Klaus and all - I feel compelled to add something to this conversation.
Perhaps only because, when the JISC mail digest arrived in my inbox, I was
reading a 1996 Krippendorf article and just wondered if the post included
your thoughts, a pure synchronicity of timing. I'm writing a piece that
cites your "Second-order Cybernetics of Otherness."

 

For better or worse, it seems we all must clarify our language, especially
in transdisciplinary discussions. The article I'm writing refers early to
Simon's (1969) definition of design as a universal activity, wherein
"everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones." Social systems and social design should not
be discounted in the current discussion. While perhaps technically
human-centered, there are multiple streams of practice in social design that
have nothing to do with artifacts, technologies, or immediate human
interaction. It is essentially planning for human social betterment by
dialogic means.

 

This view has been reinforced by the recent acknowledgment of organizational
management, citizen activism, and social action campaigns as social design
activities. I believe Simon may have invented the term social design 40
years ago. Young designers often consider this a new trend, but their
meaning of social design is closer to the "design of services for social
relevance." Simon's was that any organized planning with the intent to
improve performance of collective human activity is social design. 

 

Another point I'd like to introduce. There has been much interest in "design
thinking" lately, including discussions comparing design and systems
thinking, many of which are not BS.  Some of us have been writing about
design thinking informally (blogs) because it has no credible scholarly
purchase yet. I've been making the case that design thinking can be
considered legitimate, not just a buzzword for designers to elevate their
consultancies. Here's a phrasing some of us may abhor actually using, but we
have few good alternatives given the socially constructed meaning of the
term and its currency.

 

"Capital D" Design can be seen an epistemology, not the methodology of
"small d" design. It's a way of knowing and intervening in the world, and we
attach references to that way of knowing that clarify the shared objects of
design. Human-centred design is a kind of methodology, and we have agreement
about that methodological set today. But if you considered human factors
engineering from the 1960's (or even earlier), they would have claimed the
same territory, that their methods of "human engineering" were indeed
human-centered design methods, in applications to artifacts and systems. So
should any designer be limited by either perspective or methods? The way of
knowing in design is informed by iterative exploration, not scientific
method.

 

For all the many ways of designing that we acknowledge (or fail to
recognize), methods follow a worldview and epistemology that designing "into
the world" is a way of knowing about the world. Good design practice follows
a different kind of rigour than the scholarly or scientific. While there may
be plenty of charlatans about, we also ought to allow students and our own
practices to explore design unknowns at the edges of methodological knowing.
It is like you said in the same 1996 article regarding second order
cybernetics, a re-entry into the very practices we claim to describe (e.g.
design), and thereby creating them.

 

Peter H. Jones, Ph.D. 


Founder, Redesign Research

 

Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto

Adjunct Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design

 

http://designdialogues.com