Unpacking the term 'exploration' in the design field
Design Exploration: Series 1 – The Definition
I’m bringing you the first part of a new series about design exploration—discussing the what, why, and how of designers maintaining an open process in finding solutions, iterating, and testing them—whether they fail or succeed, it's all for the sake of learning.
I remember starting to use the term ‘exploration’ back in 2015 when I was actively designing hypothetical UI screens in Dribbble. I’ve continued to use the term to describe a designer’s act of finding ideas. However, I was not entirely sure if the term ‘exploration’ was the standard and widely used.
I once read a book by Jon Kolko, a design professor at The Savannah College of Art and Design. He mentions design exploration and the typical types of exploration used when designing digital products. Although Jon didn’t provide a specific definition, the way he explains it aligns exactly with what I’ve had in mind.
Two of the most basic principles of design process are iteration and variation. They aren’t the same, but they are related. Iteration is making informed changes to an existing design.1
Variation is a way of adding a sense of objectivity to design exploration. Variation is an exploration of alternatives. Where an iteration moves an idea forward (or backward), a variation moves an idea left or right, and is not productive in a typical engineering sense because the expectation is that all of the variations (except one) will be rejected. But variations act as provocations for what-if scenarios.2
– Jon Kolko
I then found another reference in "Reflection in Action," a book by Donald Schön, an MIT professor of urban planning, which discusses how professionals, such as architects and therapists, engage in reflective practice while performing their jobs. From the architect’s anecdote, notable similarities exist between product design and architecture. Schön doesn’t use the word ‘exploration’ directly. Instead, he discusses ‘experimentation’ as the central concept. Within this core idea of experimentation, he outlines three stages, the first of which is termed 'exploratory,' followed by tests.
When the practitioner reflects-in-action in a case he perceives as unique, paying attention to phenomena and surfacing his intuitive understanding of them, his experimenting is at once exploratory, move testing, and hypothesis testing.3
Exploratory experiment is the probing, playful activity by which we get a feel for things. It succeeds when it leads to the discovery of something there.4
– Donald Schön
At first, I couldn’t accept the use of the term 'experiment' here, as I've always viewed experimentation as a more thorough and scientific process, involving the testing of a specific hypothesis. This perspective gradually changed when I encountered an explanation of 'experiment' from the Design Academy Eindhoven, whose articulation, I’d say, is spot on.
Experimentation is the term used at Design Academy Eindhoven to refer to the process when a designer is trying out as many possible options as he sees or finds, usually within the confines of using a certain material, construction or technique, within a (self-)determined framework. It is related to both the thinking and the making process.
In contrast with experimenting in a scientific way, at Design Academy Eindhoven experimenting is a more open process, not restricted by scientific procedures, specific (laboratory) environments, a specific hypothesis that needs testing or a theory that needs to be developed. Instead, experimenting results in a series of designs that can not and should not, in the end, be replaced by theory.
Experimenting involves iterating, repeating design and research activities in slightly different ways to get to different results. Failure is inherent in experimenting because unexpected results are to be expected. If you know what the result of your action will be, it cannot be an experiment. Hence, experimenting favours a very open-ended way of doing research.
This does not mean that experimenting at Design Academy Eindhoven is random.5
Design Academy Eindhoven
When examining Schön’s perspective on exploration and the approach of Design Academy Eindhoven, I notice a similarity; neither neglects the aspect of an open process to discover possible options.
One of the explanations of the term 'exploration' itself, according to Oxford Dictionaries, is:
Exploration
/ˌekspləˈreɪʃn/
the act of traveling through a place in order to find out about it or look for something in it.
Oxford Dictionaries
However, upon closer examination of its meaning, it’s actually just midway through the process. When we explore, we move; we travel to discover something—be it a concept, a flow, or a component. However, according to Schön and the Design Academy Eindhoven, it doesn’t stop with exploration. There are iterations and tests, and, whether failures or successes, there are learnings. Exploration, or what they actually prefer to call experimentation, isn’t an act of randomness. We are responsible for proving that the ideas we explore work as solutions when placed in users’ hands.
In the end, whether we use the term ‘exploration’ or ‘experimentation’ doesn’t really matter. What matters is the essence of well-rounded activities, not wild and irresponsible acts, in bringing the most sensible solution to the table.
I’ll keep using ‘exploration,’ though, as I have been using it for a while, and it could sometimes be misinterpreted as "growth experimentation."
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Kolko, Jon. Well-Designed (p. 177). Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Kolko, Jon. Well-Designed (p. 178). Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Schön, Donald. Reflective Practitioner. (p.154)
Schön, Donald. Reflective Practitioner. (p.152)