dear ken,

when rosan was referring to an earlier distinction of mine, you are right, i
didn't feel compelled to correct her characterization as it was quite
adequate in the context in which she was using it.  you defended your
rephrasing her characterization rather than mine by saying that you didn't
have mine handy.  indeed, how could anyone keep track of all that is said on
the list.  however, you cited my post in which i had just quoted what i had
written in the semantic turn and further elaborated by suggesting: equating
A = reactive, B = proactive, and C = playful.  you clearly had the choice of
reformulation rosan or mine or both wordings.

you say "playing" is an action verb that could denote a purposive activity
and one that is not.  true enough.  playing a musical instrument or a sport,
for example.  but in my original formulation i didn't use the word
"playing."  i spoke of  "introduc(ing) variation into the world that others
may not dare to consider, creating something new and exciting -- just as
poets, painters, and composers do -- aimlessly and for fun."  rosan used
similar words (quite restlessly, perhaps just for fun, not necessarily
making something better).  in my subsequent interpretation, i spoke of
playfulness, which in my reading entails the aimlessness i had referred to
earlier.  "playful" is not the same as "playing."  in your own post you
included the equation: "playful or purposeless variation,"  which is what i
had in mind.

o.k., you are right to resist being labeled for the direction of your
rephrasing of what others wrote.  so, let readers make their own label.

personally, the five categories that you are now proposing seem confusing to
me.  i was merely grouping motivations -- the answers that designers could
give for getting involved in a design activity -- into three kinds.  i was
concerned with accountability in terms of which different kinds of
knowledges, processes, and methods become justified.  i had no intention of
stating or developing a model.  commenting on my formulations without using
them, you said that chuck burnette and i see things differently.  you too.

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 Ken Friedman
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 4:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Solve, Seek, Create [Long post.] -- Another short reply to
Klaus


Dear Klaus,

Again, I'll have to return on this except for a short clarification.
Something is clear
here that was not clear before.

Rosan referred to you, but she didn't quote you. She stated the
terms. Since she
brought this forward in the thread, I used her statement. (According to
Rosan,
your post appeared on the list last year. You sent nearly 150 posts
to the list in
2005. It's hard to locate one post among 150 without a specific reference.)

I have your book, but I've only read it once, last year, so I've got
to apologize
for my faulty memory. I'm not sure when you quoted your book -- I don't
recall a quote on this issue, at least not since February 8 when Rosan
posted
the "A, B, C" post that elicited my reply.

Moving beyond the alphabet soup, I'd like to suggest that you and Rosan are
saying two different things.

Rosan's A, B, C is ambiguous on a point you clarify. Rosan wrote:

--snip--

A. engage in solving problems (problem defining implied).
B. seek new opportunities (experiment with new technology, for example)
C. create alternatives to what exists (quite restlessly, perhaps just
for fun, not necessarily making something better)

--snip--

I suggest that this means:

A = 1. Solving problems.
B = 2. Seeking opportunities among existing alternatives.
C = 3. Creating alternatives to what exists.

Now you offer a more precise statement. I read your statement as:

A = Solving problems.
B = Perceiving opportunities.
C = Aimless play.

This is clearly different than what I wrote. And it is different to Rosan's
A, B, C.

At this point, I request that you refrain from accusing me of rationalism
and misstating your terms. You only now stated them. I think you did,
indeed, misread an entailment where I intended none. Perhaps this is
because I failed to read your clear distinction in Rosan's ambiguous
statement. The statement "create alternatives to what exists (quite
restlessly, perhaps just for fun, not necessarily making something better)"
allows for BOTH aimless play AND purposeful creation. My restatement
allows both. Your statement does not allow both. You focus clearly on
aimless play. Rosan did not. Rosan invited you to amend or correct her
statements. You didn't. I quoted Rosan. I don't blame you for my misreading
of your intentions. I ask that you do not blame me for misreading you when,
in fact, I was reading what Rosan explicitly wrote.

Now if we can move on, I think your clarification raises interesting
issues. This suggests a fruitful distinction among 5 issues.

1. Solving problems
2. Seeking opportunities among existing alternatives
3. Perceiving opportunities
4. Creating
5. Aimless play

I know that you reject theories, but since you allow distinctions and
descriptions, I'll offer them:

1. Solving problems -- directed and purposeful
2. Seeking opportunities among existing alternatives -- directed and
purposeful
3. Perceiving opportunities -- less directed but possibly purposeful
4. Creating -- sometimes directed, sometimes not, possibly
purposeful, possibly not
5. Aimless play -- not directed, not purposeful

This is not a full model, but a preliminary thought. Putting these
three sets of
statements together offers interesting possibilities

I realize that my urge to create models bothers you, but I'd suggest that
you,
too, create models when you describe things, especially when you state that
something "is" so, as you seem to do here.

I will return later to struggle with a model.

Two short comments on language before I leave. First, "play" is also an
action verb. Second, the business of entailments should be clear in my
careful set of descriptions. I'm not saying all of these approaches work in
any specific order, nor that they entail any sequence. I say they are all
useful approaches, and I observe that they overlap -- purposeful and
purposeless both -- in design, in research, and in life.

Consider the example you gave in your prior post:

--snip--

when i
teach industrial design students, i often ask them to collect examples of
artifacts that are functionally identical but different in shape, so
students come with a collection of spoons, analogue wrist watches, or
headlight of cars.  this exercise is to demonstrate (a) the variations that
designers introduce into their designs -- without reference to purposes or
improvements -- and (b) how such inherently meaningless variations become
quickly meaningful in social interactions among users and stakeholders.

--snip--

This may demonstrate a wealth of playful or purposeless variation. It
may also demonstrate varieties of purposeful play. The collection itself
tells you nothing about the intentions or working processes of the
designers.
Users and stakeholders create meaning, but this says nothing about designer
intentions. When we speak of design process or research process, we speak
of intentions or behaviors by those who design or research.

As I see it, in many projects -- from the trivial to the major -- those who
make them move from problem solving to play, often many times. Or
sometimes they move from play to problem solving. Or sometimes
they move from play to perceiving opportunities. Or sometimes ....

Yours,

Ken


[I am purposely leaving the full tail on this post because the replies are
so
closely related to the earlier notes.]


>dear ken,
>
>i don't know quite what to make of your short reply.  you said you
responded
>to rosan's A, B, and C.  rosan had quoted me from memory of my earlier
>introduction of this distinction, said so in her post, and in my opinion,
>her recollection was sufficiently close for the discussion to proceed.  you
>chose to respond to rosan's wording although you had (i) my original
>distinction from my book manuscript, (ii) my earlier post to which rosan
>referred, and cited (iii), my recent quotation from my book (in response to
>a request for clarification).
>
>relative to the latter, you reinterpreted my distinction into rational
>categories, e.g., by changing the simple perception of opportunities that
>others do not recognize into "seeking opportunities," and changing aimless
>variation (for fun, playfully, or blindly) into "the creation of
>alternatives."  your claim that you did not spin the statements and merely
>stated them clearly suggest to me that your sense of clarity has to do with
>the very rationality that my distinction tried to relativize.  how else
>could one interpret your claim that "the creation of alternatives" is
>clearer than "acting aimlessly and for fun"?  how else could one read "the
>creation of opportunities" as being clearer than perceiving "opportunities
>to changes something for the better, not recognized by others"?   they are
>fundamentally different.  maybe i shouldn't have labeled you as
>"rationalist."  i don't like being labeled by others as well and i
apologize
>for that slip of mine.  but i hope that other readers will read the spin in
>your wording and the confusion that your post introduced by trying to
reduce
>my distinction to what it sought to overcome.
>
>by the way, the word "creating," as in creating alternatives, creating an
>artifact, or creating a mess, is an action verb.  action verbs usually
>entail that the action they describe are deliberate or purposive, and the
>actor is conscious of and accountable for their actions.  by contrast,
>"introducing variations aimlessly and for fun," or "playfully," removes
that
>deliberativeness from the meaning of an action verb, here of "introducing."
>in my description of C, i used the latter construction.  you translated it
>into the former.  Isn't that a bias?
>on top of that, you said: "I can't see that creating entails NOT
playing....
>Some creation is purposeful. Some is playful and with purpose. Some is
>playful and without purpose."  true!   but in saying that the introduction
>of variation is "aimless and for fun," i excluded purposefulness here.
>clearly, i am not "reading an entailment that does not exist in (your)
>words."  you are saying quite literally that "creating" can be purposive or
>not.  i was concerned with where it is not.  there was no misreading.  you
>just didn't want to go along with it and blame me for it.  how strange
>
>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 Ken Friedman
>Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 1:28 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Solve, Seek, Create [Long post.] -- Short reply to Klaus
>
>
>Dear Klaus,
>
>Thanks for your response. As noted, I am going to work on other
>matters for a few days. I hope to reply presently.
>
>I appreciate the distinctions you raise.
>
>The only issue I will point to now is this:
>
>Rosan's A, B, C were:
>
>A. engage in solving problems (problem defining implied).
>B. seek new opportunities (experiment with new technology, for example)
>C. create alternatives to what exists (quite restlessly, perhaps just
>for fun, not necessarily making something better)
>
>Rerstating them does not impose a rationalist spin as I see it.
>
>A = 1. Solving problems.
>
>C =  3. Creating alternatives to what exists.
>
>The question involves B.
>
>C involves creating new alternatives, something that does not exist.
>This can be done any number of ways, including playfully. But since C
>involves creating something that does not exist, it seemed to me that
>B ["seek new opportunities (experiment with new technology, for
>example)"] can only be " 2. Seeking opportunities among existing
>alternatives. New technology in this sentence seems to suggest
>seeking new ways to apply something that already exists. Even though
>it is new, it's current.
>
>If these letters "A,B,C" meant something other than the restatements,
>it would have been helpful to have a clear and articulate statement.
>I did not change or spin the statements, but stated them clearly.
>Thus my complaint about the alphabet soup -- and the ambiguous models
>that allow you to read what you wish into A, B, C while not reading
>my explicit statements in the explicit stated sense.
>
>Your post offers interesting insights. Nevertheless, your language
>provides what I'd call spin. It seems to be so that my notes did not
>account for some of the issues you raise. That said, I'd prefer that
>you not label me as a "rationalist" by creating entailments that my
>words do not require.
>
>An entailment is a necessary consequence. I can't see that creating
>entails NOT playing. That is one way to create. Some creation is
>purposeful. Some is playful and with purpose. Some is playful and
>without purpose. You're reading an entailment that does not exist in
>my words.
>
>For the rest, let me think. I hope to return.
>
>Yours,
>
>Ken


--

Ken Friedman
Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School

+47 46.41.06.76    Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95    Tlf Privat

email: [log in to unmask]