Ken,
How would a pantograph create a specification for making or doing something? It may create a replica of the physical embodiment of a specification for making or doing something. That is not creating the specification.
You assume designers are human. I suggest it is better to assume otherwise and see humans as one class of designer among many.
Simon's definition fails or being generous is incomplete because of a combination of assumption that only humans design and that the criteria of what is design and what isn't is tied to a reflexive loop of meaning defined by the individuals involved. In essence, the core of Simon's statement is that those doing the devising of the courses of action are also doing the defining of whether something is design or not. As a definition, it fails on that point. It also fails on the subjectivity point. But in addition, it fails on a raft of other considerations - if the aim is illusory, if the course of action fails is it no longer a design? What happens when a design becomes outmoded or the original designers doing the preferring prefer something else? Is the preferring a sort of badge, that once something has it it’s a design form then on in? Etc etc. These issues and many other problems of definitions of design are spelled out in some detail by Wybo Houkes and Pieter E. Vermaas (2010, 'Technical Functions: On the Use and Design of Artefacts'. Springer) from the Netherlands. This book is in a class of its own in terms of quality of analysis of design theory. I have come across no other text that addresses the conceptual issues in the same depth of detail. I recommend it highly. The design field would not be in the conceptual mess it is with sufficient work at the standard it sets. Buy it!
Ok - sorry about that , I was getting a little over excited there.
That are a lot of different issues that a definition of design has to address across an awful lot of design fields and an even larger amount of varieties of design-related activities and states in any one design field.
As soon as a definition becomes too specific, either by being to extensive or too limited, it fails to draw a boundary that is appropriate.
Like the three bears and the chairs: preferred state is too big, prototype is too little, and design as a specificaiotn for making and doing things is just right ;-)
All the best,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Friday, 19 September 2014 9:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: Ken Friedman
Subject: Re: background vs design
Terry,
This question is one of the reasons I find your definition with its focus on "a design" circular and unsatisfactory.
Simon's description is simple. To design Simon (1982: 129) wrote, is to “[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”
Whoever designs determines the preferred situation that is the goal of the design act. It may be an improved artefact or object, ir it may involve improvements to the world. While I agree with Mike that designers should be ethical, designers may prefer evil goals as well as good ones. And what is seen as good can sometimes change, often for good reason.
At the end of the 1800s, gasoline-powered motor cars were a reasonable solution to what was then a major problem in urban pollution -- the problem of dealing with ever-increasing amounts of manure from the horses that powered most light urban transport. As the 1900s crept along, exhaust from internal combustion engines was a major source of pollution. When Henry Ford was developing the modern mass production assembly line to manufacture cars at relatively low cost, his preferred states involved the car itself, the manufacturing system, the organisation that could build and deliver both -- and sell them, and a different kind of modern world in which these would have a place.
Those who design wars or genocide "[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones" as the designers of those actions see the preferred state of the world. The victims of war and genocide have different preferences, but they often lack the power to design or to design ways to prevent more powerful designers.
To ask what the term "preferred state" refers to demonstrates why it is problematic to develop a definition of design that focuses on "a design" rather than focusing on the act of design in which a designer makes preferential choices, either as the sole agent or as a designer acting on behalf of legitimate stakeholders.
Another way to describe this is by using Buckminster Fuller's (1969: 319) model. This requires a goal-oriented decision-maker capable of teleological choices -- an individual able to choose preferential end states. This is why Simon and Fuller describe design as a process involving human designers, using the verb "to design," and this is why your definition of design as the noun "a design" becomes problematic.
This suits the arguments you make elsewhere in which you assert that computers can design. A computer or copyist can produce "a design" without any choice of goals or preference, and without intelligent intervention. It remains a circular definition, since you definition describes "a designer" as any entity -- either a mechanical thing or a person -- that can produce "a design." For that matter, your definition does not even require the digital simulation of intelligence by a computer.
The definition on your web site -- "A designer is someone or something that creates designs" -- applies to a pantograph.
I have tried to avoid this entire thread. I have obviously failed. It's a bit like Keith and his red-bellied black snake, but I got bit.
Ken
--
References
Fuller, Buckminster. 1969. Utopia or Oblivion. The Prospects for Humanity. New York: Bantam Books.
Simon, Herbert. 1982. The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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