View article

In this report of a case study of the work of a design team we describe some of the organizational contingencies that provided the conditions for the team's work and the ways in which the teams responded to these. We focus on the strategies by which the design team managed their circumstances in innovatory ways and manipulated the design space within which they were operating. Constraints run through the whole (design) process from beginning to end. Constraints though are not given a priori but must be fleshed out, filled in, fabricated, even thrown away or simply forgotten in the process of dialogue and negotiation. Constraints, in a sense, are to be designed. (Bucciarelli & Schon, 1991, p. 19-20)