Hello Terry
Cool you are a sailor too :) If you are interrested check my sailing site (http://www.birger-sevaldson.no/seiling/index.php)
I only partly agree with what you are stating. though decisions on the race course are seemingly reduced to single loop decisions if it was that simple you could make a computer program telling you what to do in different situations. Well it partly exists but only partly.
A very experienced sailor who i know had a very different view. He said sailing is like playing chess on several boards simultaneously. I would add yes but while the boards in chess are disconnected and static in sailing they are interlinked and dynamic. One single loop decision that seems right at a certain moment may turn out to be wrong at the next. Well enough about this only a small comment on gut feeling: i think everybody can have gut feelings but the only gut feelings that are relevant are those intuitions that are based on experience and deep knowledge. exactly when the single loop decisions fall short and a fractioning of the networks of interrelations and when calculated models don’t work the experts base their decisions on gut feeling. in contrary to what you say i think only very skilled experts can make decisions on gut feelings that make sense.
Now back to saving the planet: I think what has left us as designers in depression because of the disability to act is the last generations realization of the complexity and dynamics of things. Systems are counter intuitive and best intentions often produce worst results. But i think that this depression can be overcome by these partly new soft systems approaches in combination with other views. i think the designers ability to synthesize from very complex data is only partly developed into this. I had a very good experience with my students this spring where they were able to learn a deeper and wider thinking. look at big fields of interrelated data and to respond to this, attack their solutions with catastrophic scenarios to speculate about the resilience of their systems design.
The examples of this will follow as promised i hope within the autumn.
I am not saying that this is the way but its one way. it is hard but fun and creates innovation. Its also very much connected to real life, in the end by looking at an intervention as an ecology were economy and the survival of actors on many different scales simultaneously are included factors.
What i am saying is that designers have to trust less on their bright ideas and instead start to work with deep and wide ideas and interrelated ideas that work in synergies over time. Systems oriented designing is a creative activity also because looking at systems carefully brings you beyond the object fixation, beyond your prejudices and schemata.
My experience is that this has to be learned as skills and techniques more than methods and this is where it becomes interesting for the discussion on design education and to your question of the outcomes you mention.
If we agree that designers need to cope with more of the consequences, suggest alternatives and engage in the ecologies of the industrial production they are a part of, what are your suggestions or models for coping with this?
I think there must be other approaches out there? I fyes its crucial we bring the suggestive solutions to the table so that they can be challenged and developed further.
Best
Birger
________________________________________
Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Terence Love [[log in to unmask]]
Sendt: 5. juli 2009 03:55
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: Re: Betraying the Planet: systems oriented design
Hi Berger,
Thanks for your message. I'll respond more fully later. Good to hear you
sail!
My feeling is sailing is a good example in favour of my comments: race
training of successful helmsmen and boat teams attempts to reduce
everything to single feedback loops or at most, two feedback loops.
Match-racing, one boat against another, is essentially a single feedback
loop system. Your boat makes a move, the other boat responds and you need to
change your move. One feedback loop. All the other factors are not part of
feedback loops or also single feedback loops - wind, tide, hydrodynamics
etc. You cannot change the tide, wind or hydrodynamic laws by your sailing
you can only respond to them.
From my experience in regatta racing, helms typically reenvisage any
situation to two feedback loops or less. In the main, this reduction back
towards a single loop thinking is done by learning whole sets of fixed
moves, patterns and strategies that can be wheeled out in particular
situations (i.e. single feedback loop). There are large numbers of books and
training courses dedicated to learning these strategy groups (e.g. "Learn to
sail like Dennis Conner" - I'm showing my age!). This is similar to the way
those in the martial arts learn patterns and katas. Improving sail racing
skills is dedicated to reducing everything to seeing only one feedback loop
or less at any moment a decision needs to be made. You can easily test this
by listening to discourse when sailing decisions are made (e.g. 'Look they
are starting to lift, going about now'). The use of 'gut feeling' is not
about the solution. Otherwise any physiologically sensitive novice sailor
would be good. The use of 'gut feeling' is about which strategy to use in
seeing a particular pattern out on the water - simply a single feedback
loop.
There has been a lot of confusion about systems methods. There is no magic
in understanding them, the situation is very straightforward. The 'magic'
that has been used to apparently differentiate between 'hard' and 'soft'
methods is a politically driven illusion. The same conceptual and empirical
situation applies to all. The systems field suffers in parts from much the
same sort of mess that the design field does. For example, one problematic
systems belief is that systems analysis IS designing. I wrote about this
problem some years ago in a mapping of the ways that systems analysis and
design activity fit together (confession - the title and spirit of the paper
was based on John Langrish' battleships paper at La Clusaz). You can find it
at
http://www.love.com.au/PublicationsTLminisite/2003/systems%20&%20design.htm
What I'm more interested in is getting this right in terms of Design
Education about complex systems. Designers can learn to be able to design
better in the realm of multiple feedback loops. The question is how, and
which methods are likely to result in successful designed outcomes. In that
sense, I feel we are on the same side but seeing things from different
perspectives.
Warm regards,
Terry
Berger wrote:
"On a race cource of a regatta the action is a complex interdisciplinary
thing that involves aero and hydrodynamics, strategy, tactics and social
systems (teamwork) Some of these things can and are modelled in realtime
with computers, but in large we deal with chaotic systems (weather)
nonlinear tubulences over foil surfaces and social dynamics. It makes you
wonder why the best guys always are at the right spot at the right moment ,
how they catch the shifts etc... If you ask them they dont answer. Its the
gut feeling, years of experience. its the deep knowledge and skill of being
a specialist in coping with multi-layered systems in real time. Soft systems
approaches are fokused on these issues and therefor have renewed the way we
think of and cope with systems. So this way of approaching systems askes for
different skills than mentioned in the paper (thanks for the reference!) It
would only make partly sense to approach this with the old school systems
view: isolating the systems and their subsystems and look at all the
feedback loops and relations separately etc. And we have not even talked
about the technologies and economies of sailing (wich can hurt badly :) )"
|