Teena et al,

Re: your first paragraph.

I don't know about Gavin, but I think your description fits beautifully 
with how I see designing - including engineering designing.

Now please have mercy as I'm about to use words in ways to which some 
may be unaccustomed, but it's the words that work best for me & my 
background.

Designing usually (in my experience, always) begins with an analytic 
stage.  The designer, confronted with a new situation, is unlikely to 
"fit" into it / understand it very well.  The designer will then try to 
figure out what the "real problem" is - what's missing from the way 
things are.  This requires a rather deep understanding.

Teena, this is where your brainstorm, etc, happens.  My perspective is 
that the problem is there, you just don't recognize it as such, because 
(and I'm guessing here) "problems" exist in "more corporate design" 
settings.  Your "problem", generally, is finding the right 
image/visualization to communicate certain emotions & other info to 
specific individuals or groups.

The study of the situation your in - aka the problem you have to solve - 
will map key features/points/aspects to certain 
memories/emotions/capabilities you have stored in your brain.  To do 
this you have to take the situation/problem apart...."deconstruct" is 
perhaps too overloaded a word.  That is, you're analyzing the situation 
(perhaps inspirationally - whatever works best for you!) and connecting 
the dots in your head.

Put another way, you're finding a way to overlap your perception of the 
actual situation onto your own mental structures and, thus, 
absorb/understand it.

Then you start coming up with something that will change the situation 
in a beneficial/desirable/required way.  Some people call this 
designing, but it can't happen except in the most trivial cases without 
first understanding the current situation (the analysis), so I think of 
designing as including both the analytic and (sorry for the next word, 
no offence intended again) synthetic.

At least, that's how I see it.

Re: your second paragraph

I'd say the temporal ordering of tasks will vary from situation to 
situation.  But the tasks themselves will be there sooner or later, and 
that there will be many similar situations that will end up with task 
orderings that are very similar too, and that might be assumed permanent 
features by those who are often involved in those situations.


teena clerke wrote:
> Hi Gavin,
> 
> I am mindful that there are also spaces in which design operates that 
> are not seen as being problem-based, so articulating design space as 
> 'problem' space may be misleading and also limiting. Suffice to say that 
> in my experience, design can occur as a way of thinking, practicing, 
> experimenting, researching (before picking up the drawing implement, I 
> always list, brainstorm, play with words), and then 
> doing/making/visualising, etc, without there being a 'problem' as such. 
> In fact, many of my designs, and particularly illustrations are 
> conceived and then executed this way. Is this design? Is it practiced 
> within a 'problem' space? Can design space be articulated as occurring 
> within 'inspirational' space without there ever being a problematic? I 
> suggest so, but suspect not in the realms where more corporate design 
> resides.
> 
> Further, in my experience, the way you have worded the proposal suggests 
> that design is linear, and we can also 'suspend the desire to draw', 
> when in fact, drawing, mark making, and so on are very much a part of 
> the 'thinking', 'researching' and 'defining' activities - a bit chicken 
> and egg really. They don't seem to have formal stops and starts, and are 
> not easily articulated as a linear process, or even a circular 
> sequential process, nor do they occur in isolation or explicitly in 
> teams (in fact, frustratingly, they most often occur just when you crawl 
> into bed at night - try and categorise that!). Very tricky process this, 
> attempting to find commonalities without also excluding. But still, in 
> my opinion, a commendable one.
> 
> And might I suggest that it might also be useful to explore this 
> question empirically with your design students and practitioners, beyond 
> the 'research space' of this list and beyond the 'academic space' of the 
> university. These questions are really useful ones particularly at this 
> 'defining' time in the disciplinary development of design, and ones that 
> might be illuminated through speaking with practitioners who might thus 
> provide insights into these very interesting ideas that blow the 
> 'problem' space wide open.
> 
> so, I ended up with a long response. hope you find it useful.
> 
> teena

-- 
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/