Dear Ken,

Thanks for a thoughtful post!

1) First, I must correct an apparent misunderstanding. When I gave those texts and references in my original post, I did not intend to say that these authors are discussing "designs" (in the sense of "a design"). I gave them as examples of a broader understanding of what design (as a phenomenon) means to some distinguished authors in the field of design: they did not restrict their idea of design within the activities of professional designers, or within the production of industrial artifacts. They mention things like writing a poem, reorganizing a desk drawer, or designing fire. I gave these examples to inspire readers of the post to think about design that is not of the typical industrial design variety, and not of the professional design variety.

As the dictionary definitions you posted show, we have many well known legitimate ways how the word design is used as a noun to describe the outcome of a design process. That is the kind of use of the noun I am interested in, but I am not satisfied with these definitions.

So, my intention was not to say that these texts I included somehow showcase the idea of "a design" I am looking for; in fact they do not, and that is exactly one reason why I am looking for that what is missing. These text give good examples of design phenomena that interest me especially much, and if these describe certain kinds of design activities, what is it that these activities are creating? What is "the design" in the outcomes? 

But in addition to these "the human being is a designer" kinds of examples, I am also interested in emergent design, which brings us to point 2:

2) In your response the key idea where we think differently is that you think that design is a process that requires intentionality - and consequently, it seems to me, that something that is not intentional can not be called design, regardless of what it produces. I realize that this is the same main difference that Tim's response is based on. 

I guess I must go back to my sources a bit more thoroughly to see which ones specifically discuss these phenomena using the term "design" as what non-intentional processes (such as biological evolution) create, as opposed to something else. In any case, I believe it really makes good sense to use it, and the most vocal supporting reference I can think of off the top of my head is Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). Here is a short quote:

"The key to understanding Darwin's contribution is granting the premise of the Argument from Design. What conclusion ought one to draw if one found a watch lying on the heath in the wilderness? As Paley (and Hume's Cleanthes before him) insisted, a watch exhibits a tremendous amount of work done. Watches and other designed objects don't just happen; they have to be the product of what modern industry calls "R and D" — research and development — and R and D is costly, in both time and energy. Before Darwin, the only model we had of a process by which this sort of R-and-D work could be done was an Intelligent Artificer. What Darwin saw was that in principle the same work could be done by a different sort of process that distributed that work over huge amounts of time, by thriftily conserving the design work that had been accomplished at each stage, so that it didn't have to be done over again. In other words, Darwin had hit upon what we might call the Principle of Accumulation of Design. Things in the world (such as watches and organisms and who knows what else) may be seen as products embodying a certain amount of Design, and one way or another, that Design had to have been created by a process of R and D. Utter undesignedness — pure chaos in the old-fashioned sense — was the null or starting point." (Dennett 1995:68)
	(also at: http://scilib-biology.narod.ru/Dennett/DDI/Dennett_D.C.-DDI.htm#03_3)

Also, compared to your stance, my focus is not on the intentionality of the process, but on the nature and qualities of the outcome. As I interpret you, you think that a process that created something can not be a design process if it was not intentional; I think that if the outcome is "a design", there was a design process, whether it was intentional or not. That is why I am trying to understand what qualities make a design "a design". So you look at it starting from the actor, I from the thing. I am trying to understand what it is, in terms of design, and what can be done with it, in terms of design, but I am not so interested in who made it, or whether it was made by anyone at all.

In my own opinion, I have good reasons for this, as after they manifest themselves in objects/artifacts, such "designs" have consequences in the world that correspond to their design, and that can be understood, possibly predicted, and built on, based on an understanding of their design, regardless of the nature of the process that created them. But I recognize that this is not the way that most people think, so I have a challenge ahead of me :) 

But, I have 2 questions for you:

1) why do you think that design must be intentional? Why is it a bad idea to think about a process that produces organization and functionality without intention, as "design"? Is it just because it has always been that way, or is there a more justified or important reason?

2) as you suggest that these outcomes should not be called designs, what should they be called instead? Is there any common, generic word/concept comparable to "a design", or should each of these things be called by some specific category name?

cheers, kh


Dennett, Daniel Clement. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.


On Apr 5, 2013, at 2:15 PM, Ken Friedman wrote:

> Dear Kari-Hans and All,
> 
> As this thread unfolds, I’ve been reading the contributions with great interest.
> 
> Without dipping into the full conversation, I’m going to point to two problems.
> 
> The first problem came up at the very start. In calling for a discussion of design as a noun, you gave several examples. While the authors you quote speak of “design” they do not use the noun design in a way that allows us to restate the noun in such forms as “a design,” or “many designs.”
> 
> Rather, these authors write about the noun “design” in the sense of the design process. It is a noun that describes a process. I don’t know the technical linguistic term for this kind of noun, but it is not a noun in the sense of an object or artifact. Rather, it is a noun related to the verb form of the word.
> 
> The second, and greater, problem is summarized in your last post. The phenomenon of evolved things that have some kind of structure can be mapped as a plan or structure is quite real. In this sense, we can speak of evolutionary information embodied in artifacts, processes, and thing of all kinds.
> 
> The fact that we can map this information as a plan does not mean that any agency or entity planned the information that appears in our map.
> 
> To shift the word design from a verb to a noun, and then to say that the noun allows us to consider all things that can be mapped as “plans” of this kind seems to me a problematic usage. To speak of “a design” in this sense has several implications – if we speak in metaphor or as the opening to reflection, this is potentially fruitful. To use this metaphor as a way to learn from evolution in kinds of design that engage with biomimicry, behavioral economics, different forms of informatics, or other evolutionary models has clearly been useful in different design fields.
> 
> To speak of this as a description of states or phenomena in which evolution itself or non-intentional entities create [special usage noun] “designs” without [ordinary usage verb] “designing” them seems to me a problematic scheme.
> 
> This leads to inadequate ideas about the nature of evolution and evolutionary processes. People already misunderstand evolution. Evolution is a random process. Evolution is contingent and path-dependent. Within the wide range of contingent events, evolutionary processes open niches. Multiple natural causes lead to random genetic mutations to prior life forms. These forms become candidates for success in available niches. Those life forms that fit new niches survive while others do not. On one hand, this is a successful process that leads to life as we see it today. On the other hand, the process is intensely wasteful. Billions of distinctly different life forms have emerged, evolved, and vanished since organic life first emerged on our planet. Nature has no intention, and therefore no concern for massive continued development and disappearance of species.
> 
> When we discuss cultural and social evolution, different kinds of processes come into play.
> 
> The thread raises the question, “What can designers learn from natural, biological, and cultural evolution?”  To ask this question, designers must know more about natural science, biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology than they generally know. This involves both background knowledge and specific facts. As I have often done, I’ll refer to Don Norman’s Core77 blog contribution “Why Design Education Must Change.” If we are going to get into these issues, we’ve got to develop an appropriate level of background knowledge and an appropriate level of field specific knowledge.
> 
> My view is that once we know enough about these issues to discuss them in a responsible way, the topics will remain useful – but we won’t describe them using the word “design”. The issues are important. Designers can learn a great deal from these issues. What we learn may help us to improve design processes and design outcomes. My one objection is simple – there is no need to label the outcomes of these processes and phenomena [special usage noun] “designs” to learn from them.


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