ART 418 04: Discovery Workshop

Wednesday, September 2, 2026 · Workshop

What design discovery is, from Dan Brown's Practical Design Discovery: the mindset, and how to frame a problem, with the framing canvas and five whys. With it, what makes research credible: sources, costs, and the difference between a claim and evidence. Soleio's talk on designers who ship is assigned today. In the workshop you start your project brief from the template, beginning with the worlds your personal statement named.

Read before this class

- Brown, Practical Design Discovery. chapter 1, Discovery Defined, 16 pp. - Cuervo, The Rise of Designers Who Ship. video, 62 min. Assigned today; watch it before the seminar on Sep 21.

Assigned today

- Reading for The Process So Far, read by Wednesday, September 9, 2026.

Materials

- [The slides](/lecture/art418-s4.html). Discovery, Defined: Brown's book front to back, each chapter on the date its work is due. Arrow keys, or type a slide number and press Enter. - [The slides as a PDF](/lecture/art418-s4.pdf). The same deck to keep, 38 pages, with three slides on Hall ahead of the Sep 9 reading. - [September, in order: the hand-ins and a preview of the pitch](/lecture/art418-september.html). A short deck to keep open: what is due Sep 9, 14, 16 and 21, in what form, and the Sep 21 pitch slide by slide. Also as a PDF at /lecture/art418-september.pdf. - [The pitch, demonstrated once: an invented company](/lecture/art418-pitch-example.html). The whole pitch run once on an invented company, Mise, in the ten-slide form and written as if presenting: the founder's own three slides at the front, the five sections with a title slide each, the boards, the photographs. Nothing in it is real and every invented figure is marked with a dagger; slide 15 is the one that says which parts a demo may make up and a hand-in may not. - [The demonstration as a PDF](/lecture/art418-pitch-example.pdf). The same twenty-nine slides to keep. - [The audience: the fill-in form](/course/business-of-design/handout/form-audience). The blank form. Copy it into section 2 of BRIEF.md. - [The problem statement: the fill-in form](/course/business-of-design/handout/form-problem-statement). The one-page form, blank and then filled in. Export yours as a PDF for Blackboard. - [The boards: the fill-in form](/course/business-of-design/handout/form-boards). What each board page carries. - [The pitch: the fill-in form](/practice/pitch-deck). The ten slides in Brown's five sections, with the next-steps worksheet behind them. - [BRIEF.md, the template](/course/business-of-design/handout/brief-template). The five headings for the project brief you start in class and keep adding to all semester. - [Templates for framing, audience, and the brief](/course/business-of-design/handout/templates). Brown's six traps and objectives, Davis's four dimensions, Hall's interview questions, in the authors' own words. - [The worksheets, three pages to print](/handouts/ART-418-worksheets.pdf). The problem framing canvas, the five whys ladder, and the problem statement check. - [The forms, one packet to print](/handouts/ART-418-forms.pdf). BRIEF.md and the four forms in hand-in order: audience, problem statement, boards, pitch. Each form is a blank sheet and a filled-in sheet. Also one at a time: /handouts/ART-418-form-pitch.pdf and the rest.

---

Class 04 of 28, ART 418, The Business of Design, Charleston Southern University, Fall 2026.