Hi all,
Here is an interesting article that might shed light on the questions raised here about the boundaries between practices :
HIGGINS Chris (2010), « Worlds of Practice: MacIntyre’s Challenge to Applied Ethics », Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 44, No. 2-3, p. 237-273.
In this article, based on Alasdair MacIntyre works, Higgins analyses the components of practises (see section « What count as a practises : The proof, the pudding, and the recipe », p.253 and follow). Those components represents criteria through which we can designate an activity as a practise. For instance, among those criteria, we find internal and external goods, institutions, standards of excellence, languages, meta and para-languages.
Why do I bring this up ? It’s because when we ask if designers are politicians, and vice versa, it seems necessary to refer to a certain idea of what is constitutive of practises such as those. Higgins allows us to understand why Simon’s definition of « design », is a dead end for who seaks to understand what makes a designer a designer. By pointing towards to sole activity of designing, this definition entails a concept of practise that suggest that I can be considered a doctor because when my son has a flu, I give him Tylenol, and cure him of his illness. As of self-designation, it also seems of very limited interest in that perspective.
So, to the question of whether politicians are designers, it seems reasonable to answer no. But, of course, this doesn’t mean that politicians, at any point in their practise, never have to complete tasks that correspond to designing.
In the same way, designers should never be considered politicians, sociologists (or artists), whatever the reach of the responsibilities they accept to encompass in their practise. These are all distinct practises.
But then again, as Sébastien Proulx suggested in a short article, the model of practises proposed by Higgins does represent a challenge to designers who may still not have achieve to constitute their activity as a practise (see PROULX Sébastien (2015), « Le design à l’épreuve du concept de pratique », Sciences du Design, 2, p. 20-30).
À toutes fins utiles !
Philippe Gauthier, D. Sociologie
Professeur agrégé
Directeur, groupe design ∩ société
www.gds.umontreal.ca <http://www.gds.umontreal.ca/>
Université de Montréal
École de design
Faculté de l'aménagement
Case Postale 6128, succursale Centre-Ville
Montréal (Québec)
CANADA H3C 3J7
Téléphone : (514) 343-6138
Télécopieur : (514) 343-5694
> Le 7 févr. 2017 à 08:02, Ruth STEVENS <[log in to unmask]> a écrit :
>
> Dear all,
>
> I am Ruth, a PhD candidate in architecture, working on Design for Human
> Flourishing in an architectural design context, and I am inspired by the
> post of Dr. ir. Nynke Tromp.
>
> Rem Koolhaas recently shared that architecture seems to have lost its
> social motivation, but he still believes that the greatest value of
> architecture in the future is in the experiences it offers to society, and
> the profession being social-driven. I am currently writing my thesis, and
> building my argument for a Venustas-based approach in architectural design,
> that starts to design spaces building on psychological human needs.
> For instance: how to include specific flourishing activities for the target
> group of older persons in for instance a local park or the city library, up
> to a complete residential care centre.
>
> Especially in the field of architecture, a design branch that is so 'out
> there' due to its larger scale, and its life resistance, it is also a major
> issue to define how a project can be truly social-driven in the long run. I
> believe flourishing experiences are a worthwhile avenue to take.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Ruth
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Nynke Tromp - IO <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Klaus, dear others,
>>
>> Since my research focuses on the social implications of artefacts
>> (products, services, laws, anything man-made) and how to design these
>> deliberately, I felt triggered to respond to your comment
>> “our focus from designing products to considerations of their social and
>> structural implications”.
>> I firmly agree that we -designers- need to learn how to take
>> responsibility for such consequences, since they can be tremendously
>> harmful to all.
>>
>> In doing so, I argue that designers need to consider what’s best for all
>> of us and in the long run. User-centred design approaches, or even
>> multi-stakeholder design, do not suffice here. It is not about user needs,
>> but about future society needs that need to be taken into account. It is
>> about long-term collective interests, instead of short-term individual
>> ones. Surely we can learn from the current context, but it is misleading to
>> think it should be the reference to take for designing the future.
>>
>> While this type of long-term vision in “changing existing situations into
>> preferred ones” once was carried out by politicians, many prominent
>> contemporary politicians are all to engaged in the here and now, respond
>> mostly reactively, and are obsessed with pleasing “users”…
>>
>> Nynke
>>
>> Dr. ir. Nynke Tromp
>> Social Design & Behaviour Change
>>
>> +31641206265
>> @NynkeTromp
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06 Feb 2017, at 12:31, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]<mailto:t.
>> [log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> There is a need to be careful with words.
>>
>> Much of what is happening in the discussion is like the 'cat has four
>> legs, dog has four legs so a dog must be a cat (or not)'.
>>
>> Many professional activities have an aspect whereby designs get created.
>> In that part of their activity the professional undertaking it is designing
>> and they are a designer. That doesn't however mean that the whole of their
>> professional activity is as a designer.
>>
>> This can be seen in engineering design and the engineering profession.
>> There is good clarity about different roles in the engineering profession:
>> sometimes a part of an engineering professional's role is as an engineering
>> project manager; sometimes as a mathematical modeller; sometimes it is
>> negotiating with stakeholders, etc and sometimes it is creating designs as
>> an engineering designer. Because engineers are aware of the variety of
>> different roles and activity. they keep the 'designer' label for one
>> specific part of engineering professional activity.
>>
>> Other fields in which design activity occurs also have many other roles
>> besides design activity but do not have the same clarity of separation. An
>> equivalent would be if there were 'graphics professionals' and one aspect
>> of their role is designing, i.e. creating graphic designs.
>>
>> For politicians, it is also easy to see that a part of their overall role
>> is the design of some form of political strategy or policy concepts or
>> plans. For this part they are designers, but that doesn't mean to say that
>> it is necessary to insist on an equivalence relation
>> "poiticians==designers"
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Terry
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [log in to unmask]<mailto:owner-phd-design@
>> jiscmail.ac.uk> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Krippendorff, Klaus
>> Sent: Monday, 6 February 2017 4:15 PM
>> To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
>> research in Design <[log in to unmask]<mailto:
>> [log in to unmask]>>
>> Subject: RE: Are politicians designers?
>>
>> dear ken
>>
>> you quoted me correctly "if you ask politicians if they are designers,
>> their answer is NO." i would this to be true also of architects, feminists,
>> businessmen, computer programmer, etc. each for their own reasons
>>
>> but then you question the validity or usefulness of self-designations, and
>> are quoting nixon saying "the president is not a crook." (note that this a
>> 3rd person statement). you argue " If all responsible designations must be
>> self-designations, it would be difficult to discuss the world around us." i
>> never wrote of ALL self-designations and i am not suggesting that
>> professional identities are entirely individualist constructions.
>>
>> for example, if someone has studied say engineering, graduates with an
>> engineering degree, is hired as an engineer and says "i am an engineer, not
>> a designer" that person refers not just to him and herself but a whole
>> history of affirmation by individuals and institutions in which he or she
>> was and still is a contributing participant.
>>
>> it is a mark of intellectual imperialism when designers claim able to
>> decide whether someone really is (or is not) a designer despite their own
>> affirmed identity. from an ethnomethodological perspective, i come to a
>> conclusion opposite to yours. i seriously the world would be a horrible
>> place if we deny each other their self-identifications and impose our
>> categories on others, for example by saying "politicians are designers"
>> perhaps followed by qualifications, or denying self-identifications to
>> others by asserting that "politicians are not designers."
>>
>> imposing one's own categories on others without listening to and
>> respecting how they see themselves is the source of all prejudices --
>> ethic, gender, and professional.
>>
>> herbert simon did not say that craftsmen, engineers, managers, etc, are
>> designers, he pointed out that they all act to improve something. i don't
>> want to get too deeply into simon's conception but feel the need to add
>> that his science of the artificial is fundamentally limited to problem
>> solving, improving existing conditions, improving the status quo. he was
>> not interested in creating innovations, artifacts and practices without
>> precedence -- something that i try to understand and have written about.
>>
>> i am suggesting that we, in discussing other professions on this list,
>> should respect how they define themselves and try to learn from what they
>> do well and what makes them fail when handling new situations. simon sought
>> to generalize problem solving wherever they occurred not to categorize
>> professions.
>>
>> i am reading several responses on this thread as evidence that the
>> identity of designers is being challenged by the radical changes in the
>> world we live in, including the emergence of numerous competing
>> professions. if we have something to contribute to them, we should invite
>> them into our conversations. I guess, most of them have developed
>> institutionalized identities of their own. this leaves us the option to
>> study them in order to improve our own design discourse.
>>
>> 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 Ken
>> Friedman
>> Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2017 10:50 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: Are politicians designers?
>>
>> Hi, Klaus,
>>
>> You wrote,
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>> if you ask a politician whether he or she is a designer, the answer is a
>> clear NO if you ask an engineer whether he or she is a designer, the answer
>> is NO as well even if you ask an architect whether he or she is a designer,
>> the answer is most likely NO
>>
>> i read that designers design products, politicians don't terry wrote that
>> designers write specifications, politicians don't ken said once a
>> politician is elected he becomes a designer, i wouldn't call a politician a
>> designer unless he or she agrees to this designation, which i doubt any
>> politician will.
>>
>> —snip—
>>
>> I’ve got to agree with you in one respect, yet I’ve also got to disagree.
>>
>> If all responsible designations must be self-designations, it would be
>> difficult to discuss the world around us. I recall the well-known
>> politician Richard Nixon announcing, “The president is not a crook.” Many
>> of us would see key parts of the Nixon career in a different light, but the
>> fact remains that he was neither impeached nor convicted. Of course, we
>> don’t accept self-designation as the only measure of some cases.
>>
>> In a more reasonable light, I’d say that there are many people who do not
>> self-designate as designers, yet who nevertheless design. That’s the core
>> of Herbert Simon’s definition of the activity of design: “Everyone designs
>> who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into
>> preferred ones.”
>>
>> There are several more issues. One is the question of those who
>> self-designate as design professionals, people who are paid to undertake
>> design as professional designers. Another is the question of people who do
>> not self-designate as designers, yet are nevertheless paid as professional
>> actors to “[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
>> into preferred ones.”
>>
>> I agree with several points of view, including — but not limited to — my
>> own. I have been interested for many reasons in comments by Mitch Sipus,
>> Liz Goodman, and Ali Ilhan. Now you’ve raised an idea that I have not
>> considered.
>>
>> Is it is possible to recognize and designate someone as a member of any
>> profession when they do not declare themselves to be such? Does their own
>> self-designation matter if they do what self-designating professionals do
>> when someone pays them to do so?
>>
>> Simon’s definition includes almost all practicing professions and most
>> professional practices. That virtue may also be a flaw.
>>
>> Yours,
>>
>> Ken
>>
>> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
>> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji
>> University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
>> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-
>> design-economics-and-innovation/
>>
>> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
>> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University
>> Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne
>> University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>>
>> Email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>> | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I
>> http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
>
> Arch. Ruth Stevens
> Doctoraatsbursaal Design for Human Flourishing - PhD Candidate Design for
> Human Flourishing
> onderzoeksgroep ArcK - research group ArcK
>
> T +32(0)11 29 21 13
>
> www.uhasselt.be
> Universiteit Hasselt - Campus Diepenbeek
> Agoralaan Gebouw D - B-3590 Diepenbeek
> Kantoor E-B08
>
>
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