Dear Chuck,
In your reply to Terry, you write, “But you and Ken seem to focus on
information that is easy to analyse because it has been framed by needs,
goals and outcomes that you don't consider in the process. Designing
should not be cut up just because it is hard to grasp it all.”
Please: this isn’t what I’m saying.
What I am saying is: 1) There has been nearly no work on transaction
cost analysis in design. 2) This can provide useful information on some
aspects of the design process. 3) This will afford information on those
aspects of the design process that we do not seem to understand well
today. 4) That information TOGETHER WITH other forms of analysis will
afford us better comprehensive models. 5) In the absence of this
information, we cannot have comprehensive models.
Along with this, I propose two statements. 1) This information is not
“easy to analyze.” The fact that we have relatively little
information on the transaction costs of design suggests that this is not
easy, even though the IDEA of transaction costs is easy to understand.
2) OTHER needs, goals, and outcomes are important. To understand them
better, however, we need the capacity to analyze different aspects of
the design process more comprehensively than is currently common. And
thus, I repeat the points in the previous paragraph, especially point 5:
in the absence of this information, we cannot have comprehensive
models.
I don’t see why this poses a problem to you. If we were doing medical
research, it seems to me you’d be saying that we should not study one
specific sub-system in the human body on the principle that this fails
to provide an understanding of the whole person.
There is a difference between professional practice and research. If
you are designing or treating patients, you work with whole systems and
whole people – or you should. When you are creating models, you
sometimes model parts of the system to understand the nature and
properties of the part. Then you study the linkages to the larger
system. Then you study the whole.
Until we have the patience and care to study the many sub-systems of
the design process, we won’t really understand the whole system, and
we won’t be able to meet the full range of needs, goals, and outcomes
for which we are responsible.
It seems to me that we get into trouble when we use bad metaphors. No
one has proposed that “designing should be cut up.” You can’t
“cut up” designing any more than you can hang designing from the
yardarms or take designing to dinner. Designing is a process, not a
person or a concrete object.
What I suggest I that we should model and analyze subsystems of the
design process to understand the design process better. As we understand
subsystems better and more effectively, we will be able to build betters
models of the whole process.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia
|