Hi Chuck,
Thanks for your message and question. I understand the approach seems to
appear as if it doesn't sufficiently involve the knowledge and skills of
designers. That just seems to be how it is. This is a way one can analyse
design industry activity and predict its futures without needing the
viewpoints of designers. The aim is to look at the forces and factors
acting to predict how things are likely to change. Or perhaps better, to
identify new opportunities for design. It seems better if one avoids using
the viewpoints, tools and assumptions of designers - mainly because for
most they are not very well developed for this work. In fact, traditional
design perspective unhelpfully give tunnel vision and block ways of seeing.
For this kind of work, it can be helpful to avoid bias and the emotional
hooks associated with design by mentally substituting for 'the industry,
practices and knowledge of design' by some totally different kind of
industry that has no mental hooks back to design. I suggest something like
'the fermented cabbage soup industry'.
It's possible to do a similar kind of transaction cost analysis (similar to
what I wrote for the future of design) to see how businesses in the
international fermented cabbage soup industry will likely have to respond as
a result of changes that vary their transaction costs across different
operations. For example, it might be that a carbon tax (transaction cost)
will be introduced based on the potential of fermented cabbage soup eater to
measurably add methane to the greenhouse gas mix. This could reasonably be
predicted to change the cost balances of fermented cabbage soup relative to
other products in ways that result in new kinds of fermented cabbage or
other products, new cabbage recipes or perhaps completely different uses for
the machinery used for making the fermented cabbage soup. Similarly, changes
in transaction costs related to the transport of fermented cabbage soup
would result in fermented cabbage soup being packaged differently - perhaps
in the form of Okonomiyaki? This kind of analysis does not depend on deep
understanding of the knowledge, skills and values of fermented cabbage soup
makers - or designers, or the value of designs, it depends only on seeing
how changes in transaction costs result in selection pressures that offer
advantage to other organisaitonal solutions.
You suggest this is not yet an integrated approach, I'm puzzled. Design
education and design practice seems to have developed some gaps or leaks of
knowledge over the last couple of decades. It might be time to bring some of
the methods that have been developed back into the light. Many design
methods were developed for identifying best choices for concepts (and for
converting wicked design situations into ordinary design problems) and were
taught in the 70s. Many are found in the journal of Design Studies in the
80s, particularly these kinds of algorithmic methods of identifying likely
best areas of solution relevant to planning and architectural design. Some
methods are newer but part of the same approaches. Quote: ' An extensive
body of work exists in the development and application of optimization
techniques in design across a large number of design disciplines (Wilde,
1978; Papalambros and Wilde, 2000; Pardalos and Resende, 2002; Parmee and
Hajela, 2002).' from Gero and Kannengiesser in
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.94.9061&rep=rep1&ty
pe=pdf
Warm regards from a chilly cabbage soup sort of evening here in Western
Australia
Terru
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-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Charles
Burnette
My point is that no transaction cost makes sense without accounting
for its ultimate effect - the outcome of a goal oriented process in
which transactions occur. You and Terry seem to assume that one can
talk about transaction analysis without an extension into the reality
it addresses. As Terry pointed out it is very useful and under
appreciated in design - but on its own it is not (yet?) an integrated
and comprehensive approach.
Chuck
Charles Burnette, PhD, FAIA
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