Dear Terry, Tim et al

Terry said (and I mostly agree):

"So far I've come to the conclusion that the only
really strong option is to base design theory on a
picture of designing as a deep internal human process
at the level of thinking, emotions, feeling or
self-consciousness (based on them but distinct from
them). There are a number of ways of going at this but
the most straightforward is a mix of straight
affective cognition theory set against a backdrop of
recent findings from cognitive neuroscience
particularly relating to chemical, neurological,
structural and evolutionary underpinnings of internal
human activities.

In this, I'm also strongly including that designing is
strongly shaped by contexts such as social and
cultural situational factors and the embedded cultural
cues in styled arefacts such as products, services,
systems, orgnisations and policies. These are
significant and necessary aspects of researching and
understanding how designing is undertaken and
inproving the efficiency and effectiveness of design
activities.

I'm suggesting, however,  that establsing a basis for
design theory by first focusing on the internal
individual human biological processes as emerging from
new research in cognitive neuroscience allows the more
ready inclusion of the above qualitatative
socio-cultural issues in a coherent and
epistemologically justifiable manner in ways that the
reverse does not."

Tim said (and I totally disagree):

 "I think there is nothing of
importance (to an understanding of designing) that
is really common across all the many many shapes and
forms that we see designing can take."

The question for me is how to apprehend design in a
way that has scientific validity and currency yet is
recognizable and useful in normal experience.
Cognitive schema (generalized cognitive structures for
organizing experience and comprehension.)seem to
provide the right handle and level of detail. They are
applied by everyone. They operate at a level of
abstraction suitable for theory building while
supporting extensive elaboration, systems building and
practical instantiations. They can be empirically
recognized and lend themselves to computational
modeling as agents and extensible objects in an
"ecology of abstractions" to use Charles Simonyi's apt
terminology. Most importantly, they are operational
structures that can be(are?)related to feelings and
emotions.

Design methods have traditionally been couched in flow
charts identifying different aspects of the design
process. Wouldn't it be wonderful if what happened in
those connected boxes could be defined in terms of the
cognitive structures that support them? The work of
Lakoff and Johnson, Damasio, Schank, Kolodner, Pinker
and Dennett cited below and the literature on agents
and object oriented programming are key resources
outside design that offer much to consider in this
regard.

Regards to all.
Chuck

Coen, E.: 1999, The Art of  Genes: How organisms make
themselves, Oxford University Press, New York.
Damasio, Antonio: 2000, The Feeling of What Happens:
Body Emotions and the Making of
Consciousness,Harcourt, NY.
Dennett, D. 1996. Kinds of Minds, NY: Basic Books
Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily
Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason , Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press
Kolodner, J.: 1993, Case-Based Reasoning, Morgan
Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA
Lakoff, G.: 1987, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things:
What Categories Reveal about the Mind, The University
of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lakoff, G. and Núñez, R.E.: 2000, Where Mathematics
Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics
into Being, Basic Books, New York.
Minsky, M. 1985, 1986, The Society of Mind, Simon and
Schuster, New York.
Schank, R.C.: 1999, Dynamic Memory Revisited,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Pinker, S. 1997. How the Mind Works, New York: W.W.
Norton


Dr. Charles Burnette
234 South Third Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: +215 629 1387
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhDs
in Design
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Dr.
Terence Love
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 1:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: : Refocusing Design Research (was Design
Research)


Hi Tim,

Thanks for your message. Hope you are enjoying your
break. Pyrenees sounds wonderful!

I think I'm not so different from your position on the
need to sharpen up the terms and basic concepts side
of design research. We tackle it in different ways.
Over the last few years, I've checked out most of the
epistemological possibilities for building a coherent
design theory model on the main options such as
undividual designers, design as a social process,
design process, designed objects, proptertise of
designed objects, design contexts,  - lookig at these
form both quantitative and qualitative perspectives
and from positivist/rationalist and a variety of post
positivist persepectives.

So far I've come to the conclusion that the only
really strong option is to base design theory on a
picture of designing as a deep internal human process
at the level of thinking, emotions, feeling or
self-consciousness (based on them but distinct from
them). There are a number of ways of going at this but
the most straightforward is a mix of straight
affective cognition theory set against a backdrop of
recent findings from cognitive neuroscience
particularly relating to chemical, neurological,
structural and evolutionary underpinnings of internal
human activities.

In this, I'm also strongly including that designing is
strongly shaped by contexts such as social and
cultural situational factors and the embedded cultural
cues in styled arefacts such as products, services,
systems, orgnisations and policies. These are
significant and necessary aspects of researching and
understanding how designing is undertaken and
inproving the efficiency and effectiveness of design
activities.

I'm suggesting, however,  that establsing a basis for
design theory by first focusing on the internal
individual human biological processes as emerging from
new research in cognitive neuroscience allows the more
ready inclusion of the above qualitatative
socio-cultural issues in a coherent and
epistemologically justifiable manner in ways that the
reverse does not.

Its from this perspective that I wrote about
information. The ways that individuals internally
manage information, data and knowledge are essentially
identical. The separation of the three in the
literature is a means of classifying stuff for other
purposes. Practically, for the purposes of
understanding the detail of how designers design as
distict from how they think or emote or feel there is
little difference between information, data and
knowledge. An interesting paper on this is Piggott and
Hobbs (2001) "The Noetic Prism" available
http://wawisr01.uwa.edu.au/2001/PigottHobbs.pdf

from the above perspective,s both design_methods_1 and
design_methods_2 are information gathering methods -
getting informed about best process is essentially
similar to getting informed about technical attribute.
The library searching methods are also logically part
of the class of design methods where 'design methods'
refers to methods designers use. This is the common
position but one I think is not so useful because of
its breadth.

With regard to the separation of the terms 'design '
and 'designing', I agree but have for the moment been
persuaded by Ken Friedman's elegant argument that it
is often better to use the verb form 'design' rather
than the gerund 'designing'.

Overall, the core of this it seems is to get clarity
on the main concept and terminology issues to build
some consistent and coherent  foundation theory and
concepts - sorting the finer detail is a job for
later. A significant problem is that much of the
literature has focused on how much it is possible to
include in the meaning of a single term across the
widest range of circumstances and that leads to the
problems such as  'all is designing' - the problem
referred to by Susan.

I too don't see any easy change routes to clarify
terminology. Others however have been here before and
Physics, Engineering, the Social Sciences and
Psychology have all had similar problems with key
terms. Drawing on the experience of these other
disciplines indicates that establsihing technical (as
distinct from everyday) definitions seems to be the
most effective way forward.

Best wishes,

Terry

===
Dr. Terence Love
Dept of Design
Curtin University
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===