Erik, Bryn, Friends,

Erik Stolterman's note and Bryn Tellefsen's note occasion thoughts on
research funding and the relationship of philosophy and design.

Erik wrote, "To me the big battles are not to be found within our own
community, the big task is to convince the rest of the world (out
there) that design is its own unique approach, a fundamental way by
which we change the world. Design needs to be treated with
philosophical means. We need to join our forces to make design a
visible and understandable alternative to other ways of approaching
the world."

Bryn responded in terms of the implications of research funding,
noting "increasing efforts by governments to dictate what research
their funding should support. Through matching funding, they also
direct to a large extent private research funding. Even basic
research funding is tied into national strategies for development.
The direction is towards supporting high priority applied research
areas, while basic research receives less of the total funding."

Bryn noted that the terms arts, design, and designing, do not occur
in research and policy strategy documents.

Bryn suggested a thread on funding strategies, "Right now it looks
like designers in the future will have to go to their academic
colleagues in other field begging to become a part of their research
activities. . . . Many disciplines are mentioned as having priority
because of their supposed importance for supporting the political
agenda. That includes environment, biotech, social sciences, and many
other disciplines. Research across functions, disciplines,
institutions and national borders are heavily encouraged."

These two threads occasion seven notes.

- - - > Three principles

1) Philosophy

Philosophical thinking requires relatively little funding.

Developing a philosophical treatment of design requires time,
intelligence, knowledge, and application. Support involves a basic
salary, a good library, a modest book budget, and access to the
Internet.

Given these, we need relatively little funding to get on with our work.

2) Explanation

Developing philosophical treatment for design involves establishing a
serious range of philosophical approaches.

To articulate these for our own purposes is the first step in
explaining design to other fields and disciplines.

3) The practical value of explanation

Developing a robust philosophy of design and explaining it well will
help to make the value of design clear to other fields.

If we do not wish to beg for allies, we must articulate the values we
offer a deeper and more profound way than we have done so far.

We also require effective approaches to marketing ourselves as
valuable research partners.

- - - > Three implications

4) An implication of philosophy

Philosophical treatments of design require that we welcome and employ
scholars who do basic research.

Working scholars normally do basic research in a faculty position.
The design field employs few people who this kind of work.

To generate philosophical treatment, design departments must employ
more scholars. These positions must require research and allow the
time that research requires.

The need for courses in research methods, and in scientific,
scholarly, and philosophical subjects is leading to a growing number
of appropriate positions.

One challenge involves establishing positions and filling them well.

Another challenge involves addressing such issues as culture change,
curriculum change, team building, and organizational learning.

Some design schools have successfully integrated scholarship and
science with significant results. The record of these successes can
be contrasted with disasters elsewhere. The difference involves
systemic thinking to rebuild department around the needs of a new
time.

5) An implication of an interdisciplinary field

As an interdisciplinary field, design is an ideal partner for many of
the kinds of programs being funded. The skill set in demand in many
funding programs means that properly trained designers ought to be in
high demand.

This involves individuals who understand design as a thinking process
embracing multiple kinds of skill and knowledge.

A properly trained designer is more than an artisan who gives
physical form to ideas. The outcome of design is not a physical
artifact, but a conceptual plan. Some plans lead to physical
artifacts.

One of my first jobs was in the publishing industry. I worked for a
book designer who had risen to the presidency of a publishing firm.
This man explained that the serious designers with whom he had been
trained distinguished between what they called a designer, and a
person whom they called a mechanical.

A designer, he said, was a person who understood every aspect of book
design. Some issues were basic and physical. These included such
skills as counting type, casting off, and developing a maquette.
Other skills were conceptual. These included understanding the
relationship of content to structure, or recognizing how paragraphing
and chapter formation helps or hinders the flow of ideas. Still other
skills involved publishing functions. These included developing
covers for good marketing, choosing illustrations, or selecting an
illustrator. Many of these functions bordered on editorial decisions
and depending on the project, the editor's task and the designers
might overlap. Designers who understood all these issues held valued
positions. They worked with and across the other publishing
disciplines. These designers were involved in every aspect of the
book production process. A design was a planner and thinker.

Distinct from the designer, he said, there was a necessary but
low-level production function held by people known as mechanicals.
Mechanicals were artisans with handicraft skills in the different
functions of physical design production. These functions included
layout, paste-up, type management, and other physical or mechanical
functions. These were carried out on the instruction of a designer
and under the supervision of the designer.

Many designers had the skills of mechanicals. Changing technology
sometimes meant that senior designers no longer mastered every
mechanical skill employed by the artisans they supervised. In
contrast, many skilled mechanicals lacked the broad general knowledge
and perspective needed for comprehensive design.

When I told this story at La Clusaz, one colleague, a design school
dean, thought that I had labeled designers as "mechanicals." This
irritated him. To the contrary, I have always been clear on what
designers are. The designers themselves saw basic design school
graduates as mechanicals.

Times have changed. Advances in technology allow the near automation
of work once handled by mechanicals.

Many design graduates are skilled in mechanical applications of their
own artistic ideas. Few new graduates are as skilled in the
intellectual, ethical, emotional, and scientific frames of design as
they should be.

In a different era, the need for mechanicals kept these people
employed while they slowly mastered the skills of a designer. There
were many mechanicals and few designers. Much as the medieval guilds
maintained a massive proportion of apprentices and journeymen to full
masters, so the design industry maintains many more beginners and
juniors than seniors and partners.

The implication of an interdisciplinary design field is that we must
emphasize a rich array of interdisciplinary skills.

Students require a broad foundation of learning to recognize the
several disciplines of an interdisciplinary field and understand how
they fit together.

The goal is not designers who master all skills. The goal is
designers who master some skills, including the central skill of
interdisciplinary management of the design process.

6) An implication of design

Herbert Simon's definition of design is "[devising] courses of action
aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones" (Simon
1982: 129). This clearly applies to the process professions we
identify with the word "design," including graphic design,
information design, and industrial design. In this context, design
management is also a form of design.

Without agreeing to all of Simon's views, his broad definition of
science is useful to an interdisciplinary field aimed at achieving
results. Science, he writes, involve understanding "things: how they
are and how they work" (Simon 1982: 129).

This offers us a grip on the kinds of projects that research funding
policy often supports.

Many of the vital processes on which society now relies fall within
the design sciences. Management, systems planning, engineering,
information science, and a host more constitute design sciences.
Making the purposes, processes, and outcomes of design clear will
demonstrate that design is fundable whether or not policy statements
use the term "design."

Fundamental definitions will help us to articulate the value of
design to those who establish research policy and fund research.

- - - > A warning

7) A warning on research funding

There are some things funding will not do. One of the best ways to
get on with our research is to understand when we need funding and
when we do not.

An adverse effect of research funding is that it often diverts
attention from genuine research problems to fundable research
problems.

In establishing funding policy, funding agencies and their political
masters actively seek to redirect attention from issues they deem
unimportant to issues they deem important.

In one respect, this is useful. In another, it can damage the best
and most important motive for good research. That motive is curiosity.

Good research requires a passionate and intense commitment. This
commitment takes time. It consumes more hours than can ever be paid
for in a job or a research post.

One important issue we face is the task of making ourselves visible
to funding agencies. Another is explaining the value of design to
legislators, policy makers, and to the funding agencies.

Another important issue is recognizing that some of our most
important research does not require funding.

Fulfilling our research goals means attending to research as a primary value.

Funding that furthers research goals is valuable. Funding should not
be a goal in its own right. Funding often distracts from research
under current policy constraints. If forced to choose between
research and funding, I would rather choose research.

The most desirable situation is to have research and research funding
both. To do this requires us to end where we must start: with
philosophical clarity.

-- Ken Friedman




Reference

Simon, Herbert. 1982. The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press.


--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management

School

On sabbatical through July 2001

Home office

+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
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