On design - again?

[Peter Jones-3]

Klaus and all - I feel compelled to add something to this conversation.
Perhaps only because, when the JISC mail digest arrived in my inbox, I was
reading a 1996 Krippendorf article and just wondered if the post included
your thoughts, a pure synchronicity of timing. I'm writing a piece that
cites your "Second-order Cybernetics of Otherness."

 

For better or worse, it seems we all must clarify our language, especially
in transdisciplinary discussions. The article I'm writing refers early to
Simon's (1969) definition of design as a universal activity, wherein
"everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones." Social systems and social design should not
be discounted in the current discussion. While perhaps technically
human-centered, there are multiple streams of practice in social design that
have nothing to do with artifacts, technologies, or immediate human
interaction. It is essentially planning for human social betterment by
dialogic means.

 

This view has been reinforced by the recent acknowledgment of organizational
management, citizen activism, and social action campaigns as social design
activities. I believe Simon may have invented the term social design 40
years ago. Young designers often consider this a new trend, but their
meaning of social design is closer to the "design of services for social
relevance." Simon's was that any organized planning with the intent to
improve performance of collective human activity is social design.

 

Another point I'd like to introduce. There has been much interest in "design
thinking" lately, including discussions comparing design and systems
thinking, many of which are not BS.  Some of us have been writing about
design thinking informally (blogs) because it has no credible scholarly
purchase yet. I've been making the case that design thinking can be
considered legitimate, not just a buzzword for designers to elevate their
consultancies. Here's a phrasing some of us may abhor actually using, but we
have few good alternatives given the socially constructed meaning of the
term and its currency.

 

"Capital D" Design can be seen an epistemology, not the methodology of
"small d" design. It's a way of knowing and intervening in the world, and we
attach references to that way of knowing that clarify the shared objects of
design. Human-centred design is a kind of methodology, and we have agreement
about that methodological set today. But if you considered human factors
engineering from the 1960's (or even earlier), they would have claimed the
same territory, that their methods of "human engineering" were indeed
human-centered design methods, in applications to artifacts and systems. So
should any designer be limited by either perspective or methods? The way of
knowing in design is informed by iterative exploration, not scientific
method.

 

For all the many ways of designing that we acknowledge (or fail to
recognize), methods follow a worldview and epistemology that designing "into
the world" is a way of knowing about the world. Good design practice follows
a different kind of rigour than the scholarly or scientific. While there may
be plenty of charlatans about, we also ought to allow students and our own
practices to explore design unknowns at the edges of methodological knowing.
It is like you said in the same 1996 article regarding second order
cybernetics, a re-entry into the very practices we claim to describe (e.g.
design), and thereby creating them.

 

Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.


Founder, Redesign Research

 

Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto

Adjunct Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design

 

http://designdialogues.com 

 

 

[Filippo A. Salustri]

Peter, nice post!  I've added one embedded comment below.
Cheers.
Fil

2009/9/13 Peter Jones <peter@...>

> Klaus and all - I feel compelled to add something to this conversation.
> [...]
>
> For better or worse, it seems we all must clarify our language, especially
> in transdisciplinary discussions. The article I'm writing refers early to
> Simon's (1969) definition of design as a universal activity, wherein
> "everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing
> situations into preferred ones." Social systems and social design should
> not
> be discounted in the current discussion. While perhaps technically
> human-centered, there are multiple streams of practice in social design
> that
> have nothing to do with artifacts, technologies, or immediate human
> interaction. It is essentially planning for human social betterment by
> dialogic means.
>

I've often wondered about what I perceive as some kind of important
difference between professional designers and non-designers who still
design, per Simon's definition.  The nearest I can come to is rather similar
to Alexander's difference between self-conscious and non-self-conscious
societies.  The professional designers are the self-conscious ones: they
know they're designing.  Everyone else who designs doesn't necessarily know
they're designing.  I think this may change how they design, but not that
they are, in fact, designing.

>
> [...]
>
>
> Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.
>
>
> Founder, Redesign Research
>
>
>
> Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto
>
> Adjunct Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design
>
>
>
> http://designdialogues.com
>
>
>
>
>

--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: [phone] ext 7749
Fax: [phone]
Email: salustri@...
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/

[Klaus Krippendorff]

fil,

self-consciousness is a rather ambiguous and entirely mentalistic concept -
like design thinking.  how can you attribute it to someone or deny someone
having it?

i am inviting you to be less mentalistic and i propose that professional
designers have articulable methods at their disposal and can justify to
others what they do and are able to explain what they have accomplished.
lay-designers may have a knack for design, may even do a good job at it, but
are not familiar with design discourse.

self-consciousness is difficult to teach.  but the use of particular methods
and an articulation of how a design was derived at is teachable indeed

klaus  

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Filippo
A. Salustri
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 2:48 PM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

Peter, nice post!  I've added one embedded comment below.
Cheers.
Fil

2009/9/13 Peter Jones <peter@...>

> Klaus and all - I feel compelled to add something to this conversation.
> [...]
>
> For better or worse, it seems we all must clarify our language,
> especially in transdisciplinary discussions. The article I'm writing
> refers early to Simon's (1969) definition of design as a universal
> activity, wherein "everyone designs who devises courses of action
> aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." Social
> systems and social design should not be discounted in the current
> discussion. While perhaps technically human-centered, there are
> multiple streams of practice in social design that have nothing to do
> with artifacts, technologies, or immediate human interaction. It is
> essentially planning for human social betterment by dialogic means.
>

I've often wondered about what I perceive as some kind of important
difference between professional designers and non-designers who still
design, per Simon's definition.  The nearest I can come to is rather similar
to Alexander's difference between self-conscious and non-self-conscious
societies.  The professional designers are the self-conscious ones: they
know they're designing.  Everyone else who designs doesn't necessarily know
they're designing.  I think this may change how they design, but not that
they are, in fact, designing.

>
> [...]
>
>
> Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.
>
>
> Founder, Redesign Research
>
>
>
> Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto
>
> Adjunct Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design
>
>
>
> http://designdialogues.com
>
>
>
>
>

--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: [phone] ext 7749
Fax: [phone]
Email: salustri@...
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/

[Filippo A. Salustri]

Klaus,
I meant self-conscious in the way Alexander writes about it rather
extensively in Notes on the Synthesis of Form.  I didn't mean it in any sort
of dictionary sense.  I used that term because I thought, perhaps
mistakenly, that more people would understand would I meant if I used
Alexander's terms as he meant them, rather than trying to explain it in my
own words.

In my own words, I'd suggest something along the lines of designing
unconsciously - i.e. doing what Simon says design is without knowing that
they're designing.  I would further suggest that when a professional
designer designs, he knows that he's doing it, and does it deliberately, and
is able to reflect on those activities in ways that designing unconsciously
doesn't permit.  Please note that this is still something I'm trying to put
good words to, so I'm not claiming to be completely clear about it.  Yet.

Cheers.
Fil

2009/9/14 Klaus Krippendorff <kkrippendorff@...>

> fil,
>
> self-consciousness is a rather ambiguous and entirely mentalistic concept -
> like design thinking.  how can you attribute it to someone or deny someone
> having it?
>
> i am inviting you to be less mentalistic and i propose that professional
> designers have articulable methods at their disposal and can justify to
> others what they do and are able to explain what they have accomplished.
> lay-designers may have a knack for design, may even do a good job at it,
> but
> are not familiar with design discourse.
>
> self-consciousness is difficult to teach.  but the use of particular
> methods
> and an articulation of how a design was derived at is teachable indeed
>
> klaus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Filippo
> A. Salustri
> Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 2:48 PM
> To: PHD-DESIGN@...
> Subject: Re: On design - again?
>
> Peter, nice post!  I've added one embedded comment below.
> Cheers.
> Fil
>
> 2009/9/13 Peter Jones <peter@...>
>
> > Klaus and all - I feel compelled to add something to this conversation.
> > [...]
> >
> > For better or worse, it seems we all must clarify our language,
> > especially in transdisciplinary discussions. The article I'm writing
> > refers early to Simon's (1969) definition of design as a universal
> > activity, wherein "everyone designs who devises courses of action
> > aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." Social
> > systems and social design should not be discounted in the current
> > discussion. While perhaps technically human-centered, there are
> > multiple streams of practice in social design that have nothing to do
> > with artifacts, technologies, or immediate human interaction. It is
> > essentially planning for human social betterment by dialogic means.
> >
>
> I've often wondered about what I perceive as some kind of important
> difference between professional designers and non-designers who still
> design, per Simon's definition.  The nearest I can come to is rather
> similar
> to Alexander's difference between self-conscious and non-self-conscious
> societies.  The professional designers are the self-conscious ones: they
> know they're designing.  Everyone else who designs doesn't necessarily know
> they're designing.  I think this may change how they design, but not that
> they are, in fact, designing.
>
>
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >
> > Peter H. Jones, Ph.D.
> >
> >
> > Founder, Redesign Research
> >
> >
> >
> > Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto
> >
> > Adjunct Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design
> >
> >
> >
> > http://designdialogues.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
> Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
> Ryerson University
> 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
> M5B 2K3, Canada
> Tel: [phone] ext 7749
> Fax: [phone]
> Email: salustri@...
> http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/ <http://deseng.ryerson.ca/%7Efil/>
>
>

--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: [phone] ext 7749
Fax: [phone]
Email: salustri@...
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Klaus,
Is competence in design discourse relevant at all?
It's not obvious to me that it is an essential aspect of design activity.
Cheers,
terry

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 3:45 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

fil,

self-consciousness is a rather ambiguous and entirely mentalistic concept -
like design thinking.  how can you attribute it to someone or deny someone
having it?

i am inviting you to be less mentalistic and i propose that professional
designers have articulable methods at their disposal and can justify to
others what they do and are able to explain what they have accomplished.
lay-designers may have a knack for design, may even do a good job at it, but
are not familiar with design discourse.

self-consciousness is difficult to teach.  but the use of particular methods
and an articulation of how a design was derived at is teachable indeed

klaus  

[Swanson, Gunnar]

Terence Love [t.love@...] sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 8:24 PM
> Is competence in design discourse relevant at all?
> It's not obvious to me that it is an essential aspect of design activity.

It is obvious to me. The nature of conversations a designer has with clients and other stakeholders shapes the design outcome as much or more than the time spent in front of the computer.

It's been a busy week. Sorry I haven't had time to contribute to the several interwoven threads.

Gunnar
----------
Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville, North Carolina 27858

gunnar@...
[phone]

at East Carolina University:
[phone]
swansong@...

[Klaus Krippendorff]

terry,

yes, of course.

if you can't translate what a client desires into a language that designers
can use to develop what might satisfy these desires, if you can't talk with
your co-designers in ways that coordinates their contribution to a project,
if you can't explain and justify what you propose to your stakeholders, if
you can't talk to your fellow designers about what, how, and why you did
what you did, then you are not a professional designer -- and certainly not
a design teacher.

lay-designers don't need a design discourse.  they usually design for
themselves, rearrange their furniture they way they see fit, cook a great
meal, carve a nice figure from driftwood.  all of this requires much
imagination, but not necessarily coordination with other designers and
stakeholders.

competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer

klaus

 

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Terence
Love
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 8:24 PM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

Hi Klaus,
Is competence in design discourse relevant at all?
It's not obvious to me that it is an essential aspect of design activity.
Cheers,
terry

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 3:45 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

fil,

self-consciousness is a rather ambiguous and entirely mentalistic concept -
like design thinking.  how can you attribute it to someone or deny someone
having it?

i am inviting you to be less mentalistic and i propose that professional
designers have articulable methods at their disposal and can justify to
others what they do and are able to explain what they have accomplished.
lay-designers may have a knack for design, may even do a good job at it, but
are not familiar with design discourse.

self-consciousness is difficult to teach.  but the use of particular methods
and an articulation of how a design was derived at is teachable indeed

klaus  

[Keith Russell]

Dear Klaus

you wrote

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I agree but then I realize this same negative definition of a not-designer can easily become the positive definition of a genius.

cheers

keith

[Klaus Krippendorff]

yes,
keith,
nothing is as definite as a definition claim it is, which is why i avoid
them.
but in your particular case, i have never met a genius who could not make a
compelling case of his or her geniality to others.  
klaus

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Russell [mailto:Keith.Russell@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 12:07 AM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

Dear Klaus

you wrote

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I agree but then I realize this same negative definition of a not-designer
can easily become the positive definition of a genius.

cheers

keith

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Klaus,

Thanks for your message.
You say 'Of Course' [design is an essential element of design activity] -
I'm not so certain.
My feeling is that thinking professionally as a design researcher requires
looking at the situation in a bit more depth.

Before I suggest it could be different, I'd like to raise two issues and do
this through an 'intro' and a 'thinky bit'

---Intro---
Of the two ideas, the first is the matter of how professional bias occurs in
how we view the world. Often this is stated  'To a hammer, everything looks
like a nail'. The underlying idea is that the hammer can only see the world
through the interaction of what a hammer does. In other words, sociologists
look at the world primarily through a lens that focuses on the sociological
aspects of the situation. Linguists focus of the language or discourse
aspects of a situation, Aestheticists focus on the aesthetics of a situation
etc.

The second is the notion that any idea has to have some boundary between it
and everything else. That is,  talking about 'something' assumes it  is
different from things  that are 'not the something'. For example, fish are
not bicycles.

The two ideas combine in ways  one can then look at different aspects of
bias in theory making. So, on one hand,  one can look at the biases in the
way a group of sociologists (or linguists)  look at fish and see in it the
way that their lens of viewing and their theory discourse overemphasizes
social interactions, group identity and other sociological dimensions (or
the communications between fish (fishy talk), e.g.  for linguists) and
simultaneously ignores or plays down other aspects of the situation such as
the aesthetics of fish or the biology of the fish (or views these through
the lens of sociology!).

Similarly, one can look at biases in how these biases shape how sociologists
define what is fish and what is 'not fish' (or bicycles and 'not bicycles').

More interestingly, one can also look at how the one-eyed lens of
sociologists  (or  linguists, aestheticists or other professional group)
results in a  biased view of the idea  of 'being and not being' (i.e. the
_idea_ itself of how something is seen as a something and everything else is
'not that something'). This is in effect the Theory of Knowledge applied to
the Sociology of Ontology. To put it more simply, it is  the study of how
theory is made with the assumption that the academic field one is in shapes
how one sees the beingness of something (for beingness substitute 'how one
defines something').
---

---Thinky bit---
How does this apply to design research?
First, applying this to design research one would expect that sociologists
and linguists would:
1) over emphasis the social aspects of design activity
2) try to claim that other dimensions of design activity were less relevant
than the bits they focus on
3) would define social interactions and discourse as the central and
essential features of design and design research
4) Would identify what is design and what is not design in terms of a social
group (e.g. professional designers) or a particular language or discourse
5) Would shy away from formal definitions in order to place the weight of
definitions in the hands of a social group or of a discourse
6) Would claim that the only way one could define concepts such as design
would be in terms of the underlying ontology and epistemological positions
of sociology and linguistics
7) Would use the power plays and claims of 'authority' that they could
derive from insisting that discussions only focused  around the ideas of
social groups and language

The intended effect is a biased  illusion of an apparently fully-justified
theory picture of design activity and design research that offers benefits
to sociologists and linguists. The behaviour of other professional groups
involved in design and design research follows much the same path. This is
one of the reasons why there is so much parochialism in the design
literature and why the idea of a single view of design activity across all
sub-fields is difficult.

Second, is the issue of what is design activity and what is not design
activity.
A reasonable epistemological position is that 'whatever criteria are used to
identify t the  essential concepts of design theory, then the same criteria
apply to all concepts'.
By implication , a test of these criteria is how they also include and
exclude other concepts.
The concept of 'discourse' provides an example. The intro above suggests
some questions:
1) Is discourse an activity in it is own right that is essentially distinct
from design activity but is used by designers (like say, thinking, searching
for information, using paper to draw on and using a computer)?  
2) Is 'discourse' a central and essential  component of design activity in
the sense that absolutely NO  design activity can occur without discourse?
3) Is discourse claimed as being  central due to biases that offer benefits
to one or more  professional academic groups?

One way of thinking about this is to ask whether the same reasons for seeing
'discourse' as central also includes things that would be regarded as silly.
I suggest that the same reasoning that leads to discourse being regarded as
central to design theory and design research if applied to other activities
would also include as central to design theory 'sweeping the design studio',
'making cups of tea', 'taking money to the bank' and all other activities
that designers do and are 'essential' to the activity.

On a slightly different tack, I'm currently designing several eco-houses and
co-housing arrangements for speculative build. The core aspects of the
design work involve national and international standards and data from the
research of others. It's a large-scale design project yet there is
negligible 'design discourse - I rarely talk with myself.

On these grounds, I suggest that 'discourse' is better viewed as an
ancillary parallel activity (more like a tool) along with  a more tightly
identified understanding of design activity that is unlinked in definition
and in conceptualization from the views, interpretations and practices  of
professional groups  of people.

In other words, I feel the above suggests there are significant benefits for
design research and design activity from  de-sociologising (what a word!)
and de-languaging (another great word!) design.

All the best,
Terry

==
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226
Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel/Fax: [phone]
Mobile: [phone]
t.love@...
www.love.com.au
===


-----Original Message-----
Klaus:
yes, of course.

if you can't translate what a client desires into a language that designers
can use to develop what might satisfy these desires, if you can't talk with
your co-designers in ways that coordinates their contribution to a project,
if you can't explain and justify what you propose to your stakeholders, if
you can't talk to your fellow designers about what, how, and why you did
what you did, then you are not a professional designer -- and certainly not
a design teacher.
...
competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer

-----Original Message-----

Terry:
Is competence in design discourse relevant at all?
It's not obvious to me that it is an essential aspect of design activity.

[Filippo A. Salustri]

Klaus, Terry, et al,

2009/9/14 Klaus Krippendorff <kkrippendorff@...>

> terry,
>
> yes, of course.
>
> [...]
>
> lay-designers don't need a design discourse.  they usually design for
> themselves, rearrange their furniture they way they see fit, cook a great
> meal, carve a nice figure from driftwood.  all of this requires much
> imagination, but not necessarily coordination with other designers and
> stakeholders.
>
> competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
> education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
> can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer
>

So, lay-designers aren't designers.  I'm looking at the term "lay designer"
as a specialization of the term "designer," which is a pretty natural way to
consider the 2 terms.  I /think/ Klaus thinks of the two groups - "lay
designers" and "designers" - as being disjoint (or nearly so).  Whereas I
consider "lay designers" to denote a subset of "designers."

And what about people who have a natural talent in discourse?  Of course
they are in a relative minority, but mightn't some of them make good "lay
designers" with reasonable design discourse skills?

Cheers.
Fil.


> klaus
>
[...]


--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: [phone] ext 7749
Fax: [phone]
Email: salustri@...
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Klaus,

My apologies. A word in the second line of my earlier post  should have read
''discourse' rather than 'design',
"You say 'Of Course' [discourse is an essential element of design activity]"
Rather than
"You say 'Of Course' [design is an essential element of design activity]"
Best regards,
Terry


-----Original Message-----
Terry:

Hi Klaus,

Thanks for your message.
You say 'Of Course' [design is an essential element of design activity] -
I'm not so certain.
My feeling is that thinking professionally as a design researcher requires
looking at the situation in a bit more depth.

[Peter Jones-3]

I've not much time before the first day of a Toronto conference (IDEA),
allow me a couple of additions here. I've enjoyed the discourse that has
emerged among the 4 or so participants here. I'm an old reader but a new
contributor. For those of you on the Transforming Transformation list as I
am, this is a somewhat deeper dive into a particular thread than we would
usually produce there. Terry's most recent response to Klaus will take a
little more time for me to process - let me say I truly appreciate the
inquiry.

Fil raises an interesting question about design professionals skilled in
forms of design discourse, but much less so craft skill. I've observed the
trend among consulting, creative agencies, and web design/strategy firms
that many consultants in design capacities, especially "experience design"
have little or no design education or even prior work experience in
designing products and services. They have the ability to articulate a given
set of methods and the organizational capacity to mediate different
contributing activities in a team. After a year or two, an English degree
and the ability to communicate has evolved a designer.

Do they think like designers? Perhaps. They are self-consciously integrating
design proposals for clients and teams. Do they contribute to the
progression of design disciplines? Probably not.

Take the practice of user experience, which has become less driven by field
and human research and more driven by methodology. If a compelling narrative
about users can replace interviews with actual people, we start to lose the
basis of evidence for designing decisions.

This is another valid way to consider the practices of lay designers, as lay
discoursers whose discourse merely articulates methodology. This is similar
to what JR Saul in Voltaire's Bastards describes as the MBA mentality,
schooled in the rhetoric and practices of technique but not the values or
understanding of the domain toward which one's design contributions are
ultimately intended.

Peter

>

So, lay-designers aren't designers.  I'm looking at the term "lay designer"
as a specialization of the term "designer," which is a pretty natural way to
consider the 2 terms.  I /think/ Klaus thinks of the two groups - "lay
designers" and "designers" - as being disjoint (or nearly so).  Whereas I
consider "lay designers" to denote a subset of "designers."

And what about people who have a natural talent in discourse?  Of course
they are in a relative minority, but mightn't some of them make good "lay
designers" with reasonable design discourse skills?

Cheers.
Fil.


> klaus
>
[...]


--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: [phone] ext 7749
Fax: [phone]
Email: salustri@...
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/

[Klaus Krippendorff]

Terry,
We had this argument before albeit in different clothes.  

Regarding your introduction:
You conceptualize language and discourse as something separable from the activities of those speaking and from what you think it represents.  So you talk about biases which implies you know and have access to what is unbiased and objectively true.  I don't.  sure, we notice differences between a sociologist seeing and theorizing the world and how designers perceive and act in the world.  But who is biased relative to the other, and who decides? You?  It is when a designer meets a sociologist that they start recognizing how different the other views the world and where their respective competencies are.  When trying to understand what designers do one needs to ask them what they are good at, not search for biases and truths.

Regarding your thinking bit, I am less clear if I can follow your arguments.  You ask how sociologists and linguists would see design research.  O.k. but what is the relevance of their view to design or design research.  Similarly historians of design have mastered the discourse of history and apply it to what designers do or have done.  This is their discourse.  Why do you link it to design as a discursive activity?

Then you ask three questions about what discourse is and conclude from each of them that it is an ancillary or parallel activity to design.

I just don't share your view of language have written about it (you said you read my the semantic turn) and we have argued about this in the past.  To me discourse is not just talk ABOUT something, it is coordinating meanings with others regarding what one does. Creating scientific evidence is part of what scientific discourse enables.  Creating artifacts that are considered designs is what design discourse does.  Even animals change the world.  We all do things that impact the world, but unless we talk of these as design, they aren't design.

Indeed, design discourse seems to me an essential part of design, especially nowadays where designers rarely are stranded on an island affecting nobody else.  That lone island occupant doesn't need to be a designers because s/he has no other people to distinguish themselves from or other stakeholders to serve or affect.

klaus

-----Original Message-----
From: Terence Love [mailto:t.love@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:02 AM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: RE: On design - again?

Hi Klaus,

Thanks for your message.
You say 'Of Course' [design is an essential element of design activity] -
I'm not so certain.
My feeling is that thinking professionally as a design researcher requires
looking at the situation in a bit more depth.

Before I suggest it could be different, I'd like to raise two issues and do
this through an 'intro' and a 'thinky bit'

---Intro---
Of the two ideas, the first is the matter of how professional bias occurs in
how we view the world. Often this is stated  'To a hammer, everything looks
like a nail'. The underlying idea is that the hammer can only see the world
through the interaction of what a hammer does. In other words, sociologists
look at the world primarily through a lens that focuses on the sociological
aspects of the situation. Linguists focus of the language or discourse
aspects of a situation, Aestheticists focus on the aesthetics of a situation
etc.

The second is the notion that any idea has to have some boundary between it
and everything else. That is,  talking about 'something' assumes it  is
different from things  that are 'not the something'. For example, fish are
not bicycles.

The two ideas combine in ways  one can then look at different aspects of
bias in theory making. So, on one hand,  one can look at the biases in the
way a group of sociologists (or linguists)  look at fish and see in it the
way that their lens of viewing and their theory discourse overemphasizes
social interactions, group identity and other sociological dimensions (or
the communications between fish (fishy talk), e.g.  for linguists) and
simultaneously ignores or plays down other aspects of the situation such as
the aesthetics of fish or the biology of the fish (or views these through
the lens of sociology!).

Similarly, one can look at biases in how these biases shape how sociologists
define what is fish and what is 'not fish' (or bicycles and 'not bicycles').

More interestingly, one can also look at how the one-eyed lens of
sociologists  (or  linguists, aestheticists or other professional group)
results in a  biased view of the idea  of 'being and not being' (i.e. the
_idea_ itself of how something is seen as a something and everything else is
'not that something'). This is in effect the Theory of Knowledge applied to
the Sociology of Ontology. To put it more simply, it is  the study of how
theory is made with the assumption that the academic field one is in shapes
how one sees the beingness of something (for beingness substitute 'how one
defines something').
---

---Thinky bit---
How does this apply to design research?
First, applying this to design research one would expect that sociologists
and linguists would:
1) over emphasis the social aspects of design activity
2) try to claim that other dimensions of design activity were less relevant
than the bits they focus on
3) would define social interactions and discourse as the central and
essential features of design and design research
4) Would identify what is design and what is not design in terms of a social
group (e.g. professional designers) or a particular language or discourse
5) Would shy away from formal definitions in order to place the weight of
definitions in the hands of a social group or of a discourse
6) Would claim that the only way one could define concepts such as design
would be in terms of the underlying ontology and epistemological positions
of sociology and linguistics
7) Would use the power plays and claims of 'authority' that they could
derive from insisting that discussions only focused  around the ideas of
social groups and language

The intended effect is a biased  illusion of an apparently fully-justified
theory picture of design activity and design research that offers benefits
to sociologists and linguists. The behaviour of other professional groups
involved in design and design research follows much the same path. This is
one of the reasons why there is so much parochialism in the design
literature and why the idea of a single view of design activity across all
sub-fields is difficult.

Second, is the issue of what is design activity and what is not design
activity.
A reasonable epistemological position is that 'whatever criteria are used to
identify t the  essential concepts of design theory, then the same criteria
apply to all concepts'.
By implication , a test of these criteria is how they also include and
exclude other concepts.
The concept of 'discourse' provides an example. The intro above suggests
some questions:
1) Is discourse an activity in it is own right that is essentially distinct
from design activity but is used by designers (like say, thinking, searching
for information, using paper to draw on and using a computer)?  
2) Is 'discourse' a central and essential  component of design activity in
the sense that absolutely NO  design activity can occur without discourse?
3) Is discourse claimed as being  central due to biases that offer benefits
to one or more  professional academic groups?

One way of thinking about this is to ask whether the same reasons for seeing
'discourse' as central also includes things that would be regarded as silly.
I suggest that the same reasoning that leads to discourse being regarded as
central to design theory and design research if applied to other activities
would also include as central to design theory 'sweeping the design studio',
'making cups of tea', 'taking money to the bank' and all other activities
that designers do and are 'essential' to the activity.

On a slightly different tack, I'm currently designing several eco-houses and
co-housing arrangements for speculative build. The core aspects of the
design work involve national and international standards and data from the
research of others. It's a large-scale design project yet there is
negligible 'design discourse - I rarely talk with myself.

On these grounds, I suggest that 'discourse' is better viewed as an
ancillary parallel activity (more like a tool) along with  a more tightly
identified understanding of design activity that is unlinked in definition
and in conceptualization from the views, interpretations and practices  of
professional groups  of people.

In other words, I feel the above suggests there are significant benefits for
design research and design activity from  de-sociologising (what a word!)
and de-languaging (another great word!) design.

All the best,
Terry

==
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226
Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel/Fax: [phone]
Mobile: [phone]
t.love@...
www.love.com.au
===


-----Original Message-----
Klaus:
yes, of course.

if you can't translate what a client desires into a language that designers
can use to develop what might satisfy these desires, if you can't talk with
your co-designers in ways that coordinates their contribution to a project,
if you can't explain and justify what you propose to your stakeholders, if
you can't talk to your fellow designers about what, how, and why you did
what you did, then you are not a professional designer -- and certainly not
a design teacher.
...
competence in the use of a design discourse is what you acquire in design
education.  if you don't talk like a designer, can't think like a designer,
can't work with others as a designer, you  are not a designer

-----Original Message-----

Terry:
Is competence in design discourse relevant at all?
It's not obvious to me that it is an essential aspect of design activity.

[Benjamin Pratt]

A few quick points:
1. I believe listening is a more important skill than speaking, but
this is not normally taught, nor practiced.
2. In grad school, I realized that many of my peers were poor
designers, but were able to make their work sound good because of
their speaking skills. At some point, I decided to try to design so
well that I had to say very little--letting my designs speak for
themselves. I believe that made me a stronger designer.
3. Some designers are great salespeople--to the point of being con
artists. They may be successful, but I don't respect them.
-Ben
Professor
UW-Stout

[Charles Burnette]

On Sep 15, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

> We all do things that impact the world, but unless we talk of these  
> as design, they aren't design.

Klaus: You have argued previously against intentionality in design.  
It seems  to me that you have a contradiction here. To talk  of  
something as design is to take an intentional stance in that regard.  
However, I like the idea that if we talk of how we deliberately impact  
the world we are talking about design.  Note the key word is  
deliberately, ie intentionally, purposefully. Chuck

[Klaus Krippendorff]

chuck,

i didn't really want to get into mentalism and avoided the word
intentionality.  all i wanted to say that the meaning of the word design is
manifest in its use.  there are many discourse in which the word design has
particular meanings, such as when you are asked to pay more for a
merchandise, or when psychologists say they have designed an experiment to
test a scientific hypothesis.  we can't legislate the use of the word design
outside of our community of professional designers and i find it futile to
develop a super theory that embraces every use of the word design.

what we professional designers have in common is a way of talking, drawing,
presenting, and coordinating our actions with others or in the service of
others and we teach, develop, utilize and identify ourselves with this
competence. -- and to respond to terry, this way of languaging is not
separate from what we are doing.

regarding your cherished concept of intentionality, i was suggesting instead
that designers are accountable to others for the changes they propose.  we
can develop design methods as ways of accounting for design activities --
which i have done in the semantic turn -- but i find it difficult to develop
methods for being intentional.

nice to hear from you again

klaus  

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Burnette [mailto:charlesburnette@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:26 PM
To: Klaus Krippendorff
Cc: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?


On Sep 15, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

> We all do things that impact the world, but unless we talk of these as
> design, they aren't design.

Klaus: You have argued previously against intentionality in design.  
It seems  to me that you have a contradiction here. To talk  of something as
design is to take an intentional stance in that regard.  
However, I like the idea that if we talk of how we deliberately impact the
world we are talking about design.  Note the key word is deliberately, ie
intentionally, purposefully. Chuck

[Lubomir Savov Popov]

Dear Klaus,

I have always appreciated your original thinking and your admirable achievements. That is why I am often puzzled by the extravagant positions you take. I have no problem with your positions as long as you and all of us understand the limits of their heuristic potential and area of applicability. Actually, they are very interesting and heuristic. But if they are absolutized, then something strange happens.

We can have as many definitions of design as the aspects we envisage. I am not an extreme relativist, but I value different points of view in terms of different aspects and approaches. However, absolutizing one point of view and one approach to the level that it has always be applied and rigorously defended might not always be productive.

I would like to mention that the view of design as a purposeful and intentional action is fundamental for understanding design. In historical materialist philosophy this characteristic of design constitutes the major demarcation line between the instinctive behavior of animals (beaver dam building) and human purposeful action.

I also believe that a general theory of design is possible. My former dissertation advisor and boss, a philosopher and methodologist of science, has achieved pretty good progress in that area. He almost managed to define the conditions under which such a theory is possible and how it is possible. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, he run out of time and resources to finalize that work and to disseminate it through publications.

A linguistic and communications perspective, stemming from philosophy of language, might be very productive in many situations, but an indiscriminate application to all situations might not always be the best way to conceptualize the realm of design.

I think that the issue is not what is design defined in one term. The issue how to conceptualize design in respect to problem situations, social agendas, and epistemological criteria.

Defining a behavior as a design action just because we justify it and make it accountable might bring some benefits in some situations, but it can also be quite misleading in many situations. We can justify post factum and provide accountability in many instances of instinctive and not intentional behavior. Actually, the rationalization techniques that humans use to explain and justify their actions exemplify this.

The big issue is not about intentionality. It is axiomatic. The big issue is about professionalization. Is the visualization of a layperson about their bedroom decoration a design? Or, only the work of a "professional" designer is design? (What is professional?). If all human everyday exploratory activity is called research, then what is research as a professionalized activity? Do we have seven billion researchers on this planet? And here I want to stop before straying away from the topic.

Yours very friendly,

Lubomir

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:PHD-DESIGN@...] On Behalf Of Klaus Krippendorff
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 12:26 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?

chuck,

i didn't really want to get into mentalism and avoided the word
intentionality.  all i wanted to say that the meaning of the word design is
manifest in its use.  there are many discourse in which the word design has
particular meanings, such as when you are asked to pay more for a
merchandise, or when psychologists say they have designed an experiment to
test a scientific hypothesis.  we can't legislate the use of the word design
outside of our community of professional designers and i find it futile to
develop a super theory that embraces every use of the word design.

what we professional designers have in common is a way of talking, drawing,
presenting, and coordinating our actions with others or in the service of
others and we teach, develop, utilize and identify ourselves with this
competence. -- and to respond to terry, this way of languaging is not
separate from what we are doing.

regarding your cherished concept of intentionality, i was suggesting instead
that designers are accountable to others for the changes they propose.  we
can develop design methods as ways of accounting for design activities --
which i have done in the semantic turn -- but i find it difficult to develop
methods for being intentional.

nice to hear from you again

klaus  

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Burnette [mailto:charlesburnette@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:26 PM
To: Klaus Krippendorff
Cc: PHD-DESIGN@...
Subject: Re: On design - again?


On Sep 15, 2009, at 4:01 PM, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

> We all do things that impact the world, but unless we talk of these as
> design, they aren't design.

Klaus: You have argued previously against intentionality in design.  
It seems  to me that you have a contradiction here. To talk  of something as
design is to take an intentional stance in that regard.  
However, I like the idea that if we talk of how we deliberately impact the
world we are talking about design.  Note the key word is deliberately, ie
intentionally, purposefully. Chuck

[Terence Love-2]

Hi Klaus,

I'm genuinely puzzled about where you are coming from.

From my own experiences over four decades, I've designed in many different
areas of design: some in 'Art and Design, sometimes in Engineering Design
with lots of maths, sometimes programming, sometimes processes and services
, and sometimes in 'other' areas of design (for example, designing crime
prevention strategies involving interagency collaboration).

My experience has been that designing has been much the same  in all these
very different sub-fields of design.

Sure, sometimes the content knowledge is  a bit different between areas and
sometimes the way people talk about design is a bit different.

These are pretty superficial issues that in my experience have not been
particularly central to the design activity itself.

The design activity and the experiences of 'doing design' are essentially
the same (a bit of functionality, a bit of emotional stuff, a bit of
useability, a bit of new knowledge, a bit of actualization, some quality
management, some communication, some modeling, etc).

My experience has been that although some  sociological, cultural and
linguistic issues are there round the edges, they are  easy to address and
don't make much  significant difference to the main flow  of design
activity.

So, I'm really puzzled as to why you feel that design has to be seen solely
in terms of the social interactions and language, and solely in terms of one
specific professional group of designers.

Warm regards,

Terry

[Mattias Arvola]

Peter,

a compelling narrative is a means for expression that serves the purpose of engaging
designers and other stakeholders and creating sympathy or empathy.

Interviews are a means for gathering empirical material.

They simply don't service the same purposes. We (the interaction- and service design
research group at Linköping University) has for a long time used compelling narratives to
communicate research data, for instance communicating a perceived problem to solve.
This also means that you get a problem statement that has the same form as a narrative
that depicts a desirable future, and this means that you can place them side by side for
comparison and judgement.

So, if people mix up interviews and compelling narratives, someone in the educational
system has failed. The two are not of the same kind.

Best regards,
// Mattias
--
Mattias Arvola, Ph.D.
Sr. lecturer in Interaction Design.
Linköping University and Södertörn University.
www.arvola.se



Peter Jones wrote:

>Take the practice of user experience, which has become less driven by field
>and human research and more driven by methodology. If a compelling narrative
>about users can replace interviews with actual people, we start to lose the
>basis of evidence for designing decisions.
>