Design as a Reverse ‘Who-Done-It’

Design narratives and detective stories

 

“A good design is like a diagram of the problem”- Charles Eames 

 

A typical detective mystery story or 'who-done-it' begins with an artifact or clue at the scene of the crime. It is the very existence of this compelling yet confounding bit of evidence that propels the story forward. The clue also tends to appear woefully inadequate as a means to traverse the space between known’s and unknown's. In fact, it is the persistent silence of clues that lead to the (inevitable) conclusion that an expert must be brought in. Enter the fictional private detective; an eccentric, gifted observer possessing an acute imagination uniquely capable of leaps of insight. We enjoy the unfolding of their logical and intuitive thought processes as a parade of apparently incidental information transform into a narrative of inevitability. In a good mystery story, the moment our detective reveals how they moved from the clues to the culprit is the high point of the journey – the reward for coming along. Our detective's train of insights builds a mental bridge now readily traversed by all. It could not have been otherwise. The butler must have done it. Case closed. 

Another genre of storytelling, albeit with less readership, is like a detective story in reverse. These are design stories. Rather than deduce an explanation from the facts as they are, the design story moves from problem to artifact. The fitting clue - not the explanation - is the goal. In design, the story begins with problem definition, literally describing the crime scene accurately, through a process of hypothesis and discovery, creative leaps and modeling, to arrive at the artifact that resolves the narrative.  Although all design stories do not end with objects, all good ones end with compelling solutions that seem in retrospect inevitable. ‘Who-done-it’ stories move from artifacts to construing an explanation as to why those artifacts exist; from physical facts to hypothesis to conclusion. Design stories however can move from problem to artifact by reverse engineering necessity. In this sense designers are proactive detectives who generate a response to the ‘crime’ by tracing the maze of cause and effect. They synthesize by intervention, and are happy to contaminate the crime scene if necessary. In this hypothetical form of literature, our hero is an eccentric, gifted observer possessing an acute imagination uniquely capable of leaps of insight. An expert brought in when the facts don't match the clues. But in design, those clues - the actual links from problem to solution - don't exist yet. The designer has to in a sense create the artifacts that resolve the story - generate solutions that keep us reading all the way through.