On 16 Aug 2007, at 4:13 pm, Ken Friedman wrote:
Let's see how your three examples hold up against Simon's definition:
"[devising] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones."
Example 1: Switching on my reading light is, on this definition, a
design process,
(1) This does not fit Simon's definition. PLANNING to switch on your
reading light is the design process. Switching on your reading light is
an implementation process.
Hmm. Ben's criticism of the Simon definition of design as being too
inclusive echoed something I have felt strongly about many definitions
of design, explicit and implicit, that I have come across, since
beginning design studies in the 70's. I can see that Ken is right to
point to the selective quotation as a flaw in Ben's argument, but even
in its whole form, the Simon definition seems to me to be problematic
(-and not just because a lot of people use the term design loosely).
In identifying the planning function as the design process, Simon seems
to have in mind (correct me if I am wrong) a self-conscious process. It
is possible to argue however, that many 'intended state changes' (note
single quotes!) are brought about through processes that are only
partially self-conscious. The complex neuro-muscular-cognitive process
of reaching over to switch on a light that is in a slightly different
orientation to the user with each iteration of the action surely
implies a great deal of 'planning' at some level -as someone trying to
write a program to drive a humanoid robot would surely quickly realise.
Of course that sort of subconscious-level 'planning' probably isn't
what Simon had in mind.
If however, we move from such a special limited case to the wider field
of actual professional design practice, it seems also to be the case
that to suggest that the whole process is 'self-conscious' is also
incorrect. While some parts of it are, others seem not to be.
Alexander famously made the distinction between 'conscious' and
'un-selfconscious' design processes. He was perhaps thinking more of
the distinction between people recognising and crucially, organising
the planning function as a distinct part of making; and people using
methods of planning closely integrated into the making process, but the
concept is suggestive.
Going back to the reading light: The robot programmer has been working
away, and has probably by now realised that rather than a distinct
planning phase followed by an implementation, the planning in this case
is woven into the action itself, with initial movements being
constantly revised and adjusted through estimation, memory and sensory
input, to arrive at the target. Similarly, much real-world designing
involves a hybrid process of initiation, estimation and revision, even
though there is a conscious effort to distill out a separate and
self-conscious design phase.
Certainly, Simon's distillation out of his separate fractions has a
certain explanatory power, but I cannot help feeling they are also to a
great extent artefacts of analysis. In the end, whether we are talking
about self-conscious or unselfconscious planning we are still talking
about things that are intimately woven into all kinds of human action
-and thus the 'cell-wall' of the Simon definition breaks down and the
contents dissolve into the general background.
So how did the apparent artefact 'design' appear to our perception?
Because we put it there. I would suggest that out of things that are
present in many kinds of human creative actions we have isolated (and
fetishised?) particular cognitive aspects, claiming they are particular
only to certain kinds of creative actions that we want to privilege
(and professionalise?) Design as a category seems to me to be created
by the industrial division of labour into 'thinker' and 'maker'. That
doesn't make it a less important category, just a social, political and
economic one, not a neurological, or technological one. Its about who
gets to make the creative decisions . . . I would go so far as to
suggest for colleagues' consideration the proposition that all
definitions of design that attempt to isolate it as some kind of
abstract universal and that ignore its particular historical, social,
economic and industrial context and origins, -the fact that it is a
social category in other words, are doomed to the kind of 'boundary
condition failure' that I feel the Simon definition is prone to.
I am sure some steps in my argument are deficient here, I am trying to
sketch an outline, that may or may not work up into a clear picture,
but I hope I have done enough to convince that the direction of Ben's
argument is not without merit . . .
Regards
Andrew J King
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