Donald Schön (1988) attempts some answers to this in his study of what he calls ‘rules, types and worlds’. Schön argues that designers ‘tend to treat each design situation as a unique universe of one’. If this is correct, and it certainly chimes with all our experience of the modern process, how can that be reconciled with the idea of precedent?
A really good way of considering precedents in design is the use of analogies. We make regular use of it in the ideation phase of design thinking, and you can find a good overview here: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/learn-how-to-use-the-best-ideation-methods-analogies.
"...it all boils down to exploring unrelated concepts for an insight, which you can apply to your own problem's context. These insights on how principles or characteristics exist within one context may help inform how to reshape these principles and solutions within a different context. "
It's a very neat and intuitive way of re-purposing tried and tested designs.
Dear Marc Fabri .......thanks so much for answering..
Please tell me, .. How could that be in ideation phase. . because your link are not accessible .. Please explain more...
Thanks so much..
When you have identified a problem or observed a situation that is worth improving, it helps thinking of related domains where something similar happens - and how that was solved.
An example that I've seen before is the Nest heating control. You can turn it and it behaves like an old-style thermostat. It uses people's learned behaviour about turning something up or down, which is more intuitive than using the (+) and (-) buttons many digital thermostats currently have.
An example from my own practice is the re-design of a student library lending system. Students can be lazy and don't want to walk through the aisles to find text books. They came up with the idea of using dogs to deliver books to one's home - like a dog that delivers the daily paper and received a treat for that. This made sense as an analogy and sparked many ideas about how the library system could be re-designed to include book delivery. In the end the best idea was for students who had to pay a fine (for late return of books) to avoid the fine if they delivered a book to one of their student peers. Win-win!
Dear .. Marc Fabri ... Great answer.. Thanks so much...
Your example was so closed to the answer of the question..
So, ... we can say.. that projects first done.. problems recorded.. another project after while need to be execute.. avoid the previous problems by creating someway a solution for these problems.. mmmmm... So, .. we have some losses in the first project.. to win the future projects... (need to re-check here)
Also, .. what about new projects that don't have such similarity.. you know.. our time.. is flash time development.. new idea created every day.. Can we prevent problems by predicating some forecasting program or theory.. ????
Thanks again...
Really interesting @Dr Hussam Ali Mohammed and Dr Marc Fabri
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