A coevolução no problema de design

Abstract

Some actions in the design process are restricted to the designers’ thoughts, what may cause some difficulties in understanding the process itself and making it explicit. Studies in this area attempt to overcome these limitations by looking into the way designers solve problems to improve their performance. These problems are usually characterized as ill-structured and can be seen from different perspectives, leading to distinct answers. The concept of co-evolution regards problem resolution in an evolutive manner: as the problem is better understood, the answers become more refined. The overall objective of this work is to understand the co-evolution of the design problem. In order to do this, an exploratory research was conducted within a design workshop, where data was collected by means of both focal groups and videos recording the participants’ process. The technique used to analyse all this data was Content Analysis, with some necessary adaptations to the context of the present research. In the analysis, it was possible to observe that co-evolution is influenced by: 1) the initial formulation of the problem that works as a driving force, boosting the problem resolution process; 2) the way the groups manage themselves, taking into consideration the manner in which different members play distinct roles and establish a problem resolution pace based on previous experiences they bring to the project; and 3) inquiries related to the problem or the solution, which can be regarded as one of the strategies used by designers to move forward into the problem space or the solution space. In conclusion, all these observations lead to the understanding that not only the problem space and the solution space modify themselves in the course of the project, triggering mutual evolution, but the diverse aspects involved in the design context also have some influence on the co-evolution of the design problem.