Hello,

Your question about how we share a framework is very interesting to me. I 
think some frameworks have useful elements, that are not stated in useful 
ways. Those most important parts are hidden under more clearly stated, but 
ultimately less useful parts.

I think sharing a framework runs up against its ability to be used 
successfully. Your point about good and bad frameworks is well taken. As it 
hits snags in use, it can either be altered to bring out its more useful 
aspects, or if those aspects don't exist, (or the researcher is simply 
stubborn) it will die out.

For example, Rudolph Arnheim clearly wanted to push the idea that visual 
structures create messages that can be shared, but he had to uncover those 
structures before he could make the bigger claim. Ultimately, his framework 
for perceptual composition provided a wonderful framework to expand our 
thinking about composition. But his bigger claim died out because it did 
not stand up to use.

I think that design artifacts are prone to that same experience. (I 
apologize for giving life to inanimate objects. I'm writing too quickly. If 
I don't contribute more, it's only because I am also trying to meet 
deadlines. I found the discussion fascinating, so I had to chime in)

Best,

Susan

--On Thursday, February 3, 2005 1:50 PM -0500 Klaus Krippendorff 
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> good suggestion.
> but we should not jump into using a metaphor without being clear of its
> entailments and clarifying how we can test its practicality or validity.
> obviously there are good frameworks and bad frameworks, frameworks that
> unduly constrain and frameworks that encourage exploration.  how do we
> share a framework?
> klaus
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
> Of Susan M. Hagan
> Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 1:38 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Design & Theory
>
>
> Hello,
>
> What about frameworks instead of theories? Frameworks can establish
> heuristics that do not shut down exploration, which turns design arts into
> practical arts. Instead, heuristics can often expand focus, helping us
> move outside of our existing perspective and into another that allows new
> ways of thinking to creep in.
>
> To me, the theory discussion reminds me of Thomas Kuhn's perspective on
> paradigms and why they are so necessary. Kuhn makes that point that
> science relies on paradigms to prevent unnecessary distractions, that
> changing those paradigms takes place as incremental change, and that
> change needs that element of the arbitrary (for example, the accidental
> observation that can't be denied) in order for any paradigm shift to
> happen. The established paradigm rightly is suspicious of theory as a
> potentially time consuming and unnecessary distraction. But evidence
> keeps seeping in that requires a closer look and perhaps the incremental
> shift.
>
> Best,
>
> Susan
>
>
> --On Thursday, February 3, 2005 9:04 AM +0000 Ranulph Glanville
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Yes, Klaus, and it can't be theorised precisely because it's concerned
>> with the new (so emergence, in a Hobbesian sense, is not an appropriate
>> term). The new cannot be predicated: if it can, then it's not new. The
>> appropriate process of justification in design is not the rationalisation
>> of functionalism and Ulm, etc, but exactly what they most derided:
>> post-rationalisation. We make a story that makes sense, after the event.
>> This allows us to explain.
>>
>> As to theory, and theorizing: at FutureGround I presented a very simple
>> paper (far too simple for some) which discussed what happens when you
>> have 2 entities (intentionally vague) and placed them together, using set
>> theory and/or logic. It explored what happened when one of the entities
>> was theory, and the other a subject, say design, and pointed out that,
>> for instance, if there is no intersection, the one cannot be a theory of
>> the other. Of course, this is not theory: it's meta-theory. I know there
>> are problems of interpretation when moving away from this level of
>> abstraction, but there are, nevertheless, limits and dangers (and
>> valuable learnables and other benefits) which remain in principle.
>>
>> And as to nouns and verbs: the great contribution of Maturana, Varela and
>> Uribe in developing the concept of autopoiesis was that they described
>> life by insisting on it being a verb, live, not a noun. And it's the same
>> with design. As a process, an activity, it's a verb. Unfortunately, we
>> have connived to allow it to be presented almost always as a noun: an
>> outcome of a process (design) that may be treated as a styled object. I
>> have believed for a long time that, rather than constructing, a better
>> way of thinking about how, at least, we compose our world is by designing
>> concepts and their assembly. I wish George Kelly had chosen to use this
>> vocabulary!
>>
>> Finally, the word object, (also both a noun and a verb?as in I object) is
>> a fabulous word. It has completely inverted its meaning, etymologically
>> speaking. An objective is what we want to achieve, or a lens, but being
>> objective is, in the words of von Foerster, “?a subject’s delusion that
>> observing can be done without him.”
>>
>> Ranulph
>>
>> On 3 Feb 2005, at 04:33, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>>
>>> terry,
>>>
>>> i am glad you amplify the need to be careful about reifying linguistic
>>> constructions.  i would not speak so strongly about "false" noun
>>> constructions and much prefer to show what we miss out when pursuing a
>>> particular construction of reality.
>>>
>>> for the same reasons, i also would not want to be read as saying that
>>> design
>>> theory is impossible, but that the nature of theory limits its domain
>>> of
>>> explanation to routines, recurrent, uncreative, and hence predictive
>>> behavior.  design, like everyday life, is full of theorizable behavior
>>> and
>>> we might want to drive theory into the subject however far we want to
>>> go,
>>> but it cannot describe truly creative behavior.
>>>
>>> you mention communication theory.  here too, we can develop useful
>>> concepts
>>> for the description of conventional practices, but not what is novel
>>> and
>>> provides interesting insights
>>>
>>> the same is true for the development of intelligent machines.  early
>>> on,
>>> cognitive scientists believed that the brain is just a computer and
>>> developed computers to do what they thought the brain was doing.  these
>>> computer programs can perform what is routine,  repetitive and does it
>>> faster and involving (on some level) more data than humans can
>>> process, but
>>> it is not particularly intelligent.
>>>
>>> theory is limited.  what distinguished design from other activities is
>>> not
>>> theorizable.
>>>
>>> klaus
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
>>> related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
>>> Of Terence Love
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 10:52 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Design & Theory
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Klaus,
>>>  You raise an important point here when you say
>>> "a point worth adding here: we should be aware that the word
>>> creativity is a
>>> NOUN. it paints that experiential moment as an OBJECT with the
>>> entailment
>>> of being able to treat it OBJECTIVELY, to theorize about IT. we might
>>> be
>>> duped but this linguistic artifact into believing that we can theories
>>> everyTHING. "
>>>
>>> I agree and feel it is an important issue that needs expanding on. Just
>>> because it is possible to make a linguistic construct that does not
>>> break
>>> the conventions of human language processing doesn't mean the term has
>>> a
>>> valid representation in real life. Such terms are false,
>>> unrepresentative
>>> and  misleading. In many cases, these grammatically correct but falsely
>>> representative terms are easy to spot especially when they are a verb
>>> made
>>> from a noun. For example, 'peacing' (where as 'being full of peace' is
>>> fine). False noun constructs are, however, a different matter and are
>>> the
>>> basis of much of the problems of design theory.
>>>
>>> There are many examples of nouns made from verbs that describe objects
>>> that
>>> don't exist. Consequently, theory discussion using these false noun
>>> objects
>>> is compromised or meaningless. (They are linguistically permitted
>>> though
>>> false because of the object-based nature of the English language).
>>>
>>> Unfortunately for design researchers, many false noun objects are
>>> found in
>>> relation to human internal activities such as thinking and feeling  -
>>> areas
>>> central to design research. In fact, high production of false noun
>>> objects
>>> occurs in any theory area where researchers are struggling becasue
>>> they have
>>> difficulty understanding or they don't have access to good models of
>>> the
>>> physical substrates. Until recently, this was very true of human
>>> internal
>>> functioning where we have a wide variety of these false noun objects so
>>> embedded in everday and technical discourses that we believe they must
>>> be
>>> real. Examples of false noun terms include: creativity; thought;
>>> knowledge;
>>> emotions such as love, compassion, hate;  feelings; perception;
>>> judgement, .
>>> Greater insight into the physical substrates offers a different
>>> language and
>>> ways of making better definitions of existing language. For example,
>>> Damasio
>>> defines the term 'emotion' carefully - as the purely physical
>>> responses of
>>> an organism to its environment. This helpfully provides the theory
>>> ground
>>> for an improved theory framework and  discussion of feeling and the
>>> states
>>> that people currently call emotions (feeling sad, happy etc).
>>>
>>> The discourse of design theory has a fair bit of catch up to do in
>>> these
>>> areas.
>>>
>>> On another tack, I feel suggesting the proposal that human design
>>> activity
>>> is not subject to theory or research is not helpful. Others have gone
>>> down
>>> this path (I'm thinking of Rosen's  'Limits of Analysis', Popper's
>>> three
>>> worlds, Feyerabend's work on representation, Sterman's work on
>>> modelling).
>>> All of these have been useful in clarifying the bounds of specific
>>> overarching theory approaches. Increased understanding the physicality
>>> of
>>> internal human processes is now, however, providing an
>>> empirically-based
>>> theory bridges between areas previously reagrded as incommensurate,
>>> and is
>>> allowing theorising about areas that were apparently 'out of bounds'.
>>> To
>>> propose that it is not possible to make theory about design and
>>> creative
>>> behaviour would be similar to suggesting Communication theory isn't
>>> possible
>>> because we don't know what people might say next,  or that psychology
>>> isn't
>>> possible because we don't know what people will think next.
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>> Terry
>>> ____________________
>>> Dr. Terence Love
>>> Curtin Research Fellow
>>> Design-focused Research Group
>>> Dept of Design, Curtin University
>>> PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
>>> Tel/Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629 (home office)
>>> +61 (0)8 9266 4018 (university office)
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> ____________________
>>> Visiting Research Fellow
>>> Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
>>> Management School, Lancaster University
>>> Lancaster, UK
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> ____________________
>>> Conselho Cientifico
>>> UNIDCOM
>>> IADE, Lisboa
>>> Portugal
>>> ____________________
>>>
>>
>
>
>
> :::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> Susan M. Hagan, Ph.D., MDes.
> Postdoctoral Fellow
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh PA 15213
>
> v. 412.268.2072
> f. 412.268.7989
>
>



:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Susan M. Hagan, Ph.D., MDes.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213

v. 412.268.2072
f. 412.268.7989