Dear Terry and Gunnar,

Terry Love's paradox raises interesting issues that deserve deep
consideration. Let us not forget that Terry is a working designer
himself as well as a design theorist.

Terry's post points our two sets of consideration. Both require
deeper reflection. One is the paradoxical range of overlapping frames
and occasionally disjunctive contrasts between design methods, design
research methods, and general research methods.

The other involves the clarification of the issues that distinguish
and join methods, methodics, and methodology in this complex frame.

Gunnar's rejoinder focuses on two issues. One involves the general
nature of design.

The other involves the specific nature of this list more than the
broader inquiry into design.

Gunnar writes, "As usual, I raise objection to the marginalization of
craft: . . . Many practices of design are indeed about making (as
opposed to planning.)"

I take issue with this.

One of the most serious problems in understanding design has been the
failure to distinguish DESIGN from specific design applications.

Craft skills are important. But the craft skills level of design
involves direct material application rather than DESIGN.

Let us define design. I will not rehearse the full argument I offer
elsewhere (Friedman 1997, 2001). Copies of those articles are
available on request. Here, I will simply define design clearly.

Design is a process. The verb design describes a process of thought
and planning. This verb takes precedence over all other meanings. The
word "design" had a place in the English language by the 1500s. The
first written citation of the verb "design" dates from the year 1548.
Merriam-Webster (1993: 343) defines the verb design as "to conceive
and plan out in the mind; to have as a specific purpose; to devise
for a specific function or end." Related to these is the act of
drawing, with an emphasis on the nature of the drawing as a plan or
map, as well as "to draw plans for; to create, fashion, execute or
construct according to plan."

Although the word design refers to process rather than product, it
has become popular shorthand for designed artifacts. This shorthand
covers meaningful artifacts as well as the merely fashionable or
trendy. I do not use the word design to designate the outcome of the
design process. The outcome of the design process may be a product or
a service, it may be an artifact or a structure, but the outcome of
the design process is not "design."

Gunnar has moved down to the level of specific outcomes in his query.
On the outcome level, there may be no need for common design
knowledge. That is because much of the applied work is done and CAN
be done by junior designers or talented artisans operating under the
direction of a senior designer.

The forms of design output that Gunnar uses as example are "haute
couture fashion designer, an electrical engineer, a web interface
designer, a (literal) bridge designer, an athletic shoe designer, a
mini mall architect, and the people who design lawn gnomes and
commemorative collectibles."

Gunnar's examples shift and cross the boundaries between design and craft.

A bridge designer must be a designer and NOT an artisan. The
implementation of any modern bridge design involves a complex series
of linked organizations and agencies. In most cases, these will
involve several hundred different entities including governments,
planning agencies, highway agencies, street authorities, tax
authorities, finance departments, and more, all operating or anywhere
from two to five levels of government. In the United States, these
levels would include local, town or city, country, state, federal,
and sometimes international. Then there will be at least a dozen
different kinds of consulting and planning firms, design firms, and
engineering firms. Finally, there will be several hundred different
manufacturing firms, consulting firms, unions, engineering
consultancies, project management teams, and more. There will be
several thousand artisans working for the designer and the chief
bridge designer's central design group.

In contrast, a fashion designer may well be an artisan. The very
burden of direct engagement in material reduces the design and
planning component in favor of artisan skill. For a successful
fashion designer, the design component with all its manufacturing,
financial, and logistical challenges will increase again.

For obvious reasons, some historical some contingent, many designers
begin as artisans. They add a vast repertoire of skills and knowledge
to their work when they move from artisan craft to design planning.

Herbert Simon defines design in terms of goals. To design, he writes,
is to "[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones" (Simon 1982: 129). Design, properly
defined, is the entire process across the full range of domains
required for any given outcome.

Here I will challenge Gunnar: in some cases, perhaps most, the
material output is NOT the central focus of design. It is a preferred
outcome, in a wide range of complex attributes, only some of which
are material.

Gunnar wants to sharpen the debate by phrasing his challenge to terry
in blunt terms. Gunnar says that is "still waiting for someone to
tell me about the common design knowledge" shared by the kinds of
designers he suggests. I say that exactly to the degree that they are
designers, the design knowledge they share is common.

To the degree that they are craftsmen and artisans, their applied
knowledge is different. The design knowledge is common across fields
and disciplines. The vocational skills are not.

The second issue in Gunnar's' challenge is an implicit query on the
specific nature of this list more than a broader inquiry into design.

This involves the distinction between doctoral education and research
in design, as contrasted with vocational education and practical
applications.

This list is titled PhD-Design. The specific focus of this list is
doctoral education, research training, and advanced issues in
research among those who share these concerns.

When Terry puts up a post like the note he offered, that note must be
taken in this specific context. Vocational education is irrelevant
here. In fact, vocational skills are irrelevant here, and for a
specific reason.

The reason is YOU ARE REQUIED TO HAVE YOUR BASIC SKILLS BEFORE YOU
GET TO YOUR DOCTORAL WORK.

Terry is discussing these issues from level of advanced skills.

Half the readers of this list are working designers in specific
applied fields of artisan design, or have been. Lorraine Justice,
David Durling, Joy Sykes, Kun-Pyo Lee, Terry Love, Rosan Chow, John
Redmond, Keiichi Sato, David Sless, Jan Verwijnen, Nancy de Freitas,
Helen Armstrong, Rob Curedale, and Gunnar Swanson himself are all
working designers in industrial design, architecture, communication
design, typography, graphic design, software design and more. So are
several hundred more subscribers to this list. None of us is here to
talk basics. We are here to talk design research and doctoral
education.

Others of us are designers in Herbert Simon's larger sense. Brynjulf
Tellefsen, Liz Sander, Dick Buchanan, Bryan Byrne, and another major
group of subscribers design projects, programs, agencies, systems,
and more. They design immaterial objects where the design craft has
nothing to do with artisan skill, but with research skills and
planning of social interaction. These latter also work with teams of
designers who design material artifacts.

Still others of us think about design placing different aspects of
theorizing and philosophizing at the service of different design
projects. Judith Gregory, Tore Kristensen, Keith Russell, Michel
Biggs, Ellen Young, and others fit this category.

Some of us cross the boundaries and fit all three categories -
including at least half of those named above along with people like
Pirkko Anttila, Klaus Krippendorff, and others.

What WE have in common here is that we have come to discuss design
education, design issues, and design research above the vocational
level.

Herbert Simon's (1982: 131) discussion of the transition that MIT
made from vocational institute to research university addresses
exactly these problems.

Gunnar's complaint is understandable, but it is inappropriate. Once
we discuss doctoral education, craft is no longer the central theme.
By definition, what is not at the center is to some degree marginal.
To exactly that degree, one must expect "the marginalization of
craft" in any discussion on PhD-design.

The issue is not that craft is bad. The issue is that craft is not
the focus of doctoral education. We are each of us supposed to have
mastered craft issues before getting here.

Best regards,

Ken Friedman



References

Friedman, Ken. 1997. "Design Science and Design Education." In The
Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of
Art and Design Helsinki UIAH. 54-72.

Friedman, Ken. 2001. "Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into
Practice." In Design and Technology Educational Research and
Development: The Emerging International Research Agenda. E. W. L.
Norman and P. H. Roberts, eds. Loughborough, UK: Department of Design
and Technology, Loughborough University, 31-69.

Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1993. Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary.
Tenth edition. Springfield, Massachusetts.

Simon, Herbert. 1982. The sciences of the artificial., 2nd ed.
Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press.


--

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

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University