Shaping Change [DRAFT]

As James Webb Young indicates in A Technique for Producing Ideas (1940), “an idea is nothing more nor less than a combination of old elements.” This idea predates Young, but I think it worth emphasizing that things that appear to be "new" are in fact made from existing pieces. The quality of the "newness," be it novelty, surprise, insight, or opportunity, are the product of how we combine and integrate information.

The goal of design is not to create from scratch, but rather to transform the existing. After enough transformations and mutations we can generate something new. In this article I summarize my initial work to construct a "Verb Map" outlining actions of transformation for designers.

Actions as the Foundation for design methods

Building and curating a list of design actions we can take parallels learning the moves in a game like Chess or Go. The list provides structure for us to lean on when it takes effort to make design happen.

From producing research questions, generating concept directions, to building experience prototypes, knowing your tools will go a long way to guiding your design process. Adding to your list will also capture how you approach design. Think of your personal verb list as a foundation of elemental actions where higher level design methods can be built upon these elements.

In some ways, the raw verbs are the most powerful design tools because of their flexibility and lack of context. In other ways, more particular design methods are more powerful because of their focused scope. These specific methods are built up by aggregating and combining verbs and objects in meaningful ways in response to patterns or to solve common problems.

Reminders with Structure

Maps help us navigate new or unfamiliar territory. As we gain more understanding, referring to the map might become more of a ritual, a reminder of the paths that we usually take while showing us less familiar areas. In time, we way discover gaps in our map, and we may find new ways of looking at well trodden ground.

This web of verbs shows some of the more powerful actions we can perform to shape our design artifacts. Similar operations are placed more closely together. When crafting and honing precise “How Might We?” questions, moving small distances or finding synonyms may be be helpful to find the right framing for a design challenge. When extra effort is needed, looking for the parts of the map you haven't tried recently can help to illuminate new paths. The map is non-linear, encouraging wild jumps. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather just a point of departure for making a personal verb map.

Radiating out from this verb are different contexts to carry out that action. Moving objects to change their position or order is to arrange or rearrange them. Moving objects apart is to separate them. Moving them far enough away from each other is to remove or eliminate one from another. For me, the most fundamental action in design is “to move.” Playing with the context of  the verb “move” is actually incredibly generative. For example, what if you moved people at a dinner table? That would be rearranging. What if you moved people in an organization chart? You could be reversing roles. What if you moved a species through time? That would be evolution. Try playing with the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of some moves.

Ways of Adding Tools

Here are a couple of simple methods for adding to the verb map.

1. Adding verbs that resonate with you. Think of verbs that conjure images or feelings that are inspiring, funny, funky, or visceral to you. (A favorite example of mine is Robert Pirosh’s 1934 letter ‘I Like Words’)

2. Organize verbs into clusters or families. Look for missing links or opportunities to create continuums. For example, consider this continuum:

to elaborate | to embellish | to enhance | to expand | to explode

< more tame                                      more extreme >

Imagine someone telling a story. What does it mean for them to elaborate, to enhance, or finally to explode the story?

Organizing actions into continuums and clusters will help you find the right words when talking about design or dialing up or down the intensity of the action. This is most helpful with grappling with “How Might We?” questions.

3. Adding specific verb phrases that are particular to your discipline or craft. For example: “to synthesize insights,” “to converge directions,” “to select opportunities,” etc. Experiment with creating more specific design actions while on a project. Often times the best inspiration is necessity. On a recent project for a medical design, the design team had to consider and balance the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Thinking of each stakeholder’s role in the system then exploring ways of reversing roles or relationships proved to be a generative activity when looking at how the device could be part of a more holistic health experience. Bottled up into a design action, we could say something like: “to reverse stakeholder roles or relationships.”

4. Embrace the metaphorical, analogical, fantastical, or just plain idiomatic. Think of situations or operations that might have some parallels or areas of overlap. What could it mean for a new coffee offering if it needed to “make it rain cats and dogs?” What if a new camera could decode motion like transcription DNA? What if a new piece of design surface could define a surface by shrink wrapping a dancing octopus? The design analogies and metaphors don’t have to make sense, and the connection they spark can lead in surprising directions. With a little unpacking the design analogies can be shaped into new, expressive tools in your tool kit.

Some common analogies:

1. Architectural ones: Pillars, Foundations, Levels, Steps, Ladders.
2. Biological ones: Biomimicry spans the spectrum from literally copying nature to using nature as a source of analogies for inspiration.

Getting Active: Making a Bill of Verbs

The next time you see a work of art that you enjoy, take a look at the plaque. What’s on it? Artist’s name. Check. Year? Check. Description of historical significance. Sometimes. Materials? Maybe.

Take a closer look at the materials. Steel, stone, plastic, resin... The important bit is that the materials tell a story of the piece.

Now turn your attention back to the work. Look at it and imagine the series of actions that lead to the piece. Try and picture the verbs that the artist uses. To unroll, to cut, to choose, to mix, to brush, to splatter – record the verbs that you can see or imagine. Think of the work not only as a collection of materials and pigments, but also as a collection of verbs from the artist’s pallet.

If you want to see some examples, head over to my sculpture page to see some of the verbs that went into each piece.

Next Steps:

So we have a bunch of tools, and we have a recipe for making more tools… what do we use them on? The short answer is anything. The world is fodder. We can use everything as inspiration. Our design actions allows us to manipulate a design across a continuum running from the abstract to the concrete. Opportunities, hypotheses, scenarios, concepts, ideas, embodiments – all mutable as we search for new ways of solving problems.