Creating the Next Generation of Grant Wood AEA

1. Creating the Next Generation of Grant Wood AEA A Design Team Working Session January 30, 2008

2. The Work Ahead of Us Today • Understand more about the design and the design process • Identify Strategic Priorities • Already Emerging • Additional Considerations • Role of the Design Team

3. What happened when… • Jamshid sketched the set of interacting problems? • We synthesized all those stakeholder comments to a few guiding “specifications?” • Jamshid sketched a weird-looking “structure” with four main parts?

4. The Problem With Problems in Design “…design problems are ill-defined, ill-structured, or ‘wicked.’ They are not the same as the ‘puzzles’ that scientists, mathematicians and other scholars set themselves. They are not problems for which all the necessary information is, or ever can be, available to the problem-solver. They are therefore not susceptible to exhaustive analysis, and there can never be a guarantee that ‘correct’ solutions can be found for them….What designers tend to do, therefore, is to seek, or impose a ‘primary generator’ which both defines the limits of the problem and suggests the nature of its possible solution.” (23-24)

5. What are the “primary generators” in the set of interacting problems facing you as designers of the next generation of Grant Wood AEA?

6. What’s with the picture of the interacting problems? “…in all fields of design, one finds this preoccupation with geometrical patterns; a pattern (or some other ordering principle) seemingly has to be imposed in order to make a solution possible.” (25)

7. From a Long Wish List to a Few Specifications • Design proceeds from abstract requirements to concrete objects • “The solution is not simply lying there among the data, like the dog among the spots in the well known perceptual puzzle; it has to be actively constructed by the designer’s own efforts.” (24)

8. How would you design a bicycle frame? http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cycling/arantix-carbon-mesh-bike-from-delta-7-light-sturdy-shrapnel+resistant-video-321867.php

9. Treasure Hunt: Find the Specifications In groups up to 5, go on a short treasure hunt for an interesting (utilitarian) object. List some of the specifications or requirements you think the designer of the object must have had in mind. Decide how else the designer might have dealt with one or more of the specifications.

10. Specifications for the Next Generation of GWAEA • Some functional • Some structural • Some process-related

11. How did Jamshid get to the sketch of the Next Generation structure? “Those who have been trained as designers will be using a code…which enables the designer to effect a translation from individual, organizational and social needs to physical artifacts.” (25)

12. Cracking Jamshid’s Code CEO HR Manufacturing Sales Engineering Finance Business Unit 1 Business Unit 2 Business Unit 3 What does this chart tell us?

13. Two New Groupings

14. Crack the Code on the Sketch Jamshid Offered for GWAEA What does this chart show? Why does JG call these “platforms?”

15. What are the points of emphasis in the structure Jamshid offered?How does the structure address the set of interacting problems? How might this structure represent a next generation of the agency? What changes?

16. From Ends to Means • How can we collectively select strategic priorities for action that begin to bring the design to reality? • Some have begun • Some are yet to be addressed

17. What’s under way?What are next steps?

18. Ongoing Role of the Design Team • As a Design Team • As individuals • As leaders within the organization

19. Wrapping Up • What became clearer today? • What should be communicated to and with others? • What are next steps?