forward (pro-) , whether it is abstract elements developing in time (an idea, a plan to achieve) or tangible elements unfolding in space (a ‘projected architectural element’ such as a balcony)^3. In the 18th century, one could even say in French “avoir des projets sur quelqu'un” (“having plans on someone”) meaning “planning to marry someone” (today one can sometimes say, in familiar language, “avoir des vues sur”, i.e. “to have views on someone”). It is also worth underlining that the vast expansion of the term ‘project’ in everyday language can be compared to the broader existential use made of it by modern phenomenology (Boutinet, 1993, p. 12 and following), notably Sartre: “Man is, indeed, a project which possesses a subjective life, instead of being a kind of moss, or a fungus or a cauliflower. Before that projection of the self nothing exists; not even in the heaven of intelligence: man will only attain existence when he is what he purposes to be.” (Sartre, 1946, p. 23). Beyond linguistic diversity, one must of course consider the variety of social, cultural and theoretical practices of the project (including those of design and existential phenomenology, which are only types of practices among others). Not only does everyone make (or have) plans ( projets in French), but, in a few decades, the figure of the project has become the organisational matrix of most human activities in contemporary post-modern societies. In his monumental work Anthropologie du projet (1990), of which Alain Findeli and Rabah Bousbaci rightly say that it is “the richest theory of the project available” to this day (Findeli & Bousbaci 2005, p. 47), psychologist Jean-Pierre 1 . On the subtle nuances between these languages, see J.-P. Boutinet, 1990, p.13. 2 . Descartes, The Discourse on Method , II: “ le projet de l'ouvrage que j'entreprenais.” 3 . On the etymology of the ‘project’, see, in French Le Robert – Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (1998, book 3), Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisée (online) , and J.-P. Boutinet, 1990, p.13-14, p.116.
This epistemological question should not leave designers indifferent as, according to the answer given to it, design and project are intimately associated or totally disassociated. Our goal in this article is therefore twofold: firstly, to try to show that there is a specificity of the concept of the design project; and secondly, to try and offer a definition of this concept. The benefit we expect is the following: explaining the legitimacy of the designers’ projectual claim, that is to say, to put it in simpler terms, the ability of designers^4 to claim the necessity of the project and to define design as a discipline of project by essence, whose specificity we will try to define here_._ This will not prevent us from highlighting, at the end of this article, the fact that other disciplines have embraced the project over the last thirty years, especially IT, which teaches us a lot about the methodology of the design project.
2. The project or the creation of methodical design 4 . The term ‘design’ is not used here in the restricted historical sense of ‘industrial design’ but in the broad sense accepted by the international research community, including a variety of design fields.
One generally associates the emergence of design to that of industry, going back to the 19th century, with the rise of the decorative arts movement.^5 One less often associates its emergence with that of the project. Yet, as shown by Jean-Pierre Boutinet, design is fundamentally linked to the project and to its architectural origins in the Italian Renaissance. The architectural project was invented in Florence around 1420 by the architect Brunelleschi “to separate and unite simultaneously two critical times in the act of creation applied to the construction of a building: the time working in the studio, dedicated to the design of the model, and the time working on site, realised in the construction of the work from the model previously designed.” (Boutinet, 2002, p. 224). Before that, development and realisation were combined, with the trial and error process that it implied (Boutinet, 1993, p. 9). The project is therefore the brainchild of a dualism, or even, a division of labour: design and realisation. The objective is “both to distinguish and unify a time of design and a time of realisation in the act of building” (Boutinet, 1990, p. 10). The Italian language subtly highlights this distinction with the terms progetto (intellectual development activity) and progettazione (realisation activity), which French also differentiates in its own way with the words dessein (intention, goal, aim) and dessin (drawing, figure, sketching)^6. “ These two similar meanings of dessein intériorisé (internalized intention) and dessin extériorisé (externalized drawing) are combined in the Italian term disegno, as in the English term design ” (Boutinet, 1990, p. 116). In other words, design is originally a term that unites the two fundamental dimensions of any project. The two terms are therefore historically synonyms: “Somehow, the advent of the architectural project in Italy was to be confused with the history of the concept of disegno that Italians have divided into disegno interno and disegno externo , and that three centuries later, the French language translated, using the same etymology, into two separate concepts, but closely associated within the project: dessein relating to development and design and dessin relating to achievement and realisation; the English language, although using the same etymology, remains more concise and even more syncretic with its concept of design .” (Boutinet, 1993, p. 10). Historically, the first meaning of the term design is therefore not that of industrial design , but of project. It was only during the age of industrial production and consumer society, i.e. during the 20th century, in order to give a name to a new profession, that the term design acquired the restricted meaning of industrial design (which, for twenty years, has no longer been able to cover all current forms of design). To avoid confusion, one must distinguish between (at least) two meanings of the term design , which correspond to two different historical moments: design as a project of methodical design (Renaissance) and design as industrial creation (20th century). In this perspective, industrial design is a relatively recent form of the design project. We can also identify a third meaning of the word design that we can only briefly mention here, and under which can be gathered all the new forms of design that have appeared since the late 1980s and which are not (or cannot be reduced to) industrial design (for example eco-design, interactive design, service design, co-design, social design, etc.). Therefore, if one does not want to lose one’s way in the linguistic and conceptual complexity that too often leads design theorists to give up defining design^7 — which 5 . However, as noted elsewhere, one must remember that design did not exactly emerge with industry but with the assumption of industry, that is to say, from the moment when decorative artists, after having long rejected industrial production, decided to adopt it and take an active part in it. (Vial, 2010, p.14). 6 . See Boutinet, 1990, p.13, 116. 7 . See Erlhoff, M. & Marshall T. (Eds.), Design Dictionary , 2008, p. 104: “it is impossible to offer a single and authoritative definition of the central term in this dictionary — design .” See also Vial, 2010, updated in 2014, p.2-3.
underlining the relationship the latter has with creation (artistic domain). This has the great advantage of manifesting a first aspect of the specificity that design has in relation to notion of project, regardless of the multiple contemporary conducts geared towards the project. Figure 2. French-based genetic model of the logics of project. Indeed, if it is true that contemporary society is saturated with conducts geared towards a project, which are emblematic of its obsession for the future and anticipation thereof, design cannot be reduced to one of them as if it was just a trait of the time. Indeed design is project, but this has been so long before our time. It is naturally project, if one may say so. Basically, essentially, necessarily. Boutinet himself provided the reason for this, even if he did not grasp all of the consequences, probably because his main concern was not to define design and its specificity. The idea appears in this sentence: “Some objects in their manufacturing cannot do without the project as a required intermediary” (Boutinet, 1990, p. 110). Among these objects, he quotes the ‘building project’ (i.e. the architectural project) and the ‘technical device project’ or the ‘technical object project’ (i.e. the design project)^9. To rephrase this, one can say that architectural objects (buildings) and design objects (technical objects) cannot do without the project as a required intermediary. The epistemological value of this statement has not been sufficiently evaluated. It clearly establishes that in design and architecture, there is a necessary and consubstantial link between the project and the object, that is to say, it is impossible for one to exist without the other. In practical terms, one must understand that it is simply impossible to construct a building or make an industrial object (or to develop a service, an interface, a communication device, etc.) without the project methodology (i.e. the methodical separation and union of design and realisation). And it has nothing to do with the postmodern era. It has always been so, at least since the Renaissance, whenever there existed a certain level of complexity. There is a major logical and epistemological consequence to this: the project belongs to design by essence, whatever the time in history. Of course, nowadays, design can be considered (from an anthropological point of view) as a practice of project among others (Boutinet), but it is certainly not (from an epistemological point of view) a practice of project like any other. Because, in design, the project is not a contextual trait (postmodern), but a structural trait (timeless). Whatever the complexity, there has not always been the need for the project (as methodical design) to offer, for example, professional guidance to young people (‘career plan or project’) or entrepreneurship (‘business plan' or 'startup project’). 9 . We leave aside here the ‘projet de loi’ (draft law) also quoted by Boutinet in this category, and that seems to belong to another field.
These practices of anticipation have always existed, especially in terms of individual career plans that still require a representation of the spectrum of possibilities, but they were not explicitly stated in terms of ‘project’ (a term that the postmodern era uses exponentially^10 ), nor embodied in institutions that have made a profession out of them (‘career advisors’). However, it has always been necessary to use the methodology of the project to construct a building or make an industrial object, once a certain level of complexity was reached. Design is therefore by essence a discipline of project. There is no design without a project, that is inevitable. If Boutinet managed to outline the projective logics that have governed the social practices of anticipation for the last fifty years, it is by analysing the projectual logics that have been at work for five centuries in the technical practices of design. The project, in an anthropological sense, is only a generalization or extension of the project domain in an architectural sense. However, as shown by our genetic model of the logics of project (See Figure 2) , if design is indeed a discipline of project, it is not the only one. Here, the necessary and essential relationship between design and project is only the first stage of the specificity of design. Indeed, architecture, engineering, and more generally the design professions, also constitute disciplines of project. As is often the case in a schematic model (Figure 2) , it is probably simplistic to present them as technical cultures of design as they are far from being only technical, particularly with regard to architecture or design, but if we have chosen this term, it is more to define their status compared to other elements of the model than to express their intrinsic nature. Architecture, design and engineering have in fact one thing in common: they give rise to material artefacts. Here ‘technical’ means ‘relative to the artefactual environment.’ Therefore, if it is true that “the design project is among the phenomena of the world of which there is reason to wonder” (Findeli & Bousbaci, 2005, p. 39), attempting to characterize its specificity, and therefore that of design, means isolating what distinguishes it from other disciplines of project. Therefore, which characteristics of the culture of design exclusively come from conception or come exclusively from architecture or engineering? They may have in common the fact of project. But, obviously, there is a certain way to make project that is characterized by its finality, its methods, its philosophy, the practice of the design project probably distinguishes itself from that of engineering by its mastery of formal language, its sensitivity to usage and its concern for the user experience. It may distinguish itself from architecture by the subject addressed (design was created mostly by architects), although construction is a highly specialized field of design involving specific project management. Finally, the practice of the design project differentiates itself from art, which is not a culture of design, notably due to its social purpose. One can therefore consider design as a particular culture of conception. To this end, without pretending to be exhaustive, we suggest below five distinctive characteristics of the culture of conception specific to design. These are the hypotheses, to which our reflection has led, but which, to verify their relevance, would need to be developed and tested through further research: 1°) Design is a project discipline as well as architecture and engineering (See Figure 2). 2°) Design is a project discipline based on a specific creative culture , which is not reducible to that of architecture, the decorative arts, engineering or marketing. By this we mean a creative culture sui generis , which has its own ‘epistemological originality’ (Findeli, 2003, p. 168) and more generally belongs to the ‘ third culture’ defined by Archer and Cross (Cross, 1982, p. 221). According to Bruce Archer, when removing refinement and complexity, only three skills essential to the foundation of any education 10 . Boutinet, 1990, p. 4, note 1: for the period from 1882 to 1959, Boutinet found 4 bibliographical references including the term ‘project’ in the catalogues of the Bibliothèque nationale; for the period from 1990 to 1999, he found 2,143.
in colleges and agencies, and not just design agencies, as engineering and marketing are very interested in it too)^11. However, at the time of the digital revolution, other disciplines have embraced the project and are giving it a new lease of life that could enrich the design project. We will briefly consider here information technology, which has made a remarkable contribution in the past fifteen years to the theory and methodology of the project in the form of project management. The concept of ‘project management’ in the broad sense appeared in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s in the military and aerospace industry, especially at NASA, before spreading to civil engineering and technological development (Boutinet, 1990, p. 239). Designed to be developed laterally within businesses and involving a project team and a project manager that (partly) escape a vertical hierarchy, project management aims at stimulating creativity and innovation, notably in the area of ‘Research & Development’ ( R&D ). Closely associated with technological development, “it is similar in many aspects to the technical device project” (Boutinet, 1990, p. 237) and, therefore, maintains close ties with the design project. We can indeed say that project management has significantly changed the way of conducting a project by completely re-modelling the process. One can observe this phenomenon in the field of computer and information systems where, facing unprecedented complexity involving a very large number of agents interacting with each other, the way of organising design work had to be completely reviewed. This led to the advent of project management software (with their online platforms) used to centralize the division of tasks, problem-solving through ‘tickets,’ and exchanges of information and messages between employees, documents to share, planning, etc. (the Basecamp software is an example of this). But it mainly gave rise to the agile project management methodology as defined in 2001 by 17 experts in the Agile Manifesto (Beck et al., 2001) and based on incremental and iterative development. This methodology has totally revolutionized the field of software design in general, but also the entire chain of digital design, therefore providing sound methodological foundations to emerging disciplines such as interactive design. As emphasized in this Manifesto , the agile methodology puts the emphasis on “individuals and interactions over processes and tools,” on “working software over comprehensive documentation” or on “responding to change over following a plan” (Beck et al., 2001). Among the twelve principles of the manifesto, adapting to change is one of the most remarkable: contrary to what usually gets most designers’ backs up, it invites us to “welcome changing requirements, even late in development” and to conduct frequent and cyclical deliveries. Co-design is also at the heart of agile methodology: “The sponsors, developers and users should work together daily throughout the project.” Unfortunately, despite their high level of excellence, these methodologies are still little known outside of the IT industry. However, they are applicable to any design situation and, on this point, contrary to what they usually believe; designers have much to learn from developers (i.e. computer scientists and computer engineers). It is therefore not a coincidence that computer scientists are among the few to have shown interest in the concept of project and to have tried to define it. It is obviously not possible to provide here a review of the computer literature on the subject. We will however reflect on the definition proposed by Andreas Munk-Madsen during a research seminar held in Norway in 2005. Considering that “ Project is a central phenomenon in the field of IS as systems normally are developed and implemented in projects” and that, practically, “everybody who talks about system development methodology will also use the word project” (Munk-Madsen, 2005, p. 5), he suggests the following definition: “A project is an organizational unit that solves a unique and complex task” (Munk-Madsen, 2005, p. 6). One must note the emphasis placed on the notion of complexity, which Boutinet showed to be at the origin of the methodical project in the Renaissance. One must also note the concept of organizational unit , to which we nevertheless prefer the 11 For a general introduction to the concept of design thinking , see Vial, 2010, updated in 2014, p.49-
term design unit. According to Munk-Madsen, this definition has the merit of embracing both traditional and agile project methodologies. What differentiates these two categories is the frequency with which one uses what Munk-Madsen calls “mutual adjustment” in the coordination of the project, this frequency being very high in agile methods. Information system research thus has a lot to teach us about the theory of project and on this point; we encourage designers and design researchers to take a closer interest in it. Bibliography
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