Dear All,
For the most part, I’ve stayed out of the Herbert Simon thread since it drifted away from Simon. Nevertheless, recent posts interested me.
Klaus is writing in a reasonable, philosophically pragmatic way that reflects a responsible view of the world. I agree with Klaus on many issues – while I differ a bit on definitions, I agree with his description of how things work in the world.
I prefer defining design Simon’s way. This broad definition describes the design process as an act and an existential attribute of human being. Adjectives do the rest. Gunnar’s post speaks to the point – how we use words changes our view of who is a designer, who an architect, and who an artist.
Using Simon's approach, any planned improvement – great or small – results from a design process. Not all design processes are equal in intent or importance.
Trillions of design processes take place on our planet every day. Most are trivial, many are minor; the majority are nearly inconsequential. There are far fewer significant design processes as Klaus defines them than the minor improved states arising from the trillions of processes covered by a broad definition. Nevertheless, all intentions and plans have some consequence, great, small, or nearly invisible. These consequences tie human beings togethers in a web of existence and experience. Design, in its existential quality, is one of the attributes that makes us human. Language use, tool use, and the design process of intention, planning, and implementation make us human.
While we all design, not all of us work as designers. Among the 7,200,000,000 or so human beings on our planet, I’d estimate that fewer than 1% or possibly 2% work in the design professions. Where you put the decimal point on any estimate depends on your definitions. Fewer still work as professional designers using Klaus's criteria. Determining the numbers is a matter of determining boundaries and shaping definitions that differentiate one group from the next.
Klaus raised a valid point about the impossibility of universal design. This requires clarification on my part. Using a broad definition for design as an existential capacity doesn’t imply that any given design process can be universal.
To design – to seek improved states – means seeking improved states for specific individuals or groups. All improvements must be defined and located in a network of meaning, care, and accountability. While the concept of seeking improved states may be universal, any specific improvement must be local and not universal. Since no specific improvement is universal, and since preferred outcomes cannot be universal, the design processes we use to achieve them cannot be universal.
Professional designers attend to the issues of care, engagement, and accountability required by those whom they serve as designated problem-solvers or solution-seekers. Klaus wrote that getting paid does not make someone a professional designer. I’d put it differently. Getting paid does not make someone what a professional designer OUGHT to be. The sorrowful thing is that many designers get paid for being and doing much less than they ought. I understand and agree with what I take to be the intent of Klaus’s statement. I was using language in a different way to clarify the difference between a description of what professional designers ought to be and what they often are.
At the heart, I very much like the way that Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman put it at a conference some years ago: “Design is being in service.”
This is a deep ontological statement. It is a statement about the nature of being and a statement about the nature of being in service to others by helping them to achieve their goals. To do this requires the qualities and attributes that Klaus describes.
The reason this thread drew me back in was the contrast that emerged between descriptions of designers and descriptions of engineers. In my experience, relatively few engineers have the broad, service-oriented focus that Jon, Filippo, and Terry describe. The white papers and professional codes to which they referred us describe ideal states or future states rather than current reality. I’d be interested in reading a serious comparative analysis of the many codes and regulations that govern these different professions. Codes and attributes differ by profession. Within each profession, codes differ by nation and by jurisdiction. Terry used an Australian cove. On a worldwide basis, though, I suspect that engineers have neither the best codes nor the worst. To make an empirical statement about this requires looking at, describing, and contrasting the different codes — I am certain that one of the top journals in design or engineering would publish such an article, and I know it would be widely read.
Engineers do a job. This also true of most designers. Very few designers genuinely meet the qualities of a professional designer as Klaus describes them. Klaus describes what professional designers ought to be and do. This is not what designers generally tend to be and do.
In every nation where we see the design profession at work, design firms win professional awards year after year for silly projects, CD covers, products that don’t work, corporate identification programs that flop even though designers like them, and so on.
As Victor Papanek said, “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them.” If you add the adverse uses of communication design and experience design, you could easily expand the definition.
This legacy is visible today in the highest award of the Raymond Loewy Foundation – the Lucky Strike Design Award.
The Foundation describes the award this way: “The Lucky Strike Designer Award [recognises the] lifetime achievements, or career of an individual whose work in design has helped improve the social and cultural conditions of everyday life.
“The purpose of the award is to promote cultural and social life by supporting the continued positive development of contemporary design in honor of Raymond Loewy and his international contribution to visionary and modern industrial design. Therefore, the recipient of the award receives Euro 50.000 to continue with his or her efforts to improve conditions of everyday life.”
It is reasonable to honour Loewy. It is astonishing that the award honours work that "has helped improve the social and cultural conditions" in the name of Lucky Strike, a design project with disastrous health consequences. This award honours Loewy’s success in increasing the sales of a product that causes cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Loewy may not have known this when he designed the Lucky Strike package, but these health hazards were universally known when the Foundation named The Lucky Strike Design Award. Designers had and have a role in building major cigarette brands – and design firms have done this long since the health consequences became clear.
There are differences between the aspirations of any profession and what we actually do. This is true of designers and engineers alike.
Bob Dylan once sang,
“You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.
But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed,
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLFNTBcPNfQ
Harold and Erik wrote, “Design is being in service.” Who we serve and how we serve them defines the nature of our being. It defines what we are as designers and it defines who we become.
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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