Dear Sid,
Here I will respond to the second part of your post of
[Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:06:39: Subject: Re: Bicycle Knowledge
(coffee topic?)]. I will deal with matters relating to
the first part in a (latter) response to Terry's recent
post [Sat, 14 Oct 2000 19:58:05: Subject: Roots of theories
about designing]
First, thanks for your thoughtful and considered reply to
my questions.
You said:
"I dispute your classification of first-person
understanding as being soft, if this suggests that
first-person understanding is somehow secondary to
(not as good as) the explicit knowledge I presume
you would class as hard understanding. I subscribe
to the view that our primary form of understanding
is the first-person, embodied understanding gained
through doing."
I must have written something I did not mean to say. I did
not want to suggest that I think first-person understanding
(knowing) is soft, and certainly I do not think it is
somehow secondary to explicit knowledge. I subscribe,
like you, to the view that first-person understanding
(knowing) gained by doing is the primary form of knowing.
No. What worries me is that second-order first person
understanding of designing, gained by watching, is a kind
of understanding, but not an understanding of designing.
At least, it is not a kind of understanding of designing that
is easily related to a first-person understanding (knowing) of
designing.
I am being quite strong and provocative here. I quite
deliberately want to challenge the Dogma of Design
Research; that the way to understand designing is to
observe designers designing. This dogma would be
relatively harmless if designers still trained and learned
how to do designing by doing, but more and more we try to
teach students how to do designing by telling and showing
them things based up on the results of our design research.
In other words, based upon an understanding gained by
watching people do designing. It is a less costly kind of
teaching!
This is why I think Klaus's question is so important:
"... we can talk about design without knowing
whether we can do it. but what is it that
one is then describing?"
In challenging the Dogma of Design Research, I do
now want to say that I think that there is no relationship
between an understanding (knowing) gained form
watching designers designing and an understanding
(knowing) gained by doing designing. What I want to
say is that I think this relationship is a lot more
complicated and difficult to use than it generally
understood (known). I think that good observation-based
understanding of designing, if carefully used, may be
good for preparing students to learn how to do designing
(by doing), but I don't think it can ever be used to
successfully teach them to be designers.
Designing, is by the way, not unique in this. Lots of
other things people can get good at doing are the same.
Computer programming is another good example. You
cannot simply teach people to be good programmers,
they need to do programming---they need to become
good programmers by doing. You can teach them things
which help them become good programmers as a result
of programming, but the teaching has an enabling role
here, not a (more traditional) primary forming role.
So, my position is perhaps even stronger than yours.
First-person understanding (gained by doing) is not just
primary, it is exclusive; it is the only kind of
understanding that there is sufficient to enable the doing.
No amount of second-order first person understanding
of designing, no matter how good, will form designers.
You teach design. What do you have to say to this?
Best regards,
Tim
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|