FrFrancois-Xavier Nsenga wrote:
> I also tend not to reduce design only to the (hard) technical nor to the (soft)human aspects.
Hi Francois,
I don't think that is what this discussion has been about (and I'm not
sure that Richard's characterisation of it is a true one either).
However I do find it fascinating how we all cast different meanings onto
the same chain of messages.
Clive's use of the word "configuration" seems to sum it up for me. If
you are designing then you are attending to a problem which requires a
new configuration, one that is not predicted by any existing design or
by technical rules. These sorts of configuration problems could lie in
human or technical domains, they could be physically functional or
aesthetically functional, most likely they have all these features.
However Horst Rittel defined design problems (wicked problems) as social
system problems and I feel that is right, You don't change an aircraft
engine design because of some pure technical concern. You may do it
because you are a technical aesthete, or because you are concerned with
the safety or economics of the engine, or because your competitor is
doing it etc etc.
So the discussion I've been reading and contributing to seems to me to
be about setting some boundaries between designing and doing other
things. It is a little confused by the fact that the territory in
dispute is closer to Terry's experience than to mine so I try to respect
the fact that he may see configuration problems where I see rules in action.
But I expect him to be alert to this problem, just as I am willing to
see that some design problems of form handling and ergonomics (eg the
streamlined steam iron and other domestic apparatus) do not pose the
interesting novel questions that they might have in Raymond Leowy's day,
hence my recent characterisation of my own discipline, product design,
as a "dinosaur". (why be a stegasaurus when you could evolve into a
songbird?)
best wishes
Chris Rust
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