Dear Tim, Terry, and List members,

My recent interest in symbolic interactionism led me to revisit Blumer's
(1954) essay on social theory, which appears to speak directly to some
of the concepts in the present thread. In it, Blumer discusses the roles
of concepts, theories and theory construction, definitions and
terminology, all of which with respect to the goal of an empirical
science of the social world.

In the recent exchange between Tim and Terry, a number of these issues
appear to have surfaced in the context of design research. If we equate
design research as 'the study of the human activity of designing' as
Terry does (and I would also), I think there is little in Blumer's essay
that is not of direct relevance to design[-insert suffix] research.

Ken has familiarised many of us with Blumer's (1954) distinction between
definitive and sensitising concepts. I am of the opinion that many of
the theoretical concepts that have surfaced in the course of Terry and
Tim's exchange are (or should be considered) sensitising concepts
(including 'design' and 'designing'); and for this reason I worry about
the prospect of trying to make them definitive.

The vitality of sensitising concepts is derived from their applicability
and utility in accounting for the empirical world, and not their
amenability to theoretical manipulation. When epistemologically valid
theory is our primary goal, our commitment to the authenticity of the
empirical world is necessarily relegated to secondary importance. This
is my concern when Terry says that his position involves "choosing the
technical meanings, scope, bounds and delimitations of key conceptual
terms such as 'design' and 'designing' in terms of what will offer the
best basis for building a coherent body of theory and knowledge" which
he contrasts with a definition of design that is trying to capture "some
'true' meaning from the common usages and generic observations of what
others see as human design activity".

To borrow one of Blumer's (rather extreme) examples, the intelligence
quotient is a definitive concept, easily and empirically measurable,
reliable, and a godsend to theory constructors. The problem arises when
the (definitive) concept "IQ" is mistaken for the (sensitising) concept
"intelligence"--IQ is a measure, but it fails to capture the essence of
intelligence as intelligence is (variously) understood. Researchers have
found (or in this case, created) something new to measure, something
which is amenable to theory construction and validation, but it doesn't
shed much light on the original phenomenon of interest, which was
intelligence.

I think there is a risk here if, for theoretical purposes, we define
design as something different than what design is (variously) understood
to be (e.g. the "'true' meaning from the common usages and generic
observations of what others see as human design activity").  If we do
this, then whatever the outcome of that endeavour, it may shed light on
something, but that something may or may not be design.

Instead, I would argue that whatever concept we have of design must be
formed not on the basis of its theoretical utility, but on the basis of
our encounters with design in the empirical world. We know where to look
to find design activity because of "common usages and generic
observations", not in spite of them, and not by virtue of our particular
definitions of designing. It is our concept definitions that need to be
flexible with respect to the empirical world, because those concepts
shape up differently in each empirical instance (to paraphrase Blumer).
To delineate our definitions more carefully at this stage of our field
for theoretical purposes, would mean we prematurely concern ourselves
with what is likely to be common across cases (that which is presented
in our definition of 'design') instead of what is distinctive to the
case. Theories that do so tend to 'explain away' what is distinctive as
being unimportant; but perhaps they do so on the grounds that the
distinctive thing is unimportant to the construction of the theory,
rather than unimportant to the phenomena that was originally of
interest.

I'd also note that one aspect here has been, and still is, a central
problem for the social sciences. The object of social inquiry is to
understand the social world--a world that presents itself as inherently
and subjectively intelligible to each of us on a daily basis. But the
notions that are useful to us and make sense to us to use on a daily
basis in the goings on of our lives are incredibly difficult to subject
to any kind of 'objective' analysis. This renders any idea of a social
science fundamentally reflexive in a way that the natural sciences are
not--in many cases there can be no clear and obvious distinction between
the topics and resources of social science. "Common sense" is a case in
point--it is both what we use to identify aspects of relevance and
importance (resource), and it is a topic of analysis (that is relevant
and important) in its own right. Terry appears to offer us one way out
of this (if I've understood him correctly)--he would recommend we defer
commonly held notions of 'design' and 'designing' for other, more
definitive, more epistemologically sound ones. My fear is that in doing
so, we risk losing as phenomenon the 'design' we originally wanted to
understand.

Kind regards,

Ben

PS. Tim, I'd appreciate your thoughts on this--in your message on Sunday
I thought this is similar to what you were getting at when you said that
"seeing real designing in human activities depends upon our
understanding of designing, and our understanding of designing depends
upon seeing it well in human activities." But today you appeared to be
in agreement with Terry. Your comments/critiques would be most welcome.

Ref:

Blumer, H. (1954). "What is wrong with social theory?" American
Sociological Review 19(1): 3-10.

________________________________
Ben Matthews
Information Environments Program
University of Queensland
Brisbane Australia 4072
Ph +61 7 3365 1634
Fx +61 7 3365 4999