EDITOR Hugh Dubberly [e-mail]

The Analysis-Synthesis
Bridge Model
Hugh Dubberly

Dubberly Design Office | [e-mail]

Shelley Evenson

Carnegie Mellon University | [e-mail]

Rick Robinson

Design Continuum | [e-mail]

The simplest way to describe the design process is to divide it into two phases: analysis and synthesis. Or preparation and inspiration. But those descriptions miss a crucial element—the connection between the two, the active move from one state to another, the transition or transformation that is at the heart of designing. How do designers move from analysis to synthesis? From problem to solution? From current situation to preferred future? From research to concept? From constituent needs to proposed response? From context to form?

How do designers bridge the gap?

The bridge model illustrates one way of thinking about the path from analysis to synthesis—the way in which the use of models to frame research results acts as a basis for framing possible futures. It says something more than “then the other thing happens.” It shows how designers and researchers move up through a level of analysis in order to move forward through time to the next desired state. And models act as the vehicle for that move.

The bridge model is organized as a two-by-two matrix. The left column represents analysis (the problem, current situation, research, constituent needs, context). The right column represents synthesis (the solution, preferred future, concept, proposed response, form). The bottom row represents the concrete world we inhabit or could inhabit. The top row represents abstractions, models of what is or what could be, which we imagine and share with others.

Ideally, the design process begins in the lower-

Researching Interpret Abstract

Prototyping

Model of what “is”

suggest

Model of
what
“could be”

Describe Concrete

distilled to

manifest as

What “is”

What
“could be”

Existing – Implicit (Current)

Preferred – Explicit (Future)

Analysis-synthesis bridge model

left quadrant with observation and investigation— an inventory (or description) of the current situation. As the process moves forward, it moves to the upper-left quadrant. We make sense of research by analysis, filtering data we collect to highlight points we decide are important or using tools we’re comfortable with to sort, priori-tize, and order. We frame the current situation, but move out of the strictly concrete. We define the problem. We interpret. Analysis begins as thoughtful reflection on the present and contin-

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