i didn't want to weigh into terry's definition of design.
although i have rarely found myself on terry's side of defining things so tightly that there is little space for maneuvering left, but i want to support something he is edging toward and that is the observation that designers do not make what they want to see happening.
terry argues for specifications as defining what design IS. he buys into a long gone era when engineers were given a problem to be solved and provided drawings of a solution that, with the backing of authority -- financial, managerial, production, and sales -- is then realized as drawn. not only is this unrealistic in my experiences, even engineering drawings are often revised and modified in interaction with and to accommodate the stakeholders in the future of a design. it denies the social dimension of design, the fact that all design takes place in a network of stakeholders.
where i agree with terry is that designers do not actually produce the artifacts they envision others are to realize. i have said and written much about the need for designers to realize that they need to propose something that inspires stakeholders in the future of that proposal to do something with it. this does not equate design processes with the writing, visualization, or demonstration of what could become real, but suggest that this is part of the skill set that designers better have. proposals for a future state of affairs that do not inspire those able to make something with them will not lead to anything. in the past, terry has argues strenuously against my saying that language has much to do with whether a design comes to be. in my experiences, much of what designers do is to make drawings, prepare presentations, work out arguments for why their proposal is a good one and this has much to do with communication skills, which goes far beyond the writing of specifications. i have never met a successful designers who cannot argue for what they propose others can realize.
more so than what actually happens to engineering specifications, design is always collaborative, whether as participatory design, work in design teams, or in collaborations with other disciplines on projects that involve humans. it always needs to inspire, not specify.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gunnar Swanson
Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2014 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Specifying something to be made or done
On Jan 8, 2014, at 11:42 AM, DAVID DURLING <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I would think that making is often an important part of design.
>
> For example, making seems at the heart of the crafts in general. I'm sure that many in the crafts see themselves as designers. Such making goes well beyond technical skills, though such technical skills may underpin the designing as well as the making. In research, exploratory designing and making can be a very powerful way of gaining understanding.
Accepting Terry's assumptions as one definition of design does not preclude noting that there are other valid definitions. So design (in the Lovean sense) seems to be based on the notion of a designer that came out of engineering, architecture, and other large projects and gained broader use with mass manufacture. That does not mean that craftsman should be disallowed the use of the word designer (in another, non-Lovean sense.)
In both cases, however, thinking through making can be vital. In the Lovean sense (I hope Terry doesn't object to my hijacking his name and I hope I'm understanding his claims accurately), the thing made is called the prototype or model or maquette or sketch of the product rather than being the product itself. (I won't try to tackle the implications for the design of immaterial stuff right now.)
> Terry's notion of 'specification' seems an elegant definition, so long as one accepts that the specification may be formed in many different ways including computer generated and physical models. In this case the specification may be modified and enhanced by the making.
>> On 8 Jan 2014, at 12:21, Francois Nsenga <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
[snip]
>> meaning 'more than' - with specifying an artifact. However, I hope
>> you don't extend the definition of 'design' to 'making' processes
>> that I tend to leave up respectively to technicians and skilled
>> workers, more prepared and apt by training.
It's important to note that, in addition to the preservation of the very important sorts of thinking that are tied to making, making stuff produces manufacturing knowledge and manufacturing knowledge is mixed up with design knowledge in ways that can make it difficult to separate the two.
It's hardly limited to the US but in this country, the middle class has been hollowed out by a range of factors including the exporting of manufacturing jobs to countries with lower wages. As the lower wage workers are replaced by machines, the competitive advantage of lower wages becomes less. Many people dismiss the advantage to the US of bringing manufacturing back because, as they rightly point out, the jobs of post WWII manufacturing will still be gone. What they miss is that manufacturing knowledge and design knowledge are inextricable and that manufacturing knowledge comes from actually manufacturing things.
Ceding manufacturing to others ultimately, despite Apple's current example to the contrary, is ceding design to others. (I know how loaded "others" is here but I don't have the energy to unload it right now.) I'll be interested to see if Terry makes a parallel claim regarding automation--that machine manufacture leads to machine design.
Thinking through making happens on a small scale (small from the standpoint of production) in the case of the crafts but also on a larger scale in mass manufacture. In the case of mass manufacture, the thinking is done by more people and, in some sense, by organizations. Losing that thinking is a danger in the extension of the model of separation of design and making.
By the way, this doesn't argue against Terry's definition nor does it necessarily argue against his position that much design may be too complex for an individual to gain/understand/keep track of the needed design knowledge for a particular project.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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