Dear Klaus,

While some of your points are well taken, you start with a common 
historical error. The noun discipline does not come from the verb 
discipline. The noun came first, itself related to the earlier noun 
"disciple" or student. According to some sources, the noun appeared 
in the 13th century, and the transitive verb descended from it in the 
14th century. Other sources show 11th and 12th centuries 
respectively. In all cases, the noun comes first, beginning in words 
that have to do with education and teaching, the instruction of 
disciples.

In all this talk about disciplines, undisciplined, etc., two key 
issues remain. You point to one of them, but not to the other. You 
point to the importance of accountability, a key aspect of good 
professional practice in every profession. The other is the nature of 
artisan crafts guild culture.

All cultures have some way to deal with behavior that violates or 
transcends cultural norms. Many cultures punish productive or 
potentially useful new behaviors as severely as they punish 
destructive or damaging behaviors. Whether we call it a "discipline" 
or not, the crafts guild tradition in most design schools and design 
studios functions to preserve cultural cohesion, often doing so at 
the price of individual subordination of the student to a teacher. 
Similiar mechanisms in professional design firms govern the relations 
of the junior designers to the senior designers.

Byrne and Sands (2001) examine the ways in which the apprentice 
system of the crafts guilds still affects the professional trajectory 
of the individual designers and the performance of design firms. I 
have also discussed these issue (Friedman 1997).

As long as design is practiced in firms and taught in schools, design 
students and designers will be subject to the problems that face all 
human beings located in human cultures and the institutions to which 
human cultures give rise. In that sense, to be "undisciplined" is an 
aspiration rather than a general condition.

In my view, the value of independent research is that it allows us to 
break free of some bounds, thinking our way through to new 
possibilities outside the conventional practices of the artisan guild 
culture that have governed the professions for centuries, whatever 
form the governance mechanisms take.

We need both, to be sure. The skills and judgement developed through 
centuries of unfolding practice and honed through the years of an 
individual career preserve vital knowledge and information, knowledge 
and information we do not need to develop from scratch every time. 
The fact also remains that we develop these skills through behavior 
modification as well as conscious learning, and we internalize them 
as unconscious patterned behavioral repertoires or habitual action. 
The ability to look beyond and choose when not to use habit as as 
important as the ability to use habit successfully.

To speak of design remaining "undisciplined" refers to is this last 
ability. This is impossible: the design profession and design 
cultures are inevitably disciplined or profession-bound or governed 
under sanctions or culturally contingent -- you may choose the term 
you prefer among roughly equivalent descriptions.

What I'd hope for is that individual designers can become 
undisciplined when they need to do so.

But let's be clear here: any designer, design teacher, or design 
student who violates cultural norms enough to be seen be his or her 
peers as entirely undisciplined is going to be unwelcome in some 
circles. When I developed Scandinavia's first courses in strategic 
design at the end of the 1980s, some professors at the local design 
school were eager to add it to the curriculum while others thought it 
did not belong in a design school. After two years of debate, the man 
who was then professor of industrial design made it clear he would 
never approve and suggested I take the idea to a business school. I 
did -- a good choice for my research career, as it turned out. Twenty 
years on, the kinds of issues and offerings in that course are now 
central to many innovative design programs. I'm sure these programs 
are probably having difficult time dealing with and embracing the 
ideas of some other researcher.

While stories like this have some kind of mild emotional charge on an 
individual level, this is how cultures maintain themselves. This has 
good consequences and bad. I'm sure the industrial design professor 
was quite right, except that he was right for the 1950s when he got 
his education, and he was not right for a design school that was 
trying to develop a research culture and a doctoral program.

Choosing the title "undisciplined" for the 2008 Design Research 
Society conference in Sheffield offers an opportunity to examine 
these problems. It's a good title, despite its ambiguity. (David 
Durling and I suggested the title "new and hybrid disciplines." Our 
colleagues rejected this as exact but boring. Something about a horse 
pulling milady's carriage ...)

One needs both kinds of pull in any lively profession -- disciplined 
action and undisciplined inquiry or adventure.

To suggest that we are all undisciplined and free-wheeling doesn't 
fit the reality. I recall one time I spoke on design research to a 
conference of about 300 designers. Walking in to the hall, I was 
astonished to find myself speaking to a sea of black. Looked like a 
Jesuit prayer meeting -- head to toe, black suits, black dresses, 
black blouses, black shirts. I wore the only white shirt in the room. 
There was some color, though: scattered among the all-black 
ensembles, one occasionally saw bright eyeglass frames, a spiky 
colored ear-ring dangling from one ear, or a flashy pink and green 
hairdo. In that context, I felt quite undisciplined. My audience 
looked like a roomful of newly-commissioned lieutenants in some 
strange new army. Since they came from schools and departments in 
many different places, all meeting for the first time that morning, 
I'd have to say that their culture disciplined them to dress as they 
did. During the course of the day, I discovered that their thoughts 
and behavioral patterns were also cut to the same measure.

It is difficult for the design field to remain what it has never 
been: undisciplined. Seeking a new and richer balance is possible.

Ken

--

References

Byrne, Bryan and Ed Sands. 2001. "Designing Collaborative Corporate 
Cultures." In Creating Breakthrough Ideas. Bryan Byrne and Susan E. 
Squires, eds. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 
47-69.

Friedman, Ken. 1997. "Design Science and Design Education." In The 
Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of 
Art and Design Helsinki UIAH, 54-72.

--

Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

don't forget that the noun discipline come from the verb to discipline

a discipline is the commitment of a group of people to discipline each other
for deviations from commonly accepted practices.

when such a group works long enough, members my internalize excepted acts of
discipline, no longer need to discipline each other that much by
disciplining themselves in view of the commonly accepted practices.  another
word for that state of exerting self-discipline in institutionalization (of
commonly accepter practices).  from the literature we know that institutions
are habitual practices that subscribers seek to preserve and deviations from
which are counteracted, and deviators are held accountable for their
deviations, punished or disciplined.

in my opinion, unless one conceives design as a mere service to an industry,
design needs to remain undisciplined - except for being accountable to its
stakeholders, users, etc.

--

-- 

Ken Friedman
Professor
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Oslo

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen

+47 46.41.06.76    Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95    Tlf Privat

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