The PRInCiPleS Design Framework

Abstract

Some disciplines focus on analytic research and some disciplines focus on synthesis. Design disciplines are interesting because designers need to do both analysis and synthesis tasks. The HCI & design program I presently direct is organized around a framework I have named with the acronym PRInCiPleS, both at the curricular scale and as an organizing device for individual design projects within classes that serves as a kind of design rationale framework. The PRInCiPleS framework is not a scientific framework, but it does have an analogy to an idealized notion of a scientific framework. One of the biggest issues in design pedagogy and practice is how to get students and practicing designers to ensure that analysis leads to synthesis in a sound way and that synthesis follows from analysis in a sound way--that is, the issue of how to bridge the creative, semantic gap between design research and insights and concepts. In much of the curriculum, design research projects are paired with design concept projects in a way that is targeted at addressing this issue by means of iterative practice. Taking a curatorial attitude towards designs constructed according to the PRInCiPleS or indeed other frameworks is an appropriate way to connect notions of creativity to notions of design rationale.