Atom 10: Absorptive Design Management & Thinking

The basic definition of Absorptive are -
Absorptive : Having power,capacity or tendency to absorb or imbibe, having capability of withstanding abuse or stress. (Source: en.wikitonary.org)


Another source from thefreedictionary.com

1. The act or process of absorbing or the condition of being absorbed.

2. A state of mental concentration

"In business administration, absorptive capacity has been defined as a firm's ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. It is studied on individual, group, firm, and national levels. Antecedents are prior-based knowledge (knowledge stocks and knowledge flows) and communication. Studies involve a firm's innovation performance, aspiration level, and organizational learning. It has been said that in order to be innovative an organization should develop its absorptive capacity" as explained in wikipedia.


Absorptive design management and thinking is a broader boundary that will address the connectivity of Management and thinking process in design. With precise management, design can be highly meaningful, resource-efficient and collaborative.


On grounds of this explanation, the ability to access information, interrogate, assimilate and churn it beneficial with refined processes is highly an Absorptive process. This is a conscious evolution. Absorption in itself is brought to act without lack of un-consciousness. The cycle of information production or design production is evolved when openness and absorption to varied subjects.


This absorption also involves the stakeholder act, behavior, idealogies, notions which purely understood by perception, socializing & motivated practices. It addresses to speak or put oneself in stakeholder demands and shoes. How it transcends beneficial to the stakeholder and the internal governance of the individual and organization also needs to be comprehended. This by large is absorption in work. Absorption Design Management is specific understanding of common users, specific users, marketing team, various stakeholders, demand, market conditions & business goals. It is absorptive such as all these layers have to bundled into a manageable process and single layer. It means that it is highly intermixed and readily available. 


Now, at the lower level of the fragmentation is Absorptive thinking. The act is to produce design with utmost care, quality and strength such as it has capacity to imbibe the users, observers and succeed them at emotive level. It is not only Emotional design, but a case is built to make how absorptive are the users. It is not immersive, as it can always be function of mind, but absorptive will drive to absorb the people with attention and affection. It is humanistic as in whole, but absorptive as it is effective, easy and attentive.

Atom 9: Observation+Interrogation=Conscious Design

It is utmost bizarre and mind-boggling to be a constant observer and interrogator. It requires lot of willingness, desire and energy. The mind stays active with rigorous look out for things, just alike a beacon tower that does the same functionality all-around the direction.

The theme of observation and interrogation goes well in handy, where this itself good be split up into two phases. Observation is keen looking and wondering at how it essentially is and left to be. This essentially is the pre-cursor to the interrogation mode. Why does it have to do this way ? Interrogation can stem out individually, as to complement with heard voices, comments and reads.This does not need to evolve in pairing, but there could be significant time lag with all observed items can grew to interrogation at a later stage and time.

The key parameter which is Observation, can have a function of x, which is wholesome can turn effective in design, though even interrogative mode is absent in temporal basis. It means to say that half of the job is done by better Observation firstly, as effective design evolves by being a better observant or absorbent!! I think observant really becomes an Absorbent when Interrogation cycle is also complete. It needs a bit more of the mental tenacity and time to get to the other side of the shore, by being a constant interrogator. It requires less of mental energies to act on one of the principle, but when it comes in pair, it really needs twice as much of mental energies to drill and look at the nitty-gritty and details.

It really solves lot of problems towards designing and create conscious designs with a blend of observation and interrogation. But foremost, observation drives the critical essence of conscious design, since the mental impressions emerge to the foreground when in need of solutions, where interrogation automatically triggers to  a point that can quickly map all the observations, call it as "observations image bank", which is really less of a mental energy drain, since being a auto-resolver when in need of solutions.

The conscious design not only leads to creative work, but it could also be relatively equivalent to the routine life and work, where it lead as conscious thinking in totality. I can imagine learning to cook only by the approach of Conscious design thinking, It really sets out like this, that conscious observation of color, ingredients (basic items), boiling point, taste, etc., alone made me to cook more than average (a little tasteful) dishes. The real interrogation happens while "cooking" or in a 'task' where all constant observed imagery evolve and set up the interrogative mode. Why does the color look light when it needs to be darker? Why does the taste is really less when we had tasted it something else? This interrogative approach is a part of conscious dissemination & conscious evolution of the observed quality.