Dear Rosan
Thank you for the new mail.

No, I do not think perception and psychology are the core of design.

I rather think design is a particular action that aims at both creating
new knowledge and delivering practical solutions.

The process of creating new knowledge may be referred to as a "making
discipline", where the sensory-motorical way of
perception-cognition-action is at the core.

Design may be regarded as a sort of "experimentation" where the designer
projects that it must be a better solution than the present one (Simons
imperative logic) and the working with a medium, observing users in
their natural element and either directly with sketching and modeling or
CAD to try out alternative solutions until one seems to work. That is an
iterative process. Again Simon and March refer to this as "satisficing";
the solution is the first satisfactory one that comes up. I may not be
the globally optimal solution. This is how I have observed designers
work. I am not a professional designer myself.

The process of sensory motor perception-cognition-action is inspired by
Jean Piaget, who labeled children's early learning that way. In a
society where symbolic and verbal perception seems to dominate, I
believe design can provide extremely important insights by using the
sensor motor way of learning and communication. Both David Kirsh, Don
Norman and Andy Clark provide numerous examples of how it works and how
it is certainly not restricted to children's learning. It is a way that
is very advanced in terms of reducing the complexity of a problem and
thereby the need for computing power (including human brain power). In
Clark's terminology we deal with "scaffolding", which is a way in which
people enact the physical, technical, social and cultural environment to
use the brain more effectively. Clark talks about "wide ware" as an
extension to "wet ware". While the latter is the working of the isolated
brain, the former is the enacted, scenographed and dramatized brain in a
wide context. Just think about the practical worktable, bulletin boards,
"post-it", knots on your finger to remember, placing the empty bottles
in front of the door so you do not forget, alarms and so on. This is
wide ware in action and I do believe designers may have a competitive
edge vis-a-vis any other profession here. Think about yourself and other
designers in a situation deprived of the familiar environment of studio,
workplace and tools!! Torture, isn't it?

So, therefore I believe perception-cognition-action is the core of
design. I must confess, that I may use a language which itself is alien
to many designers, but surely the content is not.

Best

Regards

Tore