Dear Terry, Ken, and all
I am rather a fully convinced follower in Ken's perspective. You can't
circumscribe designing ONLY to conceiving and writing specifications. This
might indeed be, as you say, what the majority of designers worldwide do,
but that doesn't prevent some of us to see it as reductive, lacking, with
all the consequences.
Designing is not limited to specifying and prescribing how to produce... a
hammer in your example. Prior to the concept of 'hammer', there are,
upstream, other phases of the designing process often skipped, or not
explicitly and rationally stated by conventional design professionals.
Prior to draftsmanship, specifications searching, re-searching and writing
protocols on how to make a 'hammer', one ought to search, re-search, assess
and 'judge' most of the concurring concepts in *joining solids.* What kinds
of solids to be joined? With what kind of most appropriate joining
implements? Where the joining will it take place and installed? Who will do
the joining? For what purpose? Who specifically will be the users (there
are at least five categories of the concept of 'users', both human and
non-human) of the joining implement, a hammer or any other? What will be
the life-cycle of the implement 'decreed'? Is the 'decreed' implement 'use
cycle' for the better? For whom? Etc. etc.
Here we have moved very far from just "creating designs"! However without
implying a prestige hierarchical order. The issue here is just the breadth
of the concept of designing. In my view, PhDs can as well be written on
draftsmanship and on specs writing, as they would be written on the more
complete, or parts of, designing process as hinted at above. There is room
for professionals in all phases of the designing process. The ultimate
purpose of all being, hopefully, to change 'existing situations into
preferred ones'.
Francois
Montreal
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