What is Synthesis?
For me, synthesis is the central act of design. When creating a product, designers will need to integrate research, combine concepts, and compose systems to accomplish their goal. As we take on these complex tasks, we will be leveraging synthesis to advance our work.
As James Webb Young indicated in A Technique for Producing Ideas (1940), “an idea is nothing more nor less than a combination of old elements.” It is worth emphasizing that things that appear to be "new" come from existing pieces. The quality of the "newness," be it a sense of novelty, surprise, insight, or opportunity, are the product of how we combine and integrate information.
Young goes on to state that “the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.” Relationships between these existing elements dictate the rules of combination. To make an analogy with writing, the relationships between words become the basis for the rules of grammar that dictate how they must fit together. Crafting a sentence is an act of synthesis. Words become the base elements, with each a network of context and meaning. Arranging the words in a particular order shapes the message by pruning and enhancing the rich web of connections between words. The resultant sentence becomes a constellation of meaning through this process of synthesis.
So what does "synthesis" mean in the context of design? Here are some definitions that capture its generative and sense-giving nature:
Applying structure to information with the goal of crafting understanding
Combining and condensing disparate elements to form a complex whole
Integrating concepts into a single coherent composition
Putting things together in new ways
I like this view of synthesis, but I will admit that it can have a dark side. There is a lot of ambiguity in discovering what elements to combine, what relationships to emphasize, what rules to follow, and what rules to break. When the team is dealing with a high volume of information, this uncertainty can sometimes cause the group to become stuck.
Avoiding the slog
Synthesis looks like a black box, especially if you are new to design. It can be the source of frustration and stagnation before finally delivering inspiration to the team. At its worse, it can feel all or nothing endeavor where the intermediate steps feel like they are going nowhere.
The step-like function of synthesis: At each step, a critical mass of information needs to be assembled, understood, and organized to prime the team before sparking an insight. Frustration can especially happen when added effort does not translate immediately into added insight.
I believe that synthesis is particularly grueling because there is rarely a linear relationship between the team's effort and the rate at which they uncover new insights. Groups who do not feel a direct relationship between their actions and the desired outcome will experience frustration and annoyance with the process.
While synthesis can be frustrating, I find it to be the most rewarding part of the design process. Synthesis empowers us to gain new insight out of the information we have already collected. It works by finding patterns, focusing details, and crystalizing opportunities. Designers glean insights from the messiness, contradictions, and richness that we experience in our lives. Synthesis works to untangle this web of meaning and remold it into something actionable.
I call the perspective that emerges from design research the synthesis storyline. This narrative integrates, balances, and unifies our findings into something coherent, provocative, and actionable. The synthesis storyline ultimately becomes the vehicle for us to share insights, opportunities, and principles to inspire the design team.
the verbs of synthesis
Synthesis is messy, non-linear, and never unfolds the same way twice. It requires designers to have a flexible mindset to adapt tools in response to what they observed. Teams need to keep moving during synthesis to avoid becoming stuck. Rather than presented fixed methods, the verb list below seeks to provide a map of possible synthesis actions. This kit of parts approach allows designers to combine, augment, modify and transform this collection into their personalized methods.
The actions at the beginning of the list tend to happen earlier in synthesis while those further down tend to occur later. You can always go back, repeat, and undo actions. Think of the list as a map that helps designers way-find through the process.
This article focuses on performing synthesis to gain insights and opportunities from user research. However, designers can apply the actions to other contexts that require making sense of information, converging on design directions, or integrating knowledge across domains.
1. Get all the information in one place.
to collect | to gather | to accumulate | to saturate
For research projects, we collect and gather raw information from the field into a shared place for the team. This information can be user interviews, expert interviews, and analogous experiences from which we wish to draw inspiration. As observations accumulate, we want to make it as visual as possible using colored coded post-its notes and photos from our research. Downloading information gradually after each interview helps the team remember details while they are fresh and also lessens the burden of downloading all at once.
2. Break down dense areas.
to fragment | to break down | to analyze | to digest
Not all the information will be at the same level of detail, density, or value. Breaking apart larger chunks into their constituent parts helps up unpack latent richness. We want to create fodder for us to examine, analyze, and internalize before recombining the findings into new forms. Synthesis works as a process of finding structure in information, so we need to curate our set building blocks from which we may draw.
3. See where affinities may lie.
to cluster | to aggregate | to coalesce | to combine
Move similar things together and dissimilar things away from each other. Imagine all of the observations in a field of gravitational attraction. I can’t help but imagine the formation of the cosmos, with dust slowly condensing into stars, solar systems, and galaxies. It helps to do this in multiple passes, starting with clustering pieces of information that are almost identical then becoming more flexible with what areas could be linked. Do these two clusters have a common cause? Can you form hypotheses about how different phenomenon may be connected? Do two groups surface a tension or duality? Pay attention to what new perspective develop as information coalesces and combines into new forms.
4. Apply an initial structure.
to sort | to organize | to order | to categorize
Work to uncover latent structures in the data. Begin labeling the clusters that you and your team create. Multiple or provisional labels are alright – we can always change those later once we know what parts or perspectives we want to emphasize. Imagine a thread linking all of the little clusters. In what order should the thread visit each? What storylines being to emerge? What possible headlines or takeaways surface when we examine the groupings?
5. Look for other ways of seeing the information.
to arrange | to rearrange | to alter | to change
The first layout for the research will be rough, and you will need to keep messing with how you frame the information. Focus on looking for areas of pluralities, multiplicities, and contradictions. Play with configurations and arrangements. Work to resolve some tensions and contradictions while preserving others. Allow time for nuance to emerge and see how the main storyline of synthesis shapes up from multiple points of view.
6. Experiment with reversing key relationships.
to swap | to transpose | to invert | to reverse
Sometimes radical shifts are necessary to untangle and unpack the synthesis story of our research. Swapping or transposing parts allows us to alter the structure of our understanding. Inverting elements or reversing relationships further enables us to manipulate and explore the emerging framework of knowledge. In both cases, playing with form equips us to test our provisional layouts for the information. Some will be reaffirmed (“See! This insight does not make sense the other way round!”) and others will work better when reversed. These "reversals" can be powerful when uncovered since they go against the status quo or common knowledge. However, not every project will reveal a surprising reversal.
7. Select areas to refine and develop.
to sift | to select | to filter | to distill
As the team moves toward convergence, highlight the areas to develop and shape as a team. First, look for the areas that help to fill out the core of understanding in the problem space. Did the research support the central assumptions of the project, or will the team need to pivot? Next, look for contradictions and tensions to add richness and texture to the research. Synthesis requires neither consistency nor consensus from the research participants. Multiple perspectives can provide meaningful counterpoints to the synthesis story, adding depth and reminding the team that things are rarely white or black in design. Establishing continuums and spectrums to capture the variations will help to define the boundaries of what the team experienced in the field.
8. Remove the extraneous to simplify.
to reduce | to remove | to subtract | to hone
With any challenging design problem, complexity and ambiguity abound. Articulating a clear story empowers others to get excited and take action on the opportunities you uncover. While it might be difficult, leaving extra details on the cutting room floor will enhance the synthesis story. Strip the story to the bare minimum and apply a hierarchy to the information. Nesting evidence under headlines will allow the team to convey the most important aspects of the research while retaining the richness uncovered in the field.
9. Enhance, enhance, enhance–into one story.
to amplify | to enhance | to expand | to enrich
Work with your team to amplify and emphasize the core parts of the synthesis story. Progressively add supporting details and evidence to instill the story with richness. Leverage hindsight while reviewing notes, audio recordings, photos, or videos from the field. Look for pieces of information that now have new resonance in the context of the emerging synthesis story. While folding in these supportive elements, don't forget to consider their emotional or experiential factors. What can you add to make the story more emotive? More visceral? More relatable? More memorable?
A WORD OF WARNING: We can only amplify the story so much while keeping it grounded in the research. Enhancing our findings without supportive evidence runs the risk of crossing the line from enrichment to exaggeration.
10. Focus the synthesis story.
to focus | to connect | to communicate | to tell stories
After exploring multiple structures and perspectives, the final synthesis story will begin to emerge. When reviewing the synthesis story, ask what the big takeaways are? What are unmet or latent needs? How has our understanding changed or evolved? What area surprised us or caused us to see things in a new and expected light? This focused synthesis storyline acts as a unifying force to frame the team's insights, opportunities, and principles.
Onward to ideation
Hopefully, the verb list above acts as a catalyst to guide teams and empower designers to build their practices for making sense out of complexity. Synthesis done well produces rich and actionable perspectives to frame our design efforts. As a project progresses, there will be other opportunities to apply and reapply these actions to combine ideas, integrate systems, and compose messages critical to creating something new.