Abstract 24: Phaenotype and Genotype (ACCEPTED)

Hypothesis
The designer is like a black box to most disciplines. The process of generating and creating something new is fuzzy, just results and solutions are measurable. Describing results and “the way we got to the solution” is the only way we can communicate and confirm the idea today. The process itself is not transparent. Having an in-transparent design process makes the result untrustworthy.
Even though more and more designers show representations of their processes (e.g. IDEO) in order to convince potential clients what they should pay for, the design discipline still spares a scientific base compared to technical professions like engineering, for example.
The specialty of design does not come to the foreground in a convincing way to be taken seriously. Owing to not working in terminated laboratories, focussing one particular problems but complex situations of use considering the human, interaction, cultural diversity, perception and so on the design discipline needs to use its immanent strength of observing, comparing and visualizing to contribute to the scientific community in another way. Therefore the process of designing, the way to get to a solution is the key to define the role and potential of design.
Since the designer is a communicator in between many disciplines he should have certain standardized tools to communicate ideas and approaches. We do not doubt the designer´s ability gathering different disciplines, contextual information and creating something out of the knowledge in between. But if the communicator is not able to control and communicate his ideas, these ideas die.

Questions
We would like to research about the design process in two different ways.
One is from a meta level, looking for structures and parameters that repeat in evaluated projects. Here we start with the design process itself. Having plenty of existing methods and a numerous amount of unique projects we have to gather and screen the information contained.
Our approach is to especially reveal parts of the conceptual phases in the design process being obviously similar albeit the item of designing and the ones might be different because of the design discipline or the aim of a project: What might be “standard”, what might change and what is unique?
On the other hand we like to research about representative existing methods in scientific disciplines to compare them with methods and tools used in design. Even though disciplines like engineering do work creative as well, their way of working, focus and solutions are different.
Might be that “Design is invisible” but it is sensible. Therefore:
the role of design contributing to development and creation processes increases the quality of results. That is what we like to highlight.