Two Design Traps: Analysis Paralysis and Value Paralysis
As a designer, you face a lot of situations where your ability to act and to move on is challenged. Maybe you have to make a choice between different designs, each of which only partly meet your needs. Or maybe you have to evaluate what information to trust; or what is the most reasonable or ethical design; or who can give you the best advice. Design is about making meaning and order in the world. It is about creating an artifact that holds the functionality, form and values you believe to be the best in the specific situation. And all this has to be done in and on a turbulent world™a moving target. How is it possible to handle the chaotic complexity of that world and still be able to act? There are of course many suggestions on how to make this happen. Here I will only discuss two of them. Two ways can lead to good results but sometimes they can also lead to extreme positions. In such extreme positions the designer will not be helped to act, instead he/she may be put into different forms of paralysis. The two ways that can result in such paralysis are: the information approach and the value approach. Of course, no one of these are real approaches in the sense that they are well-developed methodologies or strategies. Instead I use them in an overall way to name and frame two broad ways of thinking often found in complex design situations.
If we choose to follow the information approach towards more and better information on which we can ground our choices and decisions, we can soon find ourselves in the situation of analysis paralysis. The information approach is based on the idea that: "the more I know about the situation the better choice and design I can make". This is also to some extent often the case. When we are confronted with a difficult design problem we are often helped by being more informed. We need information, unless we want the design to be based on a guess or on luck. We need to know a lot about the situation, for instance: who are our clients; what are their ideals; ideas and goals; what are the restrictions; limits and possibilities; what is expected from me? To some degree this is vital information and we need to get it some way. But sometimes this need becomes too strong, and we find ourselves in a situation of continuous search for more and more information. For every piece of information we are lucky enough to find or create, we can ask even more questions like: "why is this the case" or "there are still aspects (factors, variables, causes, etc..) we havenıt looked at".
It seems as if information to some extent is self-generating. Information seems to create a possibility for more "why" questions and a continuation of the search. Suddenly, we find ourselves in an ocean of information. We have to spend more energy and time dealing with the information itself; how to document, how to organize, how to make sense out of it all. We are caught in actions focused on a description of the real world™a representation™and soon we may loose touch with the relation between the representation and the reality itself. The information changes from being about reality into being reality. When we treat information as reality we find that it is never rich enough for our purposes. The "real" reality is always richer and denser both in form and in content. So, we want more information in order to form an even richer picture.
Another explanation of this quest for more information is that we are uncertain of our own skills and especially of our ability to make the right decisions or choices. To be sure we do the right thing, we want more information. In a way, we are searching for the answer as if it already existed in the world. This is a strange position, at least in design. Design is not about what exists, it is about what is not existing. There is never an answer to a design situation hidden "out there", buried in the complexity of reality.
A design is by definition something that has to be created and invented, it is about the unseen, the unknown, the unexpected, the unpredictable. If it were known or predictable then it would not be design but problem-solving or only a question of finding the correct answer. But if we are not sure that we have the right ability, or if we are afraid of making a commitment to one design, then we continue to search for the "right" solution. That may take us on an endless search for information, because we will be unable to decide if or when we actually have "found" the answer. There is always the possibility that there is an even better "answer" hidden deeper in the structures and dynamics of reality. To get information about reality, we need to analyze the structure and dynamics of reality. We have to analyze needs, desires and wants. We must analyze the history that leads to the situation we are now in and also we must analyze the future yet to come. We are soon engaged in an endless process of analysis. We are moving towards a situation where we are struck by analysis paralysis. We can not move on in our design work; we have no time for reflection; we have no time for creativity and innovation; we have no time to exercise judgment which is the only way out of the paralysis.
But to be able to exercise judgment, we need courage and certainty of our own potential to make judgments. And what gives us that certainty? Our judgments are partly based on information. But what makes us able to decide that we know enough to make a judgment? Every judgment must be based on something, and this "something" is usually recognized as values.
This leads us to the approach concerned with value. An approach that can lead to value paralysis. As good designers we are always striving to design something that satisfies as many needs, wants and desires from as many clients and stakeholders as possible. This means that we have to find all values involved in the process. As a good designer we also know that we have our own values. We are also aware of values that are universal and should be considered even if they are not directly carried by any involved stakeholder or client: such as environmental values, moral values, religious values.
When values becomes very important to us, the quest to find and respect them is, as with information, an almost self-generating activity. There is always a possibility that we have not taken all values into account. Or that we have not been complete in our investigation of all values that might be relevant in our design work.When values becomes so important, we may even lose our interest (and belief) in the importance of information. We might believe that values are the only thing important.
Becoming so focused on values, can also lead to paralysis. When you are striving to satisfy all possible values (at least all values that might be "good") you will face a situation where these values soon begin to be contradictory and not possible to fulfill at the same time. Maybe you want to design a tool that will protect its user from certain damage (vibrations or sound that might be dangerous), but to make this possible, you have to use material that is not the best from an environmental perspective. Or maybe you want to design an organizational structure that enhances every workerıs possibility to form his/hers own work process, but at the same time you must be sure that the process actually results in product with certain quality. Or suddenly you are overwhelmed by the awareness of the state of the world and the way material and energy is so unequally distributed in the world. Or maybe you are unable to respect all religious or spiritual values in your design.
When this happens, it is not uncommon to become a victim of value paralysis. That is, a state were you can not make any judgments or decisions because you will always go against some values that someone or you yourself find worthwhile. This is a situation that often leads to an expansion of scope and a process of "sweep-in", i.e. the scope of your design keeps growing as you add more and more values into the process. The design has to be placed in a larger system, which is part of a larger system, and so on. Soon, you feel as if you are responsible or the overall design of the whole world.
So, is there a way out of these two forms of paralysis? Yes, to a designer the way out is to make judgments. To actually make decisions and choices based on judgments. This is a process that always demands courage and creativity. Courage is needed to be able to deliberately choose not to satisfy certain values or to purposely neglect certain information. Creativity is needed to be able to innovate a design that will transcend the contradictions that are usually believed to exist between different values or between different sources of information. A creative leap might resolve some of these tensions and actually result in a design that respects more values and more information. This has to be done based on the belief that design is about the creation of order and meaning. The process is about designing a new situation, not a question of "fixing" of adding something to the old situation. This is the real skill of the professional designer. It is not about satisfying all clients in the way they expect. It is not about building a design on the present situation. It is about creating a situation where clients are surprised both that they are getting something that perhaps changed their perceptions and values but also that they are finding themselves in a situation they did not anticipate. Maybe parts of the information or some of the core values that were really thought to be essential in the beginning are no longer applicable or not even interesting.
A designer has to be able to make these judgments and to believe in his/her own skills to make them. Because every design process is limited in time and resources, analysis paralysis and value paralysis are the worst possible situations for a designer. The process comes to a halt and the anxiety to make the next step grows. Therefore it is of great importance that designers are trained and practiced in their education to face situations like this, to feel the stress caused by a need of more analysis and more values. As with firemen, physicians, policemen, and other professionals that will face situations that really demand their skill to make judgments, designers also have to be trained to be prepared.