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"Uncertainty is not a mood. It is the dark matter of the problem space, invisible but holding everything together. Designers who learn to chart it stop mistaking silence for emptiness."
- Before the Solution
Design is a deeply human capability, and it is increasingly practised through tools, templates, and AI that can generate polished solutions at speed and scale. The risk is a profession whose outputs look right yet lack depth, character, and humanity. If you have ever felt your process is "correct" but your outcomes are interchangeable, the gap is rarely in the tools. It is in what comes before them.
Before the Solution helps you build the practice between projects. Written for early-career designers and students, and useful to anyone working in tool-heavy settings, it focuses on the part of practice you can train without a brief in front of you: how you sit with a problem before reaching for a template, how you let a prototype change the question rather than just refine the answer, how you decide what to ignore, and how you stay in charge of the work when AI is in the room.
The book is organised around six chapters on living with the recurring companions of design work: the discipline, the people, the problems, the solutions, the AI, and yourself. These are not stages to complete. They are vantage points to return to, each treated as a set of habits to build. Short narratives and distilled research from design cognition sit alongside a restrained visual language intended for return visits, not single reads.
The distinction Before the Solution draws is between design as production and design as practice. Methods and AI will keep getting better at production. Practice, the framing, the trade-offs, the intent behind a decision, is where designers still make the difference, and it is trainable
PUBLISHER BIS Publishers
FORMAT 220 x 170 mm
EXTENT 196 pages
LAUNCH November 2026
AUDIENCE Design students, early-career designers, educators, and tool-heavy creative teams
About the Author:
Dr Morteza Pourmohamadi is an award-winning design educator, leader, and researcher whose work sits at the intersection of design practice and design cognition. He holds a PhD in Design Computing and Cognition from the University of Sydney, where he currently teaches design studios. Over two decades of university teaching, he has taught thousands of students.
Beyond teaching, he has worked with governors, academic leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners, helping them navigate complex challenges through creativity, design, and systematic thinking. He founded Iran's first Faculty of Design, developed products and services, and helped startups realise their vision.
His research on design protocol studies and computational models of design cognition has been published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Before the Solution is his first book, drawing together two decades of practice and research into habits designers can train between projects.
Design is a deeply human capability, increasingly practised through systems that can make answers look finished before the question is understood. The risk is a profession whose outputs look right yet lack depth, character, and humanity.
The book is for designers who sense that gap. It focuses on how to sit with a problem before reaching for a template, how to let an idea change the question rather than simply refine the answer, and how to stay in charge of the work when AI is in the room.
The habits behind the methods
Most design books teach tools, frameworks, and workflows. This book focuses on what makes those methods actually work: the cognitive habits of framing, reflecting, and deciding that turn a method from a template into an informed choice.
Practice that begins before the brief
The book strengthens the parts of design you can train between projects, without a client, studio task, or deadline, so the next brief lands on stronger ground.
A timely response to AI in the studio
As AI produces polished solutions at speed and scale, the designer's edge shifts to judgement, intent, and the ability to explain a decision.
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