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Dear friends
Long post: with many diversions and quotes:
This thread intrigues me and it is quite clear that the participants come to
the field of design and design research from very different perspectives and
in this I include the irreverent manner in which design practitioners treat
research methods and traditions that have been established in the sciences.
This also reminds me of a thread here on this list from way back on 2nd
October 2009 when I had made a post to the list in response to posts by
Klaus Krippendorff and Ben Jonson (see links and summary below)
<
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1457&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4
>
I did a search for "River and Banks" on the PhD-Design archive and these
three posts came up and I quote the summaries below:
Item #14234 (2 Oct 2009 21:35) - Re: On design - again?
<https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1457&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>PhD-Design
and it has been most educative and stimulating. I must thank all
the other contributors as well and the "treacherous *river* full of
currents"
that Ben Johnson refers to is indeed such a place when we try to navigate
As a designer and a design teacher I have always kept my life jacket handy
whenever I have tried to cross this *river* and in many occasions I have had
to look for access books that could become my life inflatable dingy to carry
those stakeholders who need to use it. Difficult, but we must continue to
try. The *river* must not run dry!
With warm regards
> theory and practice, as witnessed in re debate, suggests to me solid
> foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak.
>
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Item #14232 (2 Oct 2009 09:56) - Re: On design - again?
<https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1316&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>theory
and practice, as witnessed in re debate, suggests to me solid
foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak.
------------------------------
Item #14229 (2 Oct 2009 09:19) - Re: On design - again?
<https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0910&L=PHD-DESIGN&P=R1172&1=PHD-DESIGN&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>
In attempting to bridge the troubled waters of design research, spanning
theory and practice, as witnessed in re debate, suggests to me solid
foundations on both *riverbanks*, so to speak.
UnQuote
The metaphor of the fast and treacherous river with two distinct banks, one
populated by the scientific researchers and the other one populated by the
design practitioners and both are trying to cross over to meet common ground
to make design more understandable and more effective, if at all.
For me, Rosans' call for "Projection before Analysis" somehow rings true
since it corresponds with much of my experiences as a practicing designer
and as a design teacher who has watched his students grapple with extremely
difficult and complex design challenges here in India over the past 40 years
of my experience. Dreams and impractical visions dealing with possible
solutions for seemingly intractable problems in India provide the initial
motivations for them and their teacher to engage with a difficult subject
but as time progressed and after much effort new insights emerge and there
is deeper conviction in the direction but no proof. Further involvement
results in a range of concepts and options that emerge which can be
subjected to testing and these are offered for deeper analysis through the
process of shared visualisation and serial prototyping that would never have
begun in the first place if the cussed designer (teacher or student) had not
persisted with the most imponderable concept in the first place. This is
akin to design led entrepreneurship since the only persons to believe
deeply, sometimes foolishly, in the particular design possibility that is in
their dream and then take the practical plunge to make investments of time
effort and then money and knowledge of others and to bring in partners to
make it work out right, a long and frustrating process indeed.
The second aspect that I sympathise with is Rosan's act of summarising her
readings from the seminal texts of Rittel and Nelson and attributing this to
the spirit of the author and not the specific quotes by the author as an
argument for or against an idea as if it has been proposed by that author.
Let me explain. I have read and re-read many texts from Bucky Fuller in my
student days and then again and again over the years and it will be
difficult for me to quote verbatim from any one of these since I do not know
when and where I had read these particular texts, since I came from that
side of the river, that of design practice and not from scientific research.
However my reading of Bucky Fuller is deep and my take on the spirit of
Fuller is also quite firm in my mind and having met him personally twice in
my career at NID, the spirit rings true and although his long winding texts do
not make sense for most people if these were quoted and used as a source of
argument to establish some facts. I have a kernel of an idea of what Bucky
was telling us and this kernel of insight and not fact is what informs me as
I take his ideas forward even if he never said it in quite the same way ever
in any of his texts or speeches that I have witnessed. So, is this poor
research? So be it, but this is the way design has been as far as I know it,
by using facts and knowledge and insights which will perhaps continue to do
so in the years ahead.
Tell me If I am completely off base here and the river is indeed wide and
treacherous we do need to get across but not loose sight of the value of
each bank, one from the design tradition of practice first and theory later
and the other from the scientific bank of deep analysis and hard evidence
before action.
Looking back on the fifth anniversary of my starting to monitor my blog
"Design for India" and to see the blogs traffic using Google Analytics
which started on a long journey on 9th July 2007. The first blog post was
in June 2007 but the record of traffic starts on 9 July 2007, five years ago
today. Have we come far, yes and there is a long way to go before we
understand What Design Is, What Design Could Be and more importantly What
Design Can Do. Links to my first five posts in June 2007.... the search goes
on and the river is wide, and pretty treacherous indeed
<
http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/science-and-design-reality-check-for.html
>
<
http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/wish-list-for-indias-national-design.html
>
<
http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/theme-lecture-at-usid2007-hyderabad.html
>
<
http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/reflections-on-indian-design-policy.html
>
<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/2007/06/mission-statement.html>
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my imac at home on the NID campus'
9 July 2011 at 1.55 am IST
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Prof M P Ranjan*
*Design Thinker and author of blog -
www.Designforindia.com<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/>
*
E8 Faculty Housing
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India
Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
email: ranjanmp@g <[log in to unmask]>mail.com
<[log in to unmask]>web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp>web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
<http://www.ranjanmp.in/>blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>
education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com>
education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com
<http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com/>
------------------------------------------------------------
On 8 July 2011 22:09, CHUA Soo Meng Jude (PLS) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Rosan
>
> Your idea about moving into the future prior to analysis seems rather like
> something James March might say. In fact he does suggest that sometimes we
> need to "act before we think" and this he says in the context of what he
> calls "technologies of foolishness". He was trying to engineer new
> behaviours and the experience of new preferences, in order to promote play
> in organizations.
>
> However, when he recommended this, he did so after much thinking, i.e.,
> analysis. In other words, his prescription to act before one thinks is a
> considered one, something that follows analysis.
>
> Herbert Simon could almost have said this, perhaps in the sense that he
> recommended design without final goals, letting unintended consequences
> emerge freely (i.e., consequences one cannot predict, and hence could not
> have foreseen via analysis). But again he said that in the book that ran 3
> editions, The Science of the Artificial, which seems to me a lot of
> analysis!
>
> Jude
> ________________________________________
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman [
> [log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 6:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: projection before analysis
>
> Hi, Rosan,
>
> Your post puzzles me. It’s a bit difficult to understand what you
> mean by “projection before analysis” in response to Derek Miller’s
> post.
>
> It is truly difficult to see how you get this out of Harold Nelson or
> Horst Rittel. To say that you’re acknowledging that their ideas
> influence you seems to me a slippery way to avoid telling us exactly
> what Nelson or Rittel may have said. I can just as well say the
> opposite, and I, too can claim that Rittel or Nelson influences my
> views.
>
> Now if you mean that we project or seek a preferred future state as
> against a current state, you can get that out of Rittel, Nelson, or
> Herbert Simon. That’s what all designers do. What Derek is saying is
> something different.
>
> What Derek is saying is that when you create projects for human beings
> in a real world with serious consequences, you must understand the
> situation before you act. That’s why analysis is required.
>
> National Institute of Education (Singapore) http://www.nie.edu.sg
>
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--
-------------------------------------------------------------
*Prof M P Ranjan*
*Design Thinker and author of blog -
www.Designforindia.com<http://design-for-india.blogspot.com/>
*
E8 Faculty Housing
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India
Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
email: ranjanmp@g <[log in to unmask]>mail.com
<[log in to unmask]>web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp>web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
<http://www.ranjanmp.in/>blog: <http://www.design-for-india.blogspot.com>
education blog: <http://www.design-concepts-and-concerns.blogspot.com>
education blog: http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com
<http://www.visible-information-india.blogspot.com/>
------------------------------------------------------------
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