VoE - Adam Fromme
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[00:00:00] 

Adam Fromme: I think one of the wonderful things about design is it can connect to everyone's story. Design is one of those fields to where it infiltrates all the other industries. It's difficult to define itself as its own institution because it's a shapeshifter and it fills in the gaps within other industries.

Jen Farmer: From the heart of The Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host, David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics and languages, among many others. The college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. 

David Staley: I am delighted to welcome Adam Fromme into the ASC Marketing and Communication Studio today. He is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the [00:01:00] Department of Design at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. He primarily teaches courses in the Design Thinking minor, and he is also a lecturer in the College of Nursing's Master of Healthcare Innovation Program. He researches the designer's mindset and how it is used in value-based decision making. His interests include creativity, play, ambiguity, and risk taking in both formal and informal settings. He is also the producer and host of the _Thinking Through Design_ podcast, which I'm going to be speaking about in great detail with him this morning.

Professor Fromme, welcome to Voices. 

Adam Fromme: Thank you for having me. 

David Staley: We were saying before we started recording, this is, uh, unusual 'cause you're on the other side of the microphone today. 

Adam Fromme: It is, yes. Normally I'm the one asking the question, so. 

David Staley: Well, allow me to ask questions about the _Thinking Through the Design_ program.

Just first of all, start off by telling us, what can we expect if we listen to this podcast? 

Adam Fromme: Yeah. The podcast really tries to understand how designers do the work that they do. So, [00:02:00] designers are responsible for making things from logos and visual communication to chairs and tables, commercial spaces, the places that we go, and for most people, that process is very... unclear, because it's invisible to them. 

David Staley: Right. 

Adam Fromme: They just sort of... 

David Staley: Good design should be invisible, right? 

Adam Fromme: See something that happens and they don't know how it happens, and I want to take an opportunity to really go through and allow designers to explain what are the things that they're thinking about, and how they make the decisions that lead to that logo, chair, coffee shop that they're working on.

And so that's what my big picture goal is, and so we talk about things like creativity, we've talked about how digital spaces could work in collaboration, and so I really try and touch on whatever the designer is interested in and, and how they can sort of crack open the curtain and share with the [00:03:00] audience what their thinking is, what their mindset is. 

David Staley: Do you interview, principally, faculty from the Department of Design, or who do you tend to interview? 

Adam Fromme: That's who I started with because those are my people closest to me, but I've slowly started to bring in people from professional practice, researchers from other universities, and so I want it to have a topic expert quality to it. So, it definitely has an academic flavor to it, but it is just a conversation about what it is that they're either researching or doing. 

David Staley: Why, why podcasting? In other words, why did you decide to start a podcast? 

Adam Fromme: To get on the train. Everyone else is doing it. No,

um, I think one is, the idea came to me when one of my former colleagues passed away and he just had, was so filled with stories and that was his primary mechanism for teaching was through storytelling. [00:04:00] And his passing or when I heard that he had passed, I felt like we were missing something, and I want an opportunity to be able to record those conversations.

As I started thinking about Peter Megert and his life and who he was and how he affected me as a student of his, this idea sort of first took seed, and being able to not just interview designers, but give them an opportunity to explain how they see design, how they define design, how design affects them.

David Staley: When you started this, who did you imagine your listener would be or your ideal listener, and has your audience changed? You've been doing this for two years, I think, right? 

Adam Fromme: Two years, yeah. I hope it hasn't changed too much. My primary audience is for students connected to the Department of Design, whether that's specifically in the grad school or just taking a design course as an elective, people that are curious or design adjacent is a way I talk about it, and just [00:05:00] wanting to an opportunity to learn more. It's a scary place when you just search design on the internet and it's difficult to find really good content. And so, I wanted to be able to provide an area or a resource where people could go to hear designers talking about design. Additionally, or sort of like at the same time, COVID was in full swing and quite few of the professionals and colleagues I knew were isolated from one another and just being able to provide, even if it's a recorded conversation, still feeling like you're in the room with other designers, and so that was kind of another motivation I had for who my audience is. 

David Staley: Hmm. Do designers usually not have the opportunity to talk in this fashion?

Adam Fromme: In my experience, designers talk about the work, but not about what happens during the work. So, we'll be talking in terms of presentation, of here's what I'm working on, here are my sketches, here's something like that. We [00:06:00] have academic conferences, but outside of those sort of conference settings, those opportunities are far more fewer than I'd like.

David Staley: How do you choose your guests? 

Adam Fromme: People say yes when I ask. Largely, word of mouth and recommendations. So, I cast my net within the Department of Design, and as people have the opportunity, I, one of the limiting factors is I want all of my interviews to be in person, so, the greater Columbus area, or people visiting Columbus is one of the limiting factors.

I think the interview has a better cadence to it when we can look each other in the eye. 

David Staley: Yeah. Say a little more, why in person? 

Adam Fromme: Something gets lost when we lose those sensorial experiences. As an industry, we're very focused on the physical experience, we make things.

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: And so, we're dealing with materials and rooms and environments, and so whenever we can more immerse ourselves in those senses in the same room, I, I think it's a better experience. [00:07:00] It's, in my teaching, some of the classes I do are online, and that's one of my biggest frustrations, is you're teaching to a room full of 40 students, but you can't look 'em in the eye.

And so, there's a lot of information that's relayed and being able to do that. I can motivate a student to answer my question without calling on them when we're in person. Online, you can't really do that, so you have to call on them, and so things have to be translated in different way, and I think the same thing is in an interview.

David Staley: Well, and the reason I wanted to hear more about that, is that I experienced that, although I don't know if I was able to put into words. So, I've been doing this podcast long enough, that we survived the pandemic, or the lockdowns.

And so, we shifted everything, for two years we did interviews over Zoom, and you're right, there was something, I mean, I'm, I was grateful that we had Zoom, I was grateful that we could continue the series, you know, even when everything else was, was shut down.

Adam Fromme: Absolutely. 

David Staley: But there was, there was [00:08:00] something lost, I think, over Zoom, something that I don't get in the experience you and I are having right now, for instance. 

Adam Fromme: It's a different rhythm to the conversation. 

David Staley: It's true. 

Adam Fromme: 'Cause there's a little bit of pause when you're waiting to make sure somebody's done talking before you talk, and that's not how we naturally converse. We talk over each other and it creates a sort of a more unique rhythm. 

David Staley: The funny thing is you and I are both seated here at a table, I am seeing just above your waist, which is probably all I would see on Zoom anyway, but you're right about gesture, for instance.

Adam Fromme: Yes. 

David Staley: That's something that, that I found very much lost and something that I pick up on in face-to-face interviews.

Adam Fromme: Yeah, and they're all those secondary senses that we can rely on when we're in a room, like you can tell when somebody's looking at you and you can't see them, right, those types of interactions happen in person that don't online.

David Staley: Tell me about your process for preparing for an interview, or preparing for an episode. 

Adam Fromme: Yeah, I did very little research, [00:09:00] in how I wanted to do it, 'cause I didn't wanna be affected by how others have gone before me, so I don't know... 

David Staley: Oh, you mean research into podcast? 

Adam Fromme: Yeah.

David Staley: Into interviewing, I see, yeah. 

Adam Fromme: Into, just, how to do that. 

David Staley: Yeah. 

Adam Fromme: So, I don't know if this is common or not, but I sit down for 10, 20 minute conversation with my guest to determine what the big idea is, what sort of the topic is, and then we just identify three chapters. And I might have a question or two for each of 'em that I'll give them ahead of time, but then the conversation will just run, and so those chapters might happen in different orders, but then we just run. It's about an hour conversation of, yeah, enough time to be able to actually get deeper into the conversation versus just being that sort of surface level talk that oftentimes you just get a taste, and you want just that little bit more.

David Staley: Mm-hmm. So, you do at least a little bit of research about your, your guest before you sit down with them. 

Adam Fromme: Yes. 

David Staley: Yeah, Larry King, the interviewer, very famously did not do any sort of research. He would just, [00:10:00] you know, wouldn't read their book, and he would just sort of sit down and, and start an interview.

He said he wanted it to be sort of fresh and spontaneous. I don't think I could, I don't think I could do that. 

Adam Fromme: Yeah, it, it definitely, I think, takes a lot of repetitions to be able to do that and, and feel comfortable with it. 

David Staley: Yes. And, unlike you, I suppose, because I'd been listening to interviewers for a number of years, I, I wouldn't necessarily call that research, but there, there were people I tried to, if not emulate, at least try to understand something about their rhythm, their method, about how they interacted with the guest. I had sort of my favorites, I suppose. What themes or what patterns, I guess, have emerged from your interviews? Any commonalities between your guests?

Adam Fromme: Great question. I think one of the wonderful things about design is it can connect to everyone's story. Design is one of those fields to where it infiltrates all the other industries. It's difficult to define [00:11:00] itself as its own institution because it's a shapeshifter and and it fills in the gaps within other industries.

And so, one of the things I enjoy is a lot of the perspectives, there is a refrain, there is a chorus to how people talk about design, even if the subject matter is very different. 

David Staley: Hmm. 

Adam Fromme: And the specific research or what they're doing, that curiosity is at its core, people really are trying to answer a almost unanswerable question in whatever their research discipline is. So there, it's interesting to start to hear that similar fingerprint through the conversations, even though the conversation and the topic are wildly different each episode. 

David Staley: What do you think you've learned, having done the podcast now for a couple of years? 

Adam Fromme: I hate editing. No. Um, but that's my short answer.

No, I, I think, [00:12:00] I think one of the things is, it's interesting because, as I started off saying that we don't have enough conversations in design, we don't have enough just casual conversations. However, it's very easy to have a casual conversation. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: And so, while guests may be hesitant before they enter the sound studio, once we get talking, people really fall into their natural cadence and have a really interesting and authentic conversation that people really are, you can tell their passion by having that conversation, and, and so there is a very natural quality to conversation, and it just helps me identify, like, we need to have more of that with our colleagues in our daily lives, that people surrounding us. I had a very impactful mentor in my first job outside of undergrad,

and he strongly incentivized me to hurry up and eat lunch, and then [00:13:00] we'd go for an hour walk downtown Columbus and we'd just talk about design. 

David Staley: Hmm. 

Adam Fromme: And, and I think that probably is one of the sort of early breadcrumbs to where I am now, is just his willingness to share his stories with me, but also to sort of get me to open up to this idea of just conversations about design that don't necessarily have a specific end like a presentation does, or a pitch or, you know, those sort of scripted moments. 

David Staley: Well, you had said earlier that maybe it was difficult, if not impossible, but I'm gonna ask you anyway. So, you teach in the design thinking minor; so what is design thinking? 

Adam Fromme: Great question. Design thinking is a way to help people be more creative, to be more flexible and open in realizing what opportunity looks like for whatever industry that they're in. [00:14:00] So, for a really long time, designers went into their back office, tinkered, and then came out and they're like, here's your solution. That only worked for so long, and so as a way to help explain the process, especially to people that are paying you to do their design work, design thinking was a way of explaining what the different phases are; we don't necessarily call it research, even though it's research. We have different terms, and so, being able to explain that design process, which is a really good way of bringing people into design. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: So, design thinking is really just sharing how designers think. Some people naturally have that ability, and so when they hear the terms, the strategies, the tools that are under the design thinking, it's like, oh yeah, that's obvious. For other people, it's not obvious, right? And, and so it's really helpful for them, to be able to sort of understand what this activity is of how we make [00:15:00] stuff. 

David Staley: So, how do designers make stuff? What is the thinking process? 

Adam Fromme: How do designers make stuff? That can happen a lot of different ways, and so our work is very focused. Oftentimes when we think about creativity, we think of this open sort of daydreaming, of just sort of this wonderment. 

David Staley: Yeah. 

Adam Fromme: And that is true in a lot of the arts and humanities, that we want to have that sort of connection to openness.

Yet, design is very focused on being able to solve a person's problem. 

A lot of our work is just being able to understand what is the problem, or maybe more specifically, how does a problem affect people, and then being able to generate a new solution that, that satisfies that problem, that addresses what it is that they'd rather be doing during that time.

So, we're very curious, but it's very focused, it's very driven towards that specific instance. And in that way it's [00:16:00] very much contrasting maybe like the scientific method, where we eliminate all variables so we have a repeatable process. We're at the other end of the spectrum, with the design process, 'cause we're looking at the very individual moment and being able to solve that first. Now we may go on and, modify, create another solution that works for more people that can solve more people's problem, but it always starts with that very precise, what is your problem that we're looking at and how can we understand that, how can we describe it and, and then be able to sort of work through what possible solutions might be towards achieving what it is that you'd rather be doing. 

David Staley: Hmm. So is that why you designed or put together the recursive design framework? 

Adam Fromme: Yeah. 

David Staley: And I'd like you to talk about this, although, I know that's difficult because this is, this is a graphic design.

Adam Fromme: Yeah. So it's, it's a diagram. Where this started, 'cause I'm a professor of teaching, so [00:17:00] most of my work is in the classroom with students, I'm not a researcher in that sort of tenure track role. But, in my time teaching and working with students, design is a complicated thing to express, especially to bringing people into it that are new, to design, especially with the traditional sort of K 12 education that they're coming to university with.

And so, I realized I needed some reference material, especially as we're studying for finals as just a, a reference. And so, I started trying to show that in pieces, and it ended up becoming this thing that you're talking about, this recursive design framework. So, in the biggest sense, I'll let people picture this in their own mind or they can follow along with a blank sheet of paper, all problems have three parts to them. We have the situation, which is what the current situation is, what is happening right now. Maybe you're in a room and you're [00:18:00] cold, right? You have your goal. What would you rather be experiencing? And then, you have all the possible solutions, all the possible ways that you can achieve that goal.

Oftentimes you might say, I don't want to be cold, so I wanna warm up, and that might, off the top of your head, have some very easy ways of doing it, right? Putting on a blanket, changing the thermostat, right? Some obvious ones that we've all experienced in our own lives of, of when we're cold in our room.

As a designer though, before we pull the trigger on a solution, we're going to expand that further instead of just sort of what's probable, but what's possible. What are all the conditions that might be possible? Are your feet in a bucket of water, or is the door open and it's winter time, right? Maybe there are all of those types of things, and so we're really trying to understand that the goal, you getting warmer might not be actually making you physically warmer, but might [00:19:00] be preventing the room from getting colder. And so there's this relationship between the situation, what you're experiencing, the goal, the desired experience you'd rather be having, and then all of the possible solutions that could connect the now to the future where you'd rather be.

So, we have these three buckets of activities. One of the critiques of design thinking, and one of the things that gets lost in translation is oftentimes those three areas are seen as a linear route. 

David Staley: Right. 

Adam Fromme: That it's this procedure. Well, if you understand the situation, then you can come up with a solution, and then you've achieved the goal. In reality is those co-evolve; as designers, as makers, because we're working with problems that don't have a single answer to them.

So in math, we might be able to find the X equals 12. I can find X equals 12. I look at your paper, you found X equals 12. We can agree X equals 12. [00:20:00] There is never going to be one single answer in design problems, these very sort of messy, complicated things 'cause they're dealing with people and people are a wild variable.

So, we need to work through those and how we work through them is by trying a solution, seeing how it measures up to the goal. Maybe we need to go back to the situation. And so, we're moving between these three. So, I need my students to be able to understand how can we productively move between these three areas.

So, we can do one of two things for each of the areas: either we can learn more information, or we can make a decision. That's, in the most normative way, the practical way, when we're sitting at a table in a team meeting together, those are our two options. So for each of those three areas, we have something that we can do to either learn more information or to make a decision.

So within the situation, [00:21:00] if we're trying to understand what is going on, we can explore, we can interview people, we can observe how people are acting in that instance, right? And that's not making any decisions, just collecting information, and we wanna make sure that we're collecting information separate from making decisions, these are separate activities.

Once we collect some information, then we can move into that narrowing, deciding activity, which is a way of defining, okay, we saw all of these things happening, now let's make a decision. What are we interested in working on? What part of the problem is solvable versus outside of our reach? Within solutions, we have ways to grow.

We call it ideating. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: Coming up with ideas. We're not trying to solve the problem, we're just trying to solve a piece of it, this is where you see designers putting post-its up on a board, is just little nuggets of [00:22:00] ideas, right? How might this happen? So, if we're designing a poster, we can look at 20 different typefaces that we might want to use, or color palettes. And so, we're just putting those on the wall so that way we have access to our ideas. Then we have prototyping. That's where we make decisions. So, in coming up with a solution, we're gonna prototype, which is, I'm gonna take this type face, this color palette and this photo, put 'em into a composition.

There can be back and forth between like, oh, those colors aren't right, they're too quiet and I want something loud, and so I'm gonna change the color palette out. That's prototyping. 

David Staley: Prototype isn't the final decision, it's a decision. 

Adam Fromme: It's a decision. And so, as designers, we're going to, over the course of a project, come up with many prototypes of different forms, shapes, solving the problem in a different way or, or a different piece of the problem.

And then within goals, we have that same thing. We can grow what the goal is by scouting, what are other people [00:23:00] doing? It's important if we're designing in healthcare to know what the new innovations are happening, because oftentimes these projects might take several weeks, months, or years. We may start by knowing what's happening, but if we just put our head down and work, work, work without looking up, other things are going to evolve during that time. And so, we constantly need to be scouting what's happening elsewhere. Whenever we bring something to measured up against the goal, this idea of testing; I don't like testing because it's our pass fail has that connotation, but if we're, we're assessing it, how close are we? What's the distance between this prototype and being able to satisfy the goal? So, for each of these three areas, we have an activity that we can do to get us more information or to eliminate some of the things off the table, right? So we're either putting more things on the table or we're removing things from the table.

And so, this process happens where [00:24:00] we can shift between those activities. So why this is helpful for me as, as an educator, is when students are working on their project or a team project, I can show them this diagram, be like, where are you? Okay, what do you need? Do you need more information or do you need to make a decision?

What decision are you making? Are you making decision about the situation, about a solution, or about the goal, because those are three separate areas. Oftentimes, we don't like things that are complicated. We wanna make it simple, and so we try and draw a straight line between like, here's a problem, here's the answer,

and it's more complicated than that because we're thinking about this terms of the goal is far off and we're just coming up with as many solutions as possible that can reach that goal, ten, twenty, a hundred, and then from those solutions, we can select the one that makes the most sense. 

David Staley: Hmm. You say this is a teaching tool.

Adam Fromme: Yeah. 

David Staley: Have you published this anywhere? This strikes me as, as an [00:25:00] example of research. 

Adam Fromme: I have this summer. So, I was at a design educators conference and I presented it for the first time publicly, although I've been using iterations of this in my classroom for four or five years now.

But, it is that just sort of working tool. I think it goes a step beyond, maybe listeners, if they're connected to design, either the design thinking framework or maybe the double diamond model or two models that exist in the world. Those are really good for explaining the design process; once you've come up with your solution, you can use that to tell the story of how you came up with the solution.

This is a working document, and so it's really hopefully helpful to navigate during the design process. 

David Staley: How did you end up in design? I guess I'm asking why are you a designer as opposed to, I don't know, a basketball player or a violinist? 

Adam Fromme: Well, I, I started studying zoology. 

David Staley: Is that so, I don't think I knew that.

Adam Fromme: Yeah. I had this blended interest, so, even when I was [00:26:00] in high school, I had a very formative science teacher. He was wonderful., Mr. Spring was wonderful at sharing his passion for the sciences. At the same time, I had this early opportunity to intern at a design firm, and so I was exposed to the early versions of Illustrator, Photoshop, Freehand, and software back then.

And so, I had these two interests when I was coming to university and everyone, all of the advisors and counselors were like, do STEM, that art thing can be your hobby. And so I did two years of zoology, and was fighting with it, because it wasn't where my passion was. I was really interested, it was wonderful; "o-chem" kicked my butt, and... 

David Staley: Organic chemistry, yeah. 

Adam Fromme: Exactly. And then, I really just identified that design. And for me, those two things are really similar. One is studying systems, ecological systems, the other is designing within a system. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: So, we need to understand if on a college campus, we [00:27:00] have signs to navigate people through a campus, that is a system of navigation.

And so, I saw those two things, it was a very easy slide over for me, but I think two things that have stood out my personality that maybe answer your question more precisely: one is I love explaining things to people and making complicated things simple. And I just like processing that so I can explain something that's complicated simply to bring other people into like, ah, that moment of, of excitement. And the other thing is I've always loved making things, just tinkering, whether that was like the obvious of like Legos as a kid and building those things, but just having that itch to think about how would I have done that differently, whether it's a c hair I'm sitting in or something like that. And so, that made for a very natural home to come to design where, that's where they make things, that's where they, they form those ideas and that sense of making happens. 

David Staley: Hmm. Tell us what's next, what are you working on now? 

Adam Fromme: [00:28:00] Publishing this framework is one of those things of, of getting it out there.

I do think that it offers something different than how a lot of design educators and people in design have been talking about design, so using this recursive design framework and what that is, continuing the podcast, and then within the Ohio State ecosystem, we're really looking for opportunities to expand the design course s for more university students. 

David Staley: Mm-hmm. 

Adam Fromme: I already teach in the College of Nursing, introducing it over there, but what are some other ways? And so, it's one of the things I'm in charge of is, is being able to find new opportunities for students to not become designers, but how they can increase their toolbox.

So, whatever it is that they want to do, they can use some design tools in that language, especially towards this big idea of innovation that everyone's constantly driving towards and problems are becoming more [00:29:00] complex. I, I certainly see the designer's tool bag as being very helpful to solving those problems.

David Staley: Hmm. The podcast is _Thinking __Through__ __Design_. Adam Fromme, thank you. 

Adam Fromme: Thank you very much. 

Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.