Complexity through combination: an account of knitwear design

doi:10.1016/j.destud.2005.07.003

Design Studies

Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2006, Pages 183-222

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2005.07.003 Get rights and content

Designers immerse themselves in environments rich in inspiration. Previous research has tended to neglect the vital role of sources of inspiration in triggering and guiding designers' activities. This paper reports research which investigates the gathering of inspiration sources and exploration of ideas and hence attempts to understand how inspiration is harnessed. We conducted a progressive series of empirical studies looking at knitwear design: in situ observation; semi-structured interviews; constrained design tasks; and computational modelling. The paper proposes simple general accounts of observed design behaviour and shows how a simple parts-and-relations account can explicate aspects of subtlety and complexity in design.

Section snippets

Why knitwear design?

Knitwear is an example of ‘practical design’ in a fast-moving and highly competitive manufacturing industry that makes both technical and aesthetic demands of the designer. It is a constrained, tractable design domain, typically involving individual designers designing independent, low-resolution, static artefacts. The fast design turn-around (driven by an annual cycle of fashion ‘seasons’) provides opportunities to observe the design cycle in a limited period. Because of the technical and

Methodology for phase 1

In the first phase, knitwear designers at work in industry on real product lines were interviewed and observed, with particular attention to designers' source-gathering activities. This encompassed 18 companies involved in knitwear design in the UK, Italy, and Germany, plus one hand-knitting designer.

Observations — shadowing staff designers as they were available — were conducted over a number of days in three companies. In two of these three cases, it was possible both to follow particular

Methodology for phase 2

The second phase focused on designers performing realistic but constrained design tasks with supplied resources. It aimed to gather evidence on the use of sketching, on decision sequences, on spatial manipulation and reasoning, and on mental imagery. The tasks were constrained in a way that removed some design considerations (like shape design) while preserving realistic complexity of others (like motif design) — hence facilitating our identification of abstraction and transformation

Methodology for phase 3

Based on the results of the first two phases, we proposed a simple computational model divided into four steps: selection of ‘interesting’ graphical objects; adaptation of those objects; placing of the resulting objects onto the garment shape; and evaluation of the resulting garment. All phases are regarded as iterative, whether singly or in combination. In human performance, these steps appear to be bundled up in continuous multiple cycles of selection, adaptation and transformation, placement

Summary discussion

Our findings suggest that the source-to-design transformation process uses a repertoire of relatively few, simple mechanisms for selecting and adapting design elements from inspirational sources. Our simple cognitive accounts are based on a view of designs as elements in combination and configuration. Simple mechanisms may be employed in sequences or combinations. Complexity in the overall design arises from combination and configuration, so that simple design elements may stand in a complex

Acknowledgements

The project was funded by ESRC Award L127251030 under the title ‘MIND: Mechanisms of Inspiration in Novel Design’. The research reported here relied on other contributors, whom the authors thank: Most of the data collection was done by the MIND project's Research Fellow, Dr. Claudia Eckert. Dr. Martin Stacey and Prof. Nigel Cross also contributed to the project. Dr. Anne Anderson, the co-ordinator of the Cognitive Engineering Initiative, provided support throughout. The research would of course

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