I noticed this snippet in a mail by Nigel Cross
"the 1962 Conference on Design Methods - on "Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications" by the DRS"
The title from 1962 identifies the two fundamental modes of design: the mode that is intuitive and the mode that is systematic.
Some writers seem to want move all of design into one or other mode i.e. make it all systematic or say itīs mostly intuitive. I think the hard-systems methods (see Broadbent 2004) approach was an attempt to make design entirely quantitative. The intuitive or "art" side is less "imperialistic", being mostly the realm of the likes of Colani or Starck or Newson, or pehaps the "designer as visionary". Both positions are insufficient. To try to make design a purely systematic process will overlook and underplay the importance of the psychological and emotional. To say (as almost nobody ever does) that design is about the intuitive neglects the need for orderly ways to go about solving problems.
One mode is broadly about design as engineering and the other mode is broadly design as a form of art. It is not a symmetrical split. I notice my nominally "arty" students are usually really methodical in their inquiries. However, the "design as engineering" students can run a whole project with only the tiniest and faintest nod to aesthetics and the emotional.
The dichotomy of design-as-engineering contra design-as-art is just another version of the dichotomy in the human condition: are we rational or are we emotional? The answer is that we are both and the challenge is to balance the two as we go. To try to be only rational (in its simplistic sense) ignores the fact we are emotional, social beings. And to rely on emotions will lead to emotional turmoil as we overlook the consequences of blundering around following blindly following intuition, caprice and inspiration.
It would seem to me to be a useful rule for any intervention on the nature of design to recognize itīs a blend of systematic, quantitative thinking and intuitive, qualitative thinking; the interest lies in identifying the correct mode for the stage of the problem. If you are mostly in mode A you might want a bit of mode B to get you out of the problem at that point in time and vice versa. That means "executive function" thinking about the mode you are in: asking "is this the right thing to do now?".
Design researchers need to be clear about the mode they are dealing with and keep in mind (explicitly) the limit to that proposed theory or method.
"This paper is about a systematic approach to X.... We recognize it is limited to doing Y and Z. "
Most work is going to be about the rational, systematic mode. The intuitive mode tends to defeat rational inquiry. Perhaps here we see a scotoma in design research.
REF:
John Broadbent (2003) Generations in Design Methodology, The Design Journal, 6:1, 2-13, DOI: 10.2752/146069203790219335<https://doi.org/10.2752/146069203790219335>
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