Dear Gunnar,

This is an interesting post because you point to important issues. I 
implied or intended none of the problems you raise, bur I will 
address them.

It is not the non-triviality of knot tying that I point to, though, 
but the non-triviality of articulately planning a seemingly simple 
action. This does bear on design process in some ways. In a long-ago 
article on masterpieces of design (Friedman 2000) I suggested the 
difficulty of planning out even simple processes. I did so to explain 
the  rigorous study of the act of eating that Maria Benktzon and 
Sven-Eric Juhlin of Sweden's Ergonomi Design Gruppen did before 
designing their cutlery for the disabled.

"Dining is a simple, everyday matter for most of us. ... The 
mechanics of eating -- the hundreds of minor steps that take place 
during an everyday meal -- receive even less thought than the act of 
eating. Few people count the number of specific, single acts required 
for the consumption of a meal. Some people must. For those with 
impaired strength and mobility, every motion can be a difficult, 
painful experience that robs the most basic human act of its joy. ... 
Think of a simple business lunch [using a spoon to perform the] 
grasp-scoop-and-lift motions of the wrist and arm to consume a small 
bowl of soup, ... Several hundred times a day, we perform basic 
mechanical work in order to eat. When the ability to handle the 
biomechanics of dining is impaired, the quality of life is 
dramatically diminished" (Friedman 1991: 737).

To make a spoon that works for everyone requires a scientific 
approach. The Ergonomi cutlery represents the kinds of challenging 
problems that have fascinated me for years.

One of the reasons I spend so much time trying to understand these 
issues goes to the heart of excellent design practice: understanding 
how effective design works and why. This is different to practicing 
excellent design. It requires patiently examining and teasing out 
many aspects of design. But this particular challenge, right or 
wrong, involves none of the assumptions that you describe. It's a 
limited case organized around a specific point.

You ask (1) "Although 'articulate' is generally assumed to have to do 
with words and verbal expression, why isn't a picture fluent, 
effective, persuasive, lucid, expressive, intelligible, 
comprehensible, understandable. . . whatever it is we think 
"articulate" is supposed to do and be?"

(1) I am not assuming that articulateness has to do with words and 
verbal expression. That's what the word articulate means. According 
to Merriam-Websters, the relevant definitions are: "1a: divided into 
syllables or words meaningfully arranged : intelligible b: able to 
speak c: expressing oneself readily, clearly, or effectively; also: 
expressed in this manner."

But to say this of a word -- and to use this is a specific case does 
NOT argue against the value and effective properties of images. A 
picture CAN be fluent, effective, persuasive, lucid, expressive, 
intelligible, comprehensible, and understandable.

In my last note, I wrote that I was not implying that design is 
something done or described in words. Here I want to add, as I think 
I noted somewhere in the thread, that images are far more effective 
than words alone and superior to words along for a process 
description such as this.

My point was something else: I was trying to get at the difficult of 
PLANNING even a simple action when we are required to plan it through 
and describe it step by step rather than do it or demonstrate it.

(2) "Does your choice of allowable tools represent a set of values? 
What does it say if consideration of design (or the person who 
considers design) devalues something that is at the heart of many 
design fields?"

The choice of allowable tools does not represent a set of values. 
Again, I chose the specific challenge to get at the difficult of 
PLANNING even a simple action when we are required to plan it through 
and describe it step by step rather than do it or demonstrate it.

This is a test case of a specific problem. It is not a description of 
all design activities or values. It doesn't even say what I consider 
all design to be, nor the full design process, and it does not 
devalue visual representation or any of the dozens of valuable 
activities.

What I was trying to do -- and as I wrote to Chris, this may have 
been a bad idea or a bad example -- but what I was trying to do was 
to use Ben's example of _planning_ to tie shoelaces get at the 
difficult nature of planning even a simple action when we are 
required to plan it through and describe it step by step rather than 
do it or demonstrate it. My purpose in doing so was to show how a 
habitual or learned skill or behavior may also represent a design 
activity when we are required for some reason to design it rather 
than simply do it. Compare this with eating soup with a spoon if you 
are disabled.

(3) "Or is this some parlor trick where you prove something like the 
fact that changing a light bulb -is-, after all, quite difficult 
because we're only allowed to do it with our feet and we can't take 
our shoes off? (How many design researchers does it take to change a 
light bulb?)"

This is no parlor trick and the comparison is unfair. It is 
impossible to change a light bulb with your feet while wearing shoes. 
It is not merely difficult, but rather impossible.

This challenge on the other hand is difficult but in theory possible. 
Solving it would take time and resources.

If I were to have time and resources, I'll tell you how I'd try to 
solve it. I would assemble a design team consisting of an 
ethnographer, a behaviorist, a social psychologist, a communications 
designer, an illustrator, and a facilities planner, together with an 
expert on strategic problem solving. The goal would be to produce an 
explicit, articulate verbal description of how to tie shoelaces that 
would enable the person following the instructions carefully and only 
following the instructions to tie his or her shoelaces.

You might think that is a silly thing to do and a waste of resources, 
but I think the learning process and information yield would reveal 
some interesting issues about many activities, including design. I 
also note that to produce the articulate description, the team would 
have to undertake several kinds of observations and make several 
efforts. Even though the goal is a words-only description, I would 
want an illustrator on hand to produce visual representations of 
time-frozen actions or hand-and-finger details that would help the 
group to frame and select the words. The limit on using only words to 
meet the challenge does not mean that the design group solving the 
challenge is limited to using only words to solve the problem.

This brings me to a last comment. It's part of why I wanted to work 
through these assumptions and tell you how I'd solve the problem. In 
fact, I can imagine having to buy dinner for six or seven if some 
group really meets the challenge. But as I said in the challenge -- 
this group will get more than dinner. I think they'd have an 
important article that might shed light on several aspects of design 
process and design research.

But I want to emphasize that you seem to suspect me of assumptions I 
haven't made. As Elvis used to sing, "We can't go on forever with 
suspicious minds." But Elvis Presley is still dead, and I'll offer a 
couple of thoughts on why this proposal should not cause you to be 
"suspicious of design research and design researchers."

First, not everyone can be or should be interested in everything. On 
a general design research list, therefore, serious and interesting 
problems often come up that don't interest me. Because I post CFPs, 
notices, journal announcements, and occasional newspaper articles, 
you may not notice that long periods sometimes go by when I don't 
actively participate in the on-going conversation of the list. That's 
because lots of things go by here that don't interest me directly. I 
lurk and browse. Sometimes I am so uninterested that I don't even 
browse.

That does not mean I think the topics are bad or suspicious. It means 
I'm not interested. I am not interested in many worthwhile research 
activities. I have no interest in the grammar of Central Asian 
languages and I have no interest in statistical functions. In just 
the same way, I have no interest in many of the important areas of 
design and design research. I don't assume that people who pursue 
research that fails to interest me are trying to trick me or make me 
seem foolish, and I don't assume they are demeaning my values and 
interests.

Second, some research problems that may not seem productive are 
actually richer than uninterested people may know.

Consider, for example, how many people have worked on computer chess 
issues since Claude Shannon publish the first paper back in the 
1950s. To reach the state where a computer could beat a world 
champion took nearly half a century and tens of millions of dollars 
-- hundreds of millions if you consider the value of the research 
time. Why, one might ask, would anyone want to teach a computer to 
play chess? And what would we learn by doing so?

In fact, we learned a great deal. That said, it was a long, boring 
slog for anyone who wasn't interested. Even though I don't play chess 
and I have no direct interest in AI research, it never occurred to me 
to question the value of this work. I know enough about the value of 
such ventures to recognize that the outcome would produce valuable 
outcomes with wider application. That's how it is with many of the 
issues in design research.

If people are suspicious of design research and design researchers 
because of problems such as the questions or challenges I pose, it 
may be that they are making the wrong assumptions about my 
assumptions or my motives. It could also be that their frame is so 
specific and their focus so intense that they perceive anything 
outside their own area as suspicious or annoying. If the pursuit of a 
question pops up in a place where they feel they belong and the they 
feel the question doesn't belong, it bothers them. That happens in 
many fields.

There used to be an American senator named William Proxmire who gave 
out what he called "The Golden Fleece" award for dubious research. As 
an opponent of pork-barrel spending and waste, he often picked on 
perfectly good research projects that he simply did not understand. 
Proxmire was an excellent senator in many ways. He opposed the Viet 
Nam War early on, he fought for decades to get the United States to 
ratify the international convention against genocide, he was an 
outspoken and effective critic of wasteful military spending. 
Nevertheless, he had no concept of basic science or the use of 
inquiry that had no visible immediate benefit.

Some of the issues that interest me and some of the questions I 
pursue may not seem to have a visible immediate benefit to designers. 
If that makes them suspicious, I can't do much about it.

Of course, there is another explanation. I may simply be foolish. My 
dog Jacob votes for foolish. He says that people have good reason to 
suspect me. And what's worse, I talk with dogs. Articulately.

Yours,

Ken

--

References

Friedman, Ken. 1991. "Benktzon and Juhlin: Tablewares for the 
Disabled." (in) Contemporary Masterworks. Chicago and London: St. 
James Press.

--

Gunnar Swanson wrote:

--snip--

[from Gunnar's prior post]

Are you implying that design is something done or described in words?

[from Ken's reply]

I am stating, however, that planning is a mental process.

--snip--

While I don't deny the non-triviality of knot tying (the conceptual 
difficulty nor the importance), there seems to be the implication 
that mental processes and verbalization are the same (or at least 
hand in glove) and that imagery and spatiality are non-intellectual.

I'm curious about it, not because I want to force you to give me a 
hundred pounds for drawing a diagram (that's actually far from a 
grand payment for such a service) but because I think it might get 
near some assumptions that recur on this list and help explain why so 
many designers (including those of us who embrace and respect design 
research) are so suspicious of design research and design researchers.

Although "articulate" is generally assumed to have to do with words 
and verbal expression, why isn't a picture fluent, effective, 
persuasive, lucid, expressive, intelligible, comprehensible, 
understandable. . . whatever it is we think "articulate" is supposed 
to do and be?

Does your choice of allowable tools represent a set of values? What 
does it say if consideration of design (or the person who considers 
design) devalues something that is at the heart of many design fields?

Or is this some parlor trick where you prove something like the fact 
that changing a light bulb -is-, after all, quite difficult because 
we're only allowed to do it with our feet and we can't take our shoes 
off? (How many design researchers does it take to change a light 
bulb?)