Hi List,
(I wrote this on my blog a few weeks back but I thought that this list is
really the audience for this)
A few weeks ago in my class I was asked by a student if there are any major
schools of thought when it comes to design, in particular, how to
understand designing (that is as a human activity and process). I really
liked the question. I did answer the best I could right there, but since it
was not something I have really thought about, it was just a tentative
answer. I said that there are at the moment three major schools of thought
when it comes to designing.
*The first school of thought* is very close to what I teach in my class, it
is based on a broad understanding of design as an activity that is defined
by such thinkers as Schon, Rittel, Cross, Krippendorf, Nelson & Stolterman,
etc. It is a school of thought that sees designing as an open, complex and
highly non-linear process determined by the particular situation and
governed by the designer's judgment.
*The second school of thought* seems to see designing as a process that is
in need of more structure and explicit rationality, as a process that is in
need of being 'formalized' and maybe even 'scientized'. Attempts to achieve
this can be found in almost every design field and is quite common among
design researchers who see as their task to improve designing by increasing
its predictability usually by becoming less dependent on the designer's
judgment.
*The third school of thought* is what is today commonly called 'design
thinking'. It is mostly found in the business world and in academic fields
that has no tradition of design. Design thinking is in many ways a highly
simplified version of the first school of thought mentioned above (with
some aspects of the second school). It has reduced designing to a
simplistic process consisting of some phases with attached tools or
techniques. Design thinking usually portrays designing as a process where
the steps and phases and its iterative nature in combination with some very
simple 'tools' is the core, while the designers judgment is not seen as
crucial. Usually this school advocates for crash courses or workshops as a
way of mastering designing. This school of thought has been highly
successful in making designing popular in the business world and in
academia. It has raised the awareness of design as its own tradition,
however, in many cases by promising too much and delivering too little.
Ok, so this is the answer I gave the student in my class. I have not really
thought more about it. It is obvious though, that these schools of thought
only relate to a specific aspect of design, that of design as a process, as
designing. But even so, I think it is something that would be really
exciting to develop more. It would be a great help to all of us to are
navigating the world of design theory. Maybe something that could lead to
another book!
So, who is ready for this challenge?
Erik
---------------------------------------------------
Erik Stolterman
*Professor in Informatics*
*School of Informatics and Computing*
*Indiana University, Bloomington*http://transground.blogspot.com/
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