Dear Tim, Keith, Jesper, Ken,



thanks a lot for your responses!



Ken, thanks for the definitions. I have studied them as well, and I think they are very helpful, but as they reflect (as they should) the way language is generally used, I feel that some tweaking might be useful, and I am trying to ask from the list if some people have developed or come across such tweaks, or on the other hand elaborations that might better cater to the needs I am thinking about. The closest one of these definitions (for this current interest) is in my opinion:



> 5 a: an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding <the general ∼ of the epic>







Jesper, you said:

> Following that, I would consider the designed objects as change agents, being manifestations of the change the designer intends to implement, conveyed through the meaning that is stored in the product.



This is interesting, I need to spend some time thinking about this, thanks! But maybe going a bit in a different direction from mine.



Keith,

Thanks, and as Tim said, very elegant! You set off in the kind of generalization direction I am looking for. It is very concise and compact indeed. However, I am not sure I understand your explanation completely, I need to reflect and try to map it against what I am thinking about with a bit more time. But I do have one problem with the "doing" part, it is the actor....



And Tim, thanks for building on Keith's response;

You complicate his generalization by incorporating the idea of designs being built on earlier designs, which is nice.

And in your second post you highlight the actor and the expert designer. I understand your reasons for emphasizing these, but I am looking for something else. 





I am interested specifically in how to describe designs that have emerged without an intentional designer, and in considering designs that may be less clearly definable and with fuzzy boundaries. I want to be inclusive rather than restrictive. I think that it is useful in many situations to think about intentionally designed designs and emergent or unintentionally produced designs in the same way, because they all have their effects and consequences in the world, regardless of where they came from. This expands the scope for studying designs tremendously, and we are at this point quite ill equipped for that, due to the requirement of the involvement of the actor and the intention. This greater scope for design is also something that Papanek, Krippendorff and Cross have noted, although I am possibly taking it much further, and I assume many will think I go beyond useful limits.



But, for example, species. How should we describe what the design of a cat is - what should our description (of the design of the cat, not of the cat) contain?

Evolution produces design, that is something that Darwin's supporters and opponents both agreed - hence the argument from design and the idea of fighting evolutionism with the theory of intelligent design. But when evolution produces e.g. a cat, a human being, a cell, an eye, a virus - how can/should we define that design?



Or, does marriage have a design? What is the design of marriage, what should we think that the design of marriage contains? Or does everyone on the list think that marriage has no design, e.g. as we can not point out the actor who designed it, or how it actually emerged and where?





I will try to engage in something of this sort and promise to let you know when I have something smart to say about it, but I just wanted to find out if there are any soulmates out there who are considering these same kind of issues and who may have published something I have not yet found, whether I have overlooked some well known references, and whether there is any general interest in this direction :)



cheers, Kari-Hans









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