A Model and Six Semiotic Dimensions for the Ideation of Products Rafael Lacruz-Rengel Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela. Available from: http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/arquitectura/rlacruz/publicaciones_archivos/dimensions_english.pdf Article originally published in Spanish in: ICONOFACTO (Journal of the School of Architecture and Design, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellin, Colombia), Vol. 9, Nº 12, Enero-junio 2013, pp. 154-174. INTRODUCTION introspection studies (Lacruz-Rengel, 2008b). Many of them have also involved the analysis of sketchbooks, mostly in People use a variety of mental associations qualitative terms. Studies on design concept to understand and interact with products. ideation have come to the point of exploring Within design, this situation has been the possibility of supporting designers’ confirmed through studies going from those creative gestation with databases of images concerned with how people interpret the and descriptive words of pre-established functional features of products (Woolley, associations/referents (Wu and Johnston, 1992) to those about how people associate 2005). product’s features to aspects such as social status (Espe, 1992), their user’s personality Despite of all these research efforts, authors (Jordan, 2002) and emotional attachment working around the subject of concept (Ou and Lou, 2004). ideation seem to take for granted the different aspects or conceptual dimensions For the particular case of concept ideation involved in the formulation of products, in product design, studies have been carried perhaps based on the long tradition of out during and after the act of designing. speculative nature inherited from treatises The former have focused on the and handbooks of design. In this sense, the characterisation of how designers think present work attempts to outline a proposal during the solution of specific tasks, the about the nature of such dimensions on a definition of their individual style of scientific basis. problem solving, the quantification of originality as part of design concepts, and the designers’ use of drawings/sketches as 1. DESIGN AND ITS DIMENSIONS well as verbal expressions to define and characterise products (Lacruz-Rengel, Since the times of the Roman architect 2008b). In relation to the latter, i.e. inquiries Marco Lucius Vitruvius (25 BC) what we developed after the act of designing has now call design has been outlined as a field come to an end, studies have been carried of action comprised by different dimensions out based on retrospective techniques using or aspects. In the early treatises and questionnaires, interviews, analysis based handbooks of design these key aspects or on predefined categories, and even self- dimensions assumed the form of principles. Publications of Prof. Rafael Lacruz-Rengel...p. 1 / 14 Later on, they were associated to the 1998). Among the principles then functions that design objects ought to fulfil, enunciated, those of the architect Owen to the different tasks involved in their Jones and the designer Christopher Dresser creation, and to the sort of pleasures such are well-known. For the former, all works objects could evoke. of the Decorative Arts (as well as those of Architecture) should have: fitness or be According to Vitruvius (1991), design (with adapted to its purpose, proportion or particular reference to architecture)1 display a clear arrangement of its parts, and emerges from the understanding of three harmony or display an appropriate balance fundamental principles: firmitas or the and contrast among its forms (Jones, 1856). adequate selection of the materials and For Dresser, on the other hand, truth (to be means to build a design object, utilitas or truthful in the use of materials and what the appropriate conception of its use, and objects express), beauty (to be graceful, venustas or the realization of harmonious delicate and refined), and power (to be and pleasant configurations. This idea of energetically composed) were the three ‘art- “principles” persisted throughout the principles’ which, in conjunction with the Middle Ages, becoming the common place basic principle of utility (i.e. to be suitable of theoretical studies during the for its purpose), defined the primary nature Renaissance. Indeed, the medieval of any design object (Dresser, 1973). The calligraphy of books, for instance, was design principles outlined by these authors, based on three design principles (Rotte, however, are not different from those of the 1993): ordo (order based on hierarchy to Vitruvian triad. Indeed, they encapsulate structure complexity), claritas (legibility or more or less the same ideas. This might be clarity of meaning and purpose), and the reason why the teaching of design consonantia (consonance or harmony for “through principles” prevailed until the the beholder’s eye). Similarly, in 1452, beginning of the 20th century, especially Leon Battista Alberti highlighted unity, thanks to the understanding of beauty in proportion and suitability as the essential utilitarian objects as derived from their principles of design (Lambert, 1993). fitness to purpose, together with a due recognition of what was sane and suitable Within the particular field of product for tools and materials (Glass, 1927). design, the first examples of this kind of principles seem to be those of the 19th Such a state of the art began to change with century. During that century the search for the incorporation of new aspects as design principles became a real need fundamental elements of design. Among the provided the indiscriminate proliferation of promoters of this new approach were the stylistic evocations of the past in Bauhaus School of Design and the pioneer architecture during the late-eighteenth product designers of USA. Indeed, in his century, whose impact also manifested in Principles of the Bauhaus production of the design of objects through oversized, 1925, Walter Gropius (2002) pointed out over-decorated, of quasi-historical style, the need of designing objects that clearly impractical and ill-suited creations for the serve their purpose, long lasting, of a low living conditions of that time (Hauffe, cost, and beautiful. As such this was an attempt to embrace the formal, technical 1 According to Gasparski (1984:20) “…the ancient concept of architecture embraced civil and economic aspects of the changing engineering, clock construction, and mechanical design scenario of that time. Following a engineering”. Therefore, the Vitruvian principles similar vision of the new realities, the can be understood as applicable to any design American designer Henry Dreyfuss (1955) object. Publications of Prof. Rafael Lacruz-Rengel...p. 2 / 14 asserts that every design problem involves which design functions are divided into five points that should be tackled: utility economical, technical, physical, and safety, maintenance, cost, sales appeal, psychological, aesthetic and social); as well and appearance. In the same direction but in as those simplified versions of these a less explicit manner, the designer Harold typologies that define design in triadic van Doren (1954) also divided the design terms, that is, as comprised by technical- concerns into: practical requirements practical, aesthetic and symbolic functions (through the study of material and (Hauffe, 1998). processes, of the client’s manufacturing facilities as well as a preliminary Differently from this, the second half of the investigation of costs), and merchandising 20th century brought along principles and requirements (i.e. maintain a competitive dimensions for product design in the form position by seeking new features for old of either levels of work within design or as products and add new products to certain basic requirements. Examples of this kind lines). can be seen in Gillo Dorfles’ (1968) idea of tackling mass-produced objects in Besides this, the first half of the 20th century technological, innovative, commercial, also witnessed how some theoretical stylistic, symbolic and communicative proposals from the field of linguistics began terms; in Max Bense’s hyletic, morphetic, to mould new ways of understanding synthetic and pragmatic dimensions for product design. Such is the case of Jan products (Bense and Walther, 1975); in Mukarôvskỳ’s typology of functions from David Pye’s (1983) six basic requirements 1942. Indeed in his view, man-made objects of design (correct arrangement, ought to fulfil four types of functions correspondence of parts, strength, ease of (Mukarôvskỳ, 1977): practical functions or use, suitable cost, and acceptable those having to do with a physical and appearance); in Oscar Olea and Carlos direct transformation of reality as part of a Gonzalez’s (1988) five levels of work in purpose, theoretical functions or those in design (functional, contextual, structural, which reality is transformed in a direct but productive and expressive); in Richard imaginary way, symbolic functions or Buchanan’s (1989) three elements of the capacity to change reality through the design argument (technological reasoning, representation of cultural conventions and character and emotion); in Angela Dumas values, and aesthetic functions or capacity and Henry Mintzberg’s (1991) three to trigger people’s self-realisation through dimensions of design (function, fit and supraindividual ways of looking at things. form); in Ray Crozier’s (1994) three factors This kind of theoretical contribution - that influence people’s psychological together with those of other theorists