Dear Harold, Lubomir, Erik, Ken, Terry et al
This notion of decision and judgement in design is most interesting. I
can't help wondering if choice, focus and intentionality are also
inextricably related.
If I am not mistaken, this area gets to the very heart of design as an
activity. Why and how do we as designers make choices, decisions and
judgements? How can we involve others in these processes and what can
we do to ensure that different perspectives are considered throughout a
design task, that can help new decisons to be taken?
Now, I haven't yet read the literature mentioned ( Nichomacean Ethics
- Aristotle, Back to the Rough Ground - Joseph Dunne and Mindfulness -
Ellen Langer), so I'm having to rely on the comments made by others up
to now. So please forgive me if I'm off key on my understanding.
Just to make my interest clear, I would like to introduce the notion of
"Design Learning". I sense that design learning is an attitude of mind
that relates both to the context of design students learning AND to the
exploratory and experimental phases of professional design practice. I
consider design learning as a concept that covers a broad range of
activities, processes and methods used to gain an understanding to make
the necessary choices, decisions and judgements with regard to a given
design task.
Ken, I seem to remember that we've had a similar discussion on this
regarding Shaker furniture. What was the driver, other than just
describing their ability as an aesthetic sensibility, that enabled the
Shakers to produce their furniture that seems to posess such grace and
presence? Here I think quality of intention and focus apply. Something
very particular was motivating the decisions and judgements that they
took.
From the design student context, I have been confronted time and again
with students who get into a muddle, make generalised guesses as to how
to proceed with their design task and who stress themselves
unnecessarily, by struggling through a design task with far too many
options. Up to now I have considered this as a reflection of their
inability to make qualified choices and to ground their choices in an
understanding of the task. My research data is now confirming part of
this as symptomatic of a misguided notion as to what design learning
entails on the part of the students. My experience with the students is
that once they are shown the nature of precision decision making and
focus, they relax more, enjoy their design projects and begin to
produce results of remarkable innovation and quality.
With regard to professional design practice, I am intrigued with how
one can engender design learning throughout the design process, to
ensure that there is a good basis for making decisions, judgements and
choices. I am used to involving users and a range of collaborative
techniques throughout the design process. These are examples of design
learning, but others in a development group and even in the rest of a
production company say, have to recognise and accept that the phases of
design learning are both necessary and productive. Unfortunately, my
experience has shown me (design of hardcore user oriented, business to
business engineering products) that this notion of design learning is
sometimes unacceptable in terms of time, economy and activities
considered as irrelevant. Thus the particular project is carried
forward without the necessary basis or grounding for making decisions,
judgements and choices.
I find that the notion of introducing various kinds of "breakdowns"
into the design process (Ehn 1989) as very constructive. Accepted
practices and processes can be turned on their head and new scenarios
around a design task can be generated, that allow others to see
alternatives and thus reappraise their assesment of the task and
provide themselves with a renewed set of options and possible decisions.
Now I have now deliberately mixed the terms of judgement, decision and
choice. I guess this reflects my lack of precision in the use of these
terms up to now. So I find it particularly helpful to read Harold's
distinction between judgement and decision making. I am also intrigued
Harold, with your notion or distinction between the collaborative
nature of relaying the result of decisons to others, and the more
personal and context oriented process of making decisions.
I firmly believe that design involves the nurturing of a personal
understanding of a design task, which is then deployed into the
collaborative arena and negotiated into a synthesis or common
understanding that others can accept. This process is then reiterated
throughout the design process. It involves a range of decisions,
judgements and choices. There is a toing and froing, a flux of thought
and discourse and a dynamic modelling and remodelling of understandings
that reflect decisions reached or taken.
It could be very interesting to examine - if it's possible - using for
example Harold's distinction, as to where one concept of decision
making, seamlessly shifts over to another. Or can Harold's two concepts
(judgement and decision making) exist side by side at the same time?
What interactions are going on?
I will certainly re-consider some of my research material that deals
with this and see if it's possible to distinguish between various types
of decision making and try to identify what encourages the one or the
other, as opposed to just considering it as an expression of making
choices or not.
That this is possible is both confirmed by what Harold and Erik are
doing and by something I came across this summer. It was two chapters
in "Using Experience for Learning" (2000). One was by John Mason on
Learning from Experience in Mathematics. He presented a concept of
"disciplined noticing" where he very clearly distinguishes between:
1. Recognising choices - distinguishing choices, accumulating
alternatives and identifying and labeling
2. Preparing and noticing - imagining possibilities, noticing
possibilities
3. Validating with others.
The other chapter, "Living the Learning", was by E. Kasl, K. Dechant
and V. Marsick.
Here they present a case, when dealing with a given task (in their
case, research into organisational learning) for distinguishing between
"task orientation" to the task and "learning orientation" to the
task.They found that when in the learning orientation mode, they were
able to access associations and references to their experience that
they could share with each other and compare and which helped them gain
a sense of synthesis of understanding. In other words they accessed a
particular set of references that afforded a particular kind of
innovative thought and decision making. On the other hand, when in the
task orientation mode or frame of mind, they found that the decisions
they were taking were more practically oriented, time oriented and
generally tended to be less adventurous and sensible, bordering on the
pedantic.
I sense that all this hangs together somehow and is particularly
relevant to our understanding of the sometimes barely noticeable
interactions involved in the design process; interactions and attitudes
of mind that can have such an impact on the decisions taken and
solutions produced.
I apologise to those who might think this post as too long. I enjoy the
informality yet precision oriented nature of this list and the
possibility of sharing my views, which, as I am in the process of
trying to understand and formulate, inevitably tend to reflect a sketch
like character. I do this deliberately, to hopefully encourage others
to comment on my thoughts and maybe contribute with their understanding.
Best regards,
Chris.
References:
Ehn P (1989) Work-oriented design of computer artifacts.
Arbetslivscentrum, Stockholm
Kasl E, Dechant K, Marsick V (2000) Living the Learning: Internalizing
Our Model of Group Learning. In: Boud D, Cohen, R., Walker, D., (ed.)
Using Experience for Learning. Open University Press, Buckingham (pp
143-156)
Mason J (2000) Learning from Experience in Mathematics. In: Boud D,
Cohen, R., Walker, D., (ed.) Using Experience for Learning. Open
University Press, Buckingham (pp 113-126)
-----------------------------------------------
On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 06:33 AM, Harold Nelson wrote:
> Dear Lubomir et al
>
> At present I am working on a project developing a course on judgment
> and decision making for a graduate program in Strategic Planning for
> Critical Infrastructures. The distinction I make between judgment and
> decision making is based on the work I am doing with Erik Stolterman.
> It is based on the understanding that these two distinctions represent
> two types of knowledge. The first type is a form of knowledge that can
> be separated from the decision maker, has application to other
> situations, can be communicated to other decision makers, can be stored
> in information systems etc. The second type of knowledge cannot be
> separated from the knower and has no instrumental value outside of the
> situation for which it was produced and is only revealed through the
> actions of the judgment maker. Learning how to make good judgments then
> becomes a very different enterprise from learning to make good
> decisions.
>
> Harold
>
>
> On Sunday, August 17, 2003, at 05:36 PM, Lubomir S. Popov wrote:
>
>> How will the concepts of "judgement" and "decision" relate and which
>> other
>> concept should be considered in this regard?
>>
>> Lubomir Popov
>>
>> At 12:40 PM 8/17/2003 +0000, Terence Love wrote:
>>> Dear Ken and Erik,
>>>
>>> Good point about importance of judgement in design. It brings in
>>> the
>>> question of how humans actually make judgements.
>>>
>>> To chip in an alternative two-penneth, it appears to me Cognitive
>>> Science
>>> and Social Sciences are limited in how they can do this becasue much
>>> of
>>> the process is highly dependent on feelings, emotional processes, and
>>> the
>>> feelings and changes to sense of self that result from emotion
>>> responses
>>> to external and internal imagogenic perceptions. As far as I can see,
>>> judgement processes cannot be adequately explained in terms of the
>>> properties of objects or situations, human values, or of cognitive
>>> constructs (the calculator problem in both cases). They can provide
>>> some
>>> correlatory information helpful for exploratory insights but fuller
>>> explanation and causal theory requires looking at the internal
>>> physiological processes by which humans undertake judgement.
>>>
>>> I feel it is now necessary to be very cautious of the work of earlier
>>> theorists including early classical authors. These are radical times.
>>> The
>>> new means of looking at human issues in a psycho-neuro-physiological
>>> way
>>> were not available in earlier times and to a large extent, the work
>>> of
>>> earlier theorists can be seen as building of inherently compromised
>>> theory to try to make up for the emprical weakness.
>>> Epistemologically, the problem is simple. The externalist theories
>>> or
>>> theories based on properties of social situations and objects (or
>>> human
>>> values) simply cannot adeqautely explain human processes and
>>> behaviours
>>> becasue in almost all cases these factors are not directly and
>>> dependably
>>> related to how humans function.
>>>
>>> Phronesis depends on judgement, and the label of 'wisdom' is usually
>>> used
>>> to refer to the skill of a person who is able regularly to make good
>>> judgements. Making theory about the relationship between the three
>>> also
>>> depends on understanding the neuro-physiological processes that
>>> underpin
>>> humans' judgement. This also offers good insights into making
>>> coherent and
>>> reliable radical theories about both phronesis and wisdom.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Terry
>>>
>>> ===
>>> Dr. Terence Love
>>> Love Design and Research
>>> PO Box 226
>>> Quinns Rocks
>>> Western Australia, 6030
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> ===
>>
>
>
-------------
from:
Chris Heape
Senior Researcher - Design Didactics / Design Practice
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
Sønderborg
Denmark
http://www.mci.sdu.dk
Work @ MCI:
tel: +45 6550 1671
e.mail: chris @mci.sdu.dk
Work @ Home:
tel +45 7630 0380
e.mail: [log in to unmask]
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