Ward,
I certainly appreciate your comments.  What I find most interesting
personally is that you use an entirely different language than I do, yet we
seem to be saying largely the same things.  This is one of the big problems
I see in the design disciplines: we often agree on concepts but disagree on
the labels we give them.  And we let our disagreement about the labels
distract us.  I find this a great inefficiency of the design community, and
sincerely hope we someday find a way to overcome it.

I certainly don't mind you pondering my post in any way you please.  Indeed,
I consider it my most "successful" blog post so far exactly because it seems
to have stimulated thinking and discussion.

(At the risk of appearing a little too self-agrandizing, I note that the
idea of designing as balancing is one that I've actually published "for
real", with my students & colleagues: see F.A. Salustri, D. Rogers, and N.L.
Eng. Designing as Balance-Seeking Instead of
Problem-Solving.<http://ijg.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.154/prod.225>Design
Principles and Practices, 3(3):343-356,2009.  A free preprint version
is available at http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/I/Papers/DPP09preprint.pdf)

Re: the "visual play" ("optical illusion," in my language) of seeing one
thing or another but never both.  This is a feature of how the brain works.
There's a great book inanely titled Mind Hacks (with
http://www.mindhacks.com/ as a companion web site) that describes very
nicely how oddly the brain may seem to work some times, and offers a number
of neurological and evolutionary explanations.  The difference between the
visual plays and questions like, say wave-particle duality, is that the
visual plays result from biology that we cannot avoid, whereas problem
framing is something we can address.  Still, I certainly agree that
contradictions result from poorly framed questions.  In my language: Nature
doesn't do contradictions. :)

You wrote:

> Consistency requires that 'recognized' be understood as a force, i.e,
> 'expressed by individuals' works. Whether someone 'recognizes' is ultimately
> unknowable.
>

I think you're saying here that we can't tell if someone has recognized a
need until they act on that recognition.  Yes?
I would agree with that of course, except that there are levels of acting.
For instance, you might mean acting on a recognition by trying to address
the need.  But there might be other actions before trying to address the
need; for instance, saying to no one in particular "Wow!  Look at that!"
upon recognizing a need.  This would be an indicator of a recognition
without it really being a "force."

I do know when I recognize something myself.  And by comparing notes on such
experiences with others, we can pretty much nail down not only that people
do recognize things, but we can actually explore how that happens.  Not that
I know much about this myself, but I know there are brain researchers out
there doing this kind of thing.  And armed with that knowledge, I would hope
we can figure out how to help people learn to recognize and then act.

You wrote:

> Sometimes its needs but mostly it is 'possibilities' - when the president
> of Sony introduced the Watchman technology, he was asked. 'Why?'. His
> response was, "Because we can." Design is about resolving needs but I like
> to believe design is best in dealing with aspirations.
>

Sure, but there were lots of things Sony could have made "because they
could."  "Because we can" just means they've designed something.  The
question is why did they design that thing in particular.  I suggest the
answer is they thought that of all the alternatives they could have pursued,
that's the one the most people would have wanted - that is, they designed it
because there was a recognized need for portable video.

Also, I think you might be confounding technology development with designing
for a need.  I agree that Sony designed and developed the Watchman, but the
basic technology existed earlier (Panasonic had a pocket TV more than 10 yrs
earlier).  "Because we can", to me, signifies that they already knew the
technology would work.

So, as I see it, the existent technology of mini TVs let Sony recognize a
need for portable video.

It would be interesting to consider how Erik's 4-part division of discovery,
invention, innovation and design fits into this; but I haven't thought that
through yet.

You wrote:

> Choice always underlies the trajectory of the resolution of these vectors
> or designing would be fundamentally impossible.
>

I'm good with that.

You wrote:

> Ah the root of the matter, always the difference between what is and what
> could be... What I would like to add is the difference between what is and
> what should be...
>

The difference between 'could' and 'should' is that 'should' includes some
kind of judgment where 'could' just enumerates possibilities.
If the 'should' is in reference to the need, then I'm okay with that.  (i.e.
the need /should/ be fulfilled.)
If the 'should' is in reference to some specific means of fulfilling the
need (i.e. some particular design), then I have a problem, because there are
many, many ways of fulfilling a need, and /should/ suggests that one can
know a-priori which of all will do the job best.  I don't think we have a
good track record at doing that.


Cheers.
Fil

>
> --
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
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/