Dear Klaus,
Thanks for this fine post. Where it comes to Herbert Simon, I agree with you about the issues that he *should* address. Where I disagree mildly is that it is possible to design without addressing these issues. The design process will simply be less effective and likely worse in several dimensions. One other issue is that Simon’s definition doesn’t limit designers to solving problems. Creating preferred future states may involve invention or creation as well as solving problems. To imagine something that doesn’t exist generates a preferred future state as much as redesigning something that does not work as well as it might. Using Simon’s definition of design doesn’t limit us to his conception of design.
Simon’s *definition* of design was broad and generous. Had he had an equally comprehensive view of the design process, it would have fit with your description of design.
As it is, Simon’s *conception* of the design process was essentially technocratic and narrower than his definition. Simon conceived the world at a different time, and his views are economic and administrative. I agree with Simon’s definition of design, not with his conception of what design should be or how design works.
Your conception of design captures the moral and human dimensions of effective design activity. Your conception also captures the way that design works in human context through an iterative, reflexive process.
Yours,
Ken
—
Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
—snip—
i prefer to define design as the discourse of a community of professional designers committed to facilitate the introduction of differences in the world of others (= non-designers). this includes my use of the word. a discourse is practiced while constructing discourse specific realities. a design discourse has to be open inasmuch as its concern includes the world of others, a design discourse has to remain diverse as its differences introduce diversity in the worlds of others, and to be consistent, a design discourse has to be reflexive by responding to the challenges of the implications of very differences it introduces in the society and culture in which design is practiced.
one can build not one but several theories of how designers cope with the challenges they create as well as respond to.
to me, herbert simon's frequently referred to definition of design as devising courses of actions that improve an existing state is too limiting, not only because it renders designers to solving problem (that are usually defined as existing or by someone, a client) but mainly because he is unaware of the role of language in processes of designing, he does not address the social variables that designing affects -- the life of one communities might be improved at the expense of others. all realized designs have consequences, he does not recognize that design can be realized only in a network of stakeholders. he does not have a place for unprecedented innovations that can emerge without identification of a problem, without something worthy of improvement. he does not acknowledge the inevitable reflexivity of designing: the experience of the design community being challenged by the differences is has introduced in the very society or culture in which design is practiced.
—snip—
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|