dear ken,
it is late here.
only two points.
(1) i did not want to develop a complete etymological history of the word
discipline - whether disciple came before discipline and such - to me a
disciple submits him or herself to disciplinary thinking and is no longer
him or herself, has internalized the disciplinary aspect of discipline.
(2) i deliberately qualified my preference for design as an undiscipline by
saying that designers remain accountable to their stakeholders. the latter
avoids the kind of abstractions that you introduce like disciplines,
professionalism, culture, governance. i prefer a more human-centered
approach as you know.
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: Sunday, September 30, 2007 2:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Disciplines, Fuss, etc.

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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