Dear Eduardo,

Herbert Simon wrote, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises new sales plans for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principle mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences. Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, education, business, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design.” (Simon 1996:
111).

This is from the final edition of the book, the third. Simon includes all professions in his definition.

Simon’s position is that all human beings who plan situations that human beings prefer to current situations design. Whenever we plan something we prefer in contrast with something we have now, we design. This is a natural human process, and all human beings engage in the design process.

Simon’s explicit distinction doesn’t include some designers while rejecting other designers. He distinguishes between the professions and the sciences, those who plan things and do them, and those who learn about things and describe them.

Simon also makes an implicit distinction between professional designers and everyone who designs. All human beings design, or nearly all. Some human beings design as a professional practice. Human beings who earn a living (or try to) by “changing existing situations into preferred ones” for other human beings are professionals. Another way of saying this is that professional designers are designated problem-solvers who act on behalf of the legitimate personal or social owners of the problems they solve.

Simon’s explicit and implicit definitions include us all.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

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Reference

Simon, Herbert. 1996. The Sciences of the Artificial. 3nd edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

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