Design and SEO blog

1 Comment Written by Robert on May 23, 2008 – 11:45 pm

Until relatively recently, design was commonly perceived as a predominantly individual activity; the designer, trained in his or her craft, was expected to identify, frame, and solve a design problem more or less in isolation from others.

In the twenty-first century, however, this perception of the design process is becoming increasingly removed from actual practice.

Designers today routinely work in teams, collaborating to create processes and products that reflect the different kinds of expertise amongst the team members and designers who are not skilled as collaborators are increasingly unlikely to be successful.

Even in the most prototypically individualistic ventures, designers have always worked with others, whether directly or indirectly.

The needs and desires of clients and endusers for instance affect both the processes and products that designers create. At a very broad level, the consuming public’s embrace or disdain of a designer’s work is a large-scale collaboration with the designer, noticeably influencing what the designer does next.

All design always has been and always will be collaborative in the sense that multiple parties commission, influence, and require iterative change in what any given designer does.

Design as a process is akin to other activities that have often been conceptualized as isolated practices but in reality require collaborative and dialogic contexts (as argued by multiple social scientists and theorists).

For instance, design is collaborative in the same sense that the tennis player’s ace depends not only of the tennis player’s own efforts, but also on the opponent’s not returning it or in the sense that in conversation, a speaker shifts and molds her utterances based on her partner’s ongoing mm-hm’s and what’s.

Whenever a designer changes a prototype based on a client or user’s real or even anticipated feedback, a formof collaborative design has taken place. Therefore, even in situations where there is a single credited designer, there aremultiple collaborators involved, whether imagined (the product’s eventual users) or real (the client or consumers who provide iterative feedback at various points in the design process).

Despite the fact that all design can be said to be inherently collaborative, the term“collaborative design” most typically refers to design activities carried out within design teams.

These teams consist of various collaborators (team members) who are active in the creative process. Some teams have a single leader who is ultimately responsible for the process and outcome, while others involve a more distributed and consensual process with no one party in charge.

They may be composed of individuals with drastically different areas of expertise, or similar backgrounds and fields of practice. The process of design differs according to the composition and structure of the team.

When team members come from similar fields of expertise, they generallyapproach the design problem from a similar working methodology.

On the other hand, when there is a wide and disparate range of expertise involved, the process is as much about coordinating the activity of design as well as it is about producing the outcome. Collaborative design of this sort is quintessentially interdisciplinary ( Discipline), and requires a breadth ofunderstanding beyondwhat solo or discipline- specific collaborative designs require.

No matter the structure or nature of the team, methods of clear communication are central to collaborative design. The process involves the same human dynamics that are present in any other group effort, with dimensions of power, politeness, social distance, and cross-cultural differences clearly at work. Although many design teams still utilize group brainstorming sessions around a table (as embodied in the studio model), the rise of cross-global design projects ( Crosscultural Design, Globalization) has necessitated members of the same team communicating solely via remote media.

This shift has resulted in a growing need to understand the elements of collaborative skill, and how those skills differ in the context of different communication media (face to face vs. via asynchronous blogs vs. instant messaging vs. desktop videoconferencing, and so on) and in a variety of languages.

Research is currently being conducted into the dynamics of design teams, and although it is unlikely that definitive outcomes outlining successful collaborations will be reached, it is clear that understanding collaborative skill will become an increasingly important element of putting together teams, facilitating their work, and training the next generations of designers.