dear Rosan,
I am not sure I get what you are getting at...but maybe 'theory' does
not need to be elevated to such pedestal that it should be allowed to
constrain your thinking.
I'd suggest that an important thing for designers that become better
in what they do, regardless of how theoretically inclined or research
oriented they are, is to learn to recognize, manage and utilize a
repertoire of patterns - in both making sense of the situation and in
working with it. This may happen intuitively or more or less
consciously.
One important strategy in dealing with the patterns is to describe
them in some simplified fashion, to abstract them, to make them into
resources that can be mobilised into components in design.
In some areas of design, abstraction is probably more significant
than in others. For example in software design it is very close to
the essence of the field.
So, to finally come to my point, maybe one useful way to think about
theories is as tools that help one to abstract one's (or someone
else's) activities (or functions, processes, ... whatever the theory
is about) in such a way that the theory can bring something else into
new light, and hence support the birth/recognition of new insights
and creative courses of action.
From this point of view, maybe the history aspect is not dangerous,
nor critical. Use those theories that are useful, drop the bad ones,
and generate new ones for the areas where you need them. Maybe the
history is useful because it provides clues about the usefulness of
the theory/abstraction/strategy. But theories can of course also
emerge without the history or observation - from any source.
what do you think? are we in the same discussion?
best, kh
At 10:15 +0100 11.3.2003, Rosan Chow wrote:
>i am breading an idea that by changing the language, we can start to
>think differently.
>i have been stuck with 'design theory' for a good three years and
>yesterday i realized
>it circumscribed the way i evaluate and think 'things'.
>
>i happened to be thinking that if we think of our observations are
>histories then we
>evaluate them as histories, then we don't expect them to predict,
>but rather we expect
>them to tell us stories that make us wiser. that's all.
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