Dear Richard and Thea,

This involves three questions. Two puzzle me. One requires better explanation.

1) It isn’t clear to me why the term “design” is misleading. The word has clear meanings in English, at least, and these meanings have been workable since the 1400s when we first used the word.

Those who speak English use adjectives to distinguish specific varieties and branches of the design field. Whatever the design field is as a whole, people in the field perform an activity known as design. Within that large field, their are different kinds of specific design practices: industrial design, engineering design, automotive design, product design, graphic design, and so on. The adjective one uses locates design within a field by the nature of the practice (engineering design) or with respect to the artefacts, processes, or systems on designs (graphic design, book design, type design). Some design fields don’t use the word design at all: typography is a case in point.

It’s hard to see how to rename the design field unless we also change the English language at the same time. If someone has come across new information on our field or new information on the evaluation of language, I’ve missed it.

2) Richard’s proposal is puzzling. He proposes that we should: “retain [the term] ‘design’ to deal with tangible objects and service design and create a term for the areas on the margins that seem to be about social systems? Or is that already covered by communication design?” First, service design involves designing social processes. I can’t see why we would categorise services with tangible objects. The textbook definition of a service is that it is intangible, generally produced and consumed any the same time.

3) Thea’s comment sensible . Thea writes, "We have this conversation every couple of years. No matter what we decide (even if we could all agree) it would make no difference as changing common usage of a word in so many languages is not possible anyway.”

Quite right. The issue that I’d like explained is why we have this conversation every couple of years. It’s true that this occurs. When it does, however, there is usually little reference to prior conversations or to what researchers have written or uncovered.

I’m going to quote something I wrote on this in an article long ago. The virtue of this note is that it provides a rich array of sources that allow readers to see what others have written on this topic.

Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Theory construction in design research: criteria: approaches, and methods.”
Design Studies 24 (2003) 507–522
doi:10.1016/S0142-694X(03)00039-5

—snip—

Most definitions of design share three attributes. First, the word design refers to a process. Second, the process is goal-oriented. Third, The goal of design is solving problems, meeting needs, improving situations, or creating something new or useful. Herbert Simon [1] (p 129), [2] (p 112) defines design as the process by which we ‘[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.’ Since this definition covers most forms of design, it is a useful starting point.

Merriam-Webster’s [3] (p 343) defines design as: ‘1a: to conceive and plan out in the mind, b: to have as a purpose: intend, c: to devise for a specific function or end 2 archaic: to indicate with a distinctive mark, sign or name, 3a: to make a drawing, pattern or sketch of, b: to draw the plans for, c: to create, fashion, execute or construct according to plan: devise, contrive…’ (See also: [4] (pp 397–8); [5] (unpaged); [6] (unpaged); [7] (pp 36–40); [8] (p 319); [9] (unpaged); [10] (unpaged); [11] (p 645); [12] (unpaged).)

A taxonomy of design knowledge domains [13], [14] (pp 5-16), [7] describes the frames within which a designer must act. Each domain requires a broad range of skills, knowledge, and awareness. Design is the entire process across the full range of domains required for any given outcome. The field organized around design can be seen as a profession, a discipline, and a field. The profession of design involves the professional practice of design. The discipline of design involves inquiry into the plural domains of design. The field of design embraces the profession, the discipline, and a shifting and often ambiguous range of related cognate fields and areas of inquiry.

[1] Simon, H The Sciences of the Artificial, 2nd edn MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1982)

[2] Simon, H The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd edn MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1998)

[3] Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 10th edn, Merriam- Webster, Inc, Springfield, MA (1993)

[4] Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (G & C. Merriam Co. 1913, edited by N Porter) ARTFL (Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) Chicago: Divisions of the Humanities, University of Chicago (2002) http://humanit <http://humanit/> ies.uchicago.edu/forms—unres <http://ies.uchicago.edu/forms%E2%80%94unres> t/webster.form.html Date accessed: 2002 January 18

[5] Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary online edition, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago (2002) http://www.britannica.com/ <http://www.britannica.com/> Date accessed: 2002 January 21

[6] Cambridge Dictionaries online, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (1999) htt p://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/dictio <p://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/dictio> nary/ Date accessed: 1999 November 21

[7] Friedman, K ‘Creating design knowledge: from research into practice’ in E W L Norman and P H Roberts (eds) , Design and Technology Educational Research and Development: The Emerging International Research Agenda, Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University, Loughborough (2001) pp 31–69

[8] Fuller, B Utopia or Oblivion. The Prospects for Humanity Bantam Books, New York (1969)

[9] Link Lexical FreeNet: Connected thesaurus, The Link Group at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (1999) http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/ <http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/> Date accessed: 1999 November 21

[10] Simpson J A and Weiner E S C (eds) Oxford English Dictionary Online edn 1989, Clarendon Press. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002) http://dictionary.oed.com/ <http://dictionary.oed.com/> Date accessed: 2002 January 18

[11] Brown, L (ed.) The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Clarendon Press and University Press, Oxford, UK (1993)

[12] Parks R (Ed) The Wordsmyth Educational Dictionary– Thesaurus [WEDT] Wordsmyth Collaboratory, Chicago http://www.wordsmyth.net/ <http://www.wordsmyth.net/> Date accessed: 2002 February 2

[13] Friedman, K Strategic design taxonomy. Oslo Business School, Oslo, Norway (1992)

[14] Friedman, K D ‘Design knowledge; context, content and continuity’ in D Durling and K Friedman (eds) Doctoral Education in Design. Foundations for the Future. Proceedings of the La Clusaz Conference, July 8– 12, 2000, Staffordshire University Press, Staffordshire UK (2000) pp 8–12

—snip—

Richard seems to be promising that we start from scratch, drawing new boundaries between the term design and something else — and, as I note, he’s promising that we lump tangible objects together with services, while somehow placing the realm of designed processes involving the applied social sciences in some other category entirely.

Rather than starting from scratch every time this comes up, it would be useful if someone were to write a serious literature review article on how people define and use the term design, in English, and in other languages.

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/ <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] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman <http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman> | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn <http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn/>




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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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