How about the meaning of design? Surely theory can question why we design.
How to do it might be a subset of that question.
Anyone who is interested in agency and artefacts might enjoy Alfred Gell's Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1988) in which he attributes agency to art objects, as in a Pacific culture context where the "decorations" on war canoes induce fear in spectators. These canoes carry the makers' agency into the world. He says things like:
"Technology is enchanting because it is enchanted, because it is the outcome of some process of barely comprehensible virtuosity, that exemplifies an ideal of magical efficacy that people struggle to realize in other domains.” [viii]
In Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), she proposes "quasi agency" for materials like metal, which clearly have their own inclinations.
Archaeologist Lambros Malafouris goes further in How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement (2013), accepting material agency and suggesting that things have a causal role in cognition.
This is one among many theories proposing an "extended mind;" something that is not confined to the inside of the head, leading back to the question of why we design.
Heidi
On Monday, July 6, 2020, 05:57:49 a.m. EDT, Lars Albinsson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Isn’t design theory meant to predict which way is the most effective to design things?
Med Vänlig Hälsning / Best Regards,
Lars Albinsson
Consultant - Innovation & Creative Processes
CEO & Ph D Candidate
+46 (0) 705927045
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Maestro Design & Management AB
www.maestro.se
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