Hi Terry
>There is a strong and widely held assumption that one has to
>be a professional designer to understand designing.
Not an assumption I would make. I guess, in outline, my view is you can understand design by:
1.. doing, an embodied experience of what design is (to you). This need not be a reflected-on form of doing, but without the reflection how is it you would know what you do to be design?
2.. reflecting, a personal representation of what design is, relative to your own embodied experience of design and other things (a kind of watching through the mind’s eye if you like). This is a reflection on some form of embodied experience that you hold to be a true representation of design.
3.. observing, a personal representation of how others present design, relative to your own embodied experience of design and other things. This is a reflection on your embodied experience of other things (possibly including your own experience of designing) in the context of having observed how design is manifested in the actions of others. It is a second order inquiry that informs a personal representation of how others apprehend design doing.
4.. discussing, a personal representation of how others represent design, relative to your own embodied experiences of design and other things. This is a second order inquiry that informs a personal representation of how others represent design. It is an exploration of how others represent design.
The distinctions may be quite subtle, but they are significant, as we know. I am interested in trying to distinguish between understanding (as representative of the thinker) and knowledge (as representative of thought). This is important as it registers the fact that all acts of perception are framed in a background of understanding - doing design can not be disengaged from thinking about design can not be disengaged from the person doing the thinking. To put this another way, when we study or research in order to better understand design (in whatever sense I provide above) we are not simply reading what design essentially is, but rather we are writing design - inscribing what design can be through the understandings we bring to our interpretation of what we perceive (the question writes the answer). We bring a bias (a bias that can not be transcended) to any act of interpretation. All we can do is make the motivations and imperatives that sustain the issue as an interest for us more explicit.
That is what makes this discussion list so fascinating for me, and probably so concerning for students. Most subscribers will have read many common texts, experienced a shared general concept of design, gone through a similar research training, and exchanged many views. Why then are the representations of design (and design research) we articulate often so fundamentally different? They are different not because some are wrong and some are right, but because they are drawn from different perspectives. Although the background frameworks are rarely exposed or challenged, it is precisely in what we "take-for-granted" about our respective perspectives that real negotiation about design can proceed. Regrettably, I fear we are barking up the wrong tree chasing shared definitions, canons and essentials.
salute
--Sid
