Hugh Dubberly on Design Models

The Informed Life

Hugh Dubberly is the founder of Dubberly Design Office, an interaction design studio based in San Francisco. Hugh has a long trajectory in the design world. Before opening his studio, he did pioneering work at leading tech companies like Apple and Netscape. He is also a thinker and teacher of uncommon depth and breadth. He’s my colleague at the California College of the Arts, and I’m also lucky to call him a friend and mentor. I met with Hugh in his office to discuss his recent paper arguing against framing design as problem-solving, and that is the focus of this conversation.

Show notes

• Hugh Dubberly - AIGA
• Dubberly Design Office
• Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson
• Bill Verplank - Interaction Design (YouTube)
• How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition by Michael Porter
• The product service ecology: Using a systems approach in design by Jodi Forlizzi (PDF)
• MDes in Interaction Design - CCA
• After the Bauhaus, Before the Internet: A History of Graphic Design Pedagogy edited by Geoff Kaplan
• Why we should stop describing design as “problem solving” by Hugh Dubberly
• Patrick Whitney - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
• Double Diamond (design process model) - Wikipedia
• Horst Rittel - Wikipedia
• C. West Churchman - Wikipedia
• Wicked problem - Wikipedia
• Design Thinking by Peter G. Rowe
• Russell L. Ackoff - Wikipedia
• Herbert A. Simon - Wikipedia
• The Sciences of the Artificial - Wikipedia
• Axis Thinking by Brian Eno
• The MAYA Principle: Design for the Future, but Balance it with Your Users’ Present - IxDF
• Overton window - Wikipedia
• Environmental Design - University of Colorado Boulder
• Ulm School of Design - Wikipedia
• The Infinite Conversation (AI-generated dialog between simulations of Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek)

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Chapters

1. About Hugh (00:02:07)

2. Systems-centered design practice (00:05:21)

3. Modeling for conversation (00:08:03)

4. Design is not problem-solving (00:12:50)

5. The messy front end of design (00:18:32)

6. Wicked problems (00:23:26)

7. Solution spaces (00:30:12)

8. Evolving solution spaces (00:38:15)

9. Expanding the possibilities (00:42:05)

10. Closing (00:48:38)