"Concept design is an early phase of the design process that explores far-ranging design ideas which are plausible but which often set aside immediate technical and situational constraints in order to generate new options."
Why Concept Designs Work
Design concepts are powerful artifacts for both planning and persuasion for several reasons:
- The primary use of design concepts is to take a broad view of the situation. A breadth-first approach helps us explore the entire space of all possible designs. As an extension of idea generation exercises like brainstorming, it generates new options at the beginning of the project when more ideas can be explored with less expense.
- Concepts afford a great degree of control over a project because they allow us to frame a problem in a way that can make the solution easier or more interesting. The fashion equivalent of this is couture, of which Honor Fraser, the former English model, says , “I love modeling couture. It’s the only pure expression in fashion—the one part of the fashionable world where there are no commercial compromises at all.”
- By controlling how a problem is framed, we can address new kinds of issues, including big, strategic issues we wouldn’t ordinarily be assigned.
- Concepts are sexy; the Italians have known this for a long time. By using rich visualization, language, and attitude we can evoke strong emotions and thoughts from our audience.
- Concepts reduce risk by ensuring we explore the space of possible designs for the best solution. Imagine reaching the end of the project and the client asks, “Why didn’t you design it this other way?” and you don’t have a good answer.
- Concepts help teams form a common understanding of what they will collectively design better than written specifications.
No comments:
Post a Comment