Episode 2 - Co-evolution

This podcast is the second part of an interview that features Kees Dorst, Professor of Design, from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Further details about Kees can be found in the show notes for the first podcast. The interview is followed by a discussion between Peter and Mieke, who talk about some of the ideas in the interview that they found interesting.

The second part of the interview focuses on the idea of ‘co-evolution’ that Kees developed along with Nigel Cross in their 2001 paper: Creativity in the Design Process: Co-evolution of Problem and Solution. This is the idea that designers explore problems (or ‘problem spaces’) by proposing solutions. Kees starts by contrasting this type of thinking to more ‘linear’ ways of working, before going on to talk about how this kind of working can be difficult to understand for others in organisations and what to do about it. 

Several of the ideas that Kees talks about will form the subject of future podcasts – what it means to acquire experience and expertise in design, for example, and how to get others to participate in design processes.

One reference that is mentioned in the following discussion between Peter and Mieke is a famous paper by Jane Darke: The Primary Generator and the Design Process This is a study of how expert architects generate very quick solutions to architectural problems when they visit the site of where a new building should be. That is, they develop an understanding of the problem through thinking of a solution – co-evolution, in other words.

Right at the end of the discussion Mieke refers to the idea of ‘provocative prototypes’ – prototypes that deliberately try to provoke a better understanding of the problem in social design contexts. You can find out more about this in her recent paper: Problem Framing Expertise in Public and Social Innovation.