Dear Colleagues,



I don't see a problem with the NAME. I don't know why, but I have never seen a problem talking about mechanical design, building design, service design, interior design, organizational design, and so forth. It is all in the adjective. Am I wrong? It is all about the field, the substantive area, you name it. 



I really get frustrated when people use the word design only for their field and then project the differentia specifica and the peculiarities of their field to other design fields. And of course, they insist that all other design fields should be like theirs. Is that a professional myopia? And then, these people scold anyone else who dares to call himself/herself "designer," but doesn't work in their design field. Well, tell me your design field first and then we will continue the conversation.



I think we have talked on this list about this topic several times over the last 20 years. My position has never been accepted, but I am still confident in it. No offence and I am not offended. 



There are many fields of design. Let's look at them as arranged in a continuum. At the two ends they are very different in substance and method. The more we go down to the trenches, the more different and incongruent the methods and body of knowledge become. The only common ground is at philosophical level. When we go at disciplinary level, the differences pop up and even prick us. And when we go in practice, they are completely different worlds. 



Each design field can be further split by specialization. This can go for ever or until it makes sense in the division of labor. Specialization has both benefits and weaknesses. Everyone is aware of this and that is why people talk about multi- and inter- disciplinarity as a solution for the specialization segregation and myopia problem. 



In the world of professions, "designer" is a position and a profession (in the narrow sense). For example, an architectural designer. We need to keep this position in mind. The architect can also function as a corporate/government facility planning officer, real estate developer, corporate controller, regulator, and many more. In these positions the architect is not functioning as a designer, although he needs his architectural design knowledge and methods. If such people engage outside their job in designing, then they function as designers. This is a third option -- when an architect functions as designer, controller, or whatever in parallel, in sequence, or interchangeably. We can have a very complex relationship between profession, job description/position, education. However, we need to do some demarcation for the sake of ordering our thoughts, professionalization, payroll accounting, and so forth. 



Forty years ago one of my former team leaders, a social philosopher, a philosopher of science and technology, a methodologist (expert in the general theory of all methods, including design methods) started developing a General Theory of Artification. He wanted to focus on the method, but in order to start, he had to work on the ontology first. This is the thing. This is the starting point.



Because of funding pressures, he narrowed down to General Theory of Design as a subset of the General Theory of Artification. Because of a shift in the priorities of the funding agency, he has to put the project on hold and work on other things. It is a pity that the project was never finished. Now when we engage in this discussion, I start thinking about all these projects that start and stop, and start and stop, and the humankind just waste time and money because of poor funding practices, poor science management, and poor understanding of knowledge priorities. 



So, arguing about the visual in design, about the aesthetics, and so forth is good, but it is pertinent only to a small number of design fields. What about mechanical design? And by the way, don't tell me that engineers are not designers ( I mean when they function as designers). In my life experience, they were called either engineers or designers, with an adjective: electrical, mechanical, civil (construction), and so on. When they design, there were designers. This is their official title on the payroll. When they become members of the corporate review board, their job title changes. Their title becomes "controller" or "expert on the review board," and so on. The job title implies their major responsibilities and what they have to do. The education is indicated by their personal title. In some cultures people are not called Mr. Johnson but Eng. Johnson, Arch. Johnson (Hansen?) just like Dr. Johnson. 



So, in many cultures people have resolved this issues decades ago in a very practical manner, which by the way is also scientifically/scholarly very sound. We have Arch. Johnson, senior designer. And we have Arch. Stevens, Director of the Code Compliance Division of the XYZ municipality. 



I stop here because this is an endless topic.



I hope this helps. 



With kind regards,



Lubomir





-----Original Message-----

From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Ken Friedman

Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:34 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Help! Our field needs a new name:



Dear Richard, 



You wrote, “However, from within design we should be alert to what design is and is not. Simon’s famous definition is way too broad. If we add the visual and aesthetic to it we arrive at a reasonably defensible definition.” 



This leaves me with two questions. The first question involves the visual. Many of things that we now design are invisible. They constitute processes, services, or hidden structures that enable other things to work. Other things that we design involve visible parts — but we do not measure the success of the visible parts based on visual qualities. 



Last month, I spent ten days in the hospital, with a week in an isolation. I found myself thinking often of how many of the processes that I required were purposefully and carefully designed, often quite well, despite the fact that I only saw a tiny part of the process where it specifically affected me. I only learned about some aspects of the systems inadvertently when physicians explained to me how they arrived at one decision or another.



Other things were quite important and entirely visible, but the qualities they represented had little to do with how they looked. For example, for blood tests, many systems now permit medical specialists to use only one needle and a special device rather than multiple needles: the device is such that the person taking blood uses a series of different devices resembling test tubes with a rubber seal on one end, placing one after the next within the single device and its one needle. When you are being tested for blood four or five times a day, you don’t care how the thing looks: if it works so you are only pierced once each time, you are grateful for the change from earlier systems.



Is it necessary that designers engage with the visual to design invisible processes or system that work well?   



The second question involves the word “aesthetic.” This word makes sense in one way, but it remains quite vague. What do you mean by the aesthetic dimension? Depending on the definitions you use, a tax system may have aesthetic dimensions — or it may not. The same applies to many of the kinds of things that meet Simon’s admittedly broad definition.



Much of the problem in these recurring debates involves attempting to demarcate boundaries that may not exist in the real world. If we want to argue that people are not designers who design systems, artifacts, and processes without visual or aesthetic dimensions, then we’re excluding from the practice of design many people who we might otherwise think of as designers.



People really do design breeze block walls. Some of those people are engineers, some are architects, some are construction managers. These artifacts are definitely different from a Baroque church exterior. I’ve never met anyone who designs a blunt functional wall who would say that this wall is the same to them as a Baroque church exterior. People recognize the differences between different kinds of designed things. People who design functional things all day may appreciate the beauty of something designed for prayer and glorification just as much as you or I might do.



Again, I recommend Richard Buchanan’s article, "Design Research and the New Learning.” The four orders of design offers a useful way to think about design.      



https://www.ida.liu.se/divisions/hcs/ixs/material/DesResMeth09/Theory/01-buchanan.pdf



It seems to me odd to say that one may fulfill Simon’s definition yet not be a designer — perhaps I am wrong, but then it would help to have better and more clear definitions of design and designers. Without that, there would have to be some mysterious quality that designers possess, a quality that others do not possess, that renders them “designers” as contrasted with people who would otherwise be designers. 



This may be the case. If it is, defining and explaining it clearly is the purpose of research on these issues.



I’d be interested in a clear answer to my two questions.



Yours,



Ken



Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (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 ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 





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