All That Process

All this discussion, reading, reflection and writing on the importance of process and the different ways in which process can be refined reminds me of the fact that even grief is a process. At least as per Kübler-Ross’ model which defines the process of grieving as the five stages of grief : anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It conjures up  in my mind, images of the character of Joe Gideon (Roy Schider) from Bob Fosse’s film, ‘All That Jazz’. 

On reading Hugh Dubberly’s ‘How Do You Design?’, I found it interesting, initially, to see the different diagrams that added steps to create complex patterns for process. Process is not meant to be spontaneous. That I do understand. I also understand the benefits of following process. However, as the book went on to analyse academic approaches and approaches adopted for architecture or engineering projects, it somehow seemed to me that I was viewing design as a definite science. The romance, the accidental eureka moment, the fun seemed to be lost in a maze of very formula oriented approach to solving a design problem. I do understand that the underlying purpose of emphasis on process lies in learning to gather and assess information at hand to come up with the best possible solutions, I just suddenly find that I am missing the spontaneity in design. As my question is, does design have to be always process oriented? If it is not, does it become art? Is that the difference we are looking at?

To see then that grief too has a process…I am left with wondering if we view all aspects of our life as process? I guess I am going through my own process of anger, denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance when dealing with these questions. And I dont have any definite answers.