Dear Charlotte, Thanks for an interesting post. I have Henrik Gerdenryd's (1998) dissertation here. It makes interesting reading. Your note prompts four thoughts. Answering the first three will also point the way to answering your question on how the number of persons involved in a firm, organization, or design process influences the design process. (1) What we have learned about how designers work. The first is that there is a strong and useful tradition that studies the design process. This field is not populated to a great degree by designers, but rather by people who work in such fields as education, psychology, cognitive science, and social psychology. We do not yet know as much as we should about design methods. Nevertheless, it seems premature to say that design methods do not and cannot work. First, what many seem to know about design methods clearly does not work. Second, what some seem to know about design methods seems to work in limited or specific settings. This knowledge is frequently tacit, but it is workable. It is regularly taught and transmitted in successful design studios. Some of this knowledge also involves explicit and teachable processes. This means that third, some of the most successful design methods constitute the intellectual property of the firms that use them and they are embodied in the social capital and active members of the organization. These issues are clarified by some of the themes considered in organizational learning (see, for example, Argyris 1977, 1990, 1991, 1992; Argyris and Schon 1974, 1978, 1996; Senge 1990, 1996, 1999; Senge, Roberts, Ross, Smith, and Kleiner, 1994; Senge, Kleiner, Roberts, Ross, Roth, and Smith 1999). The study of professional practice and situated learning addresses these topics (see Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Byrne and Sands 2002; Chaiklin and Lave 1993; Lave and Wenger 1991; Rogoff and Lave 1999; Schon 1983, 1987; Toulmin and Gustavsen 1996; Wenger 1998). These few references suggest enough information and well developed knowledge that it is premature to simply say we do not and cannot find useful design methods. Interestingly, Conall O Cathain (2002) just posted a note on widely used and highly successful design methods on the DRS List. Connall writes, "Value Analysis (called Value Engineering in USA) is an open-ended creative design method. BMW have trained 2000 of their employees to use it. (Is that their secret? every employee is a designer???) "TRIZ, developed in the Soviet Union, far exceeds Value Analysis in its capacity to make creative leaps, and in its philosophical basis. It even facilitates technological forecasting. "Both of these methods were developed for engineering design applications, but have been - and continue to be - extended to other softer areas." Many fields of research shed light on specific aspects of the design process. These include problem solving, heuristics, creativity, and many more. In an earlier post, for example, Lubomir referred to Gerald Nadler. Like value analysis and TRIZ, Nadler's work began in engineering. Like them, it applies directly to design methods (Nadler 1981; Nadler and Hibino 1994; Nadler, and Hibino with Farrell 1995). The problem solving literature alone is rich and rewarding (see, f.ex., Sternberg 1994 or Finke, Ward, and Smith 1996). Many of the classic contributions to problem solving in fields such as mathematics (Polya 1957, 1990) have been adapted with great success to design methods. Participatory design is another field that has developed a rich body of literature on design methods (see, f.ex., Binder, Gregory, and Wagner 2002). What we know about design methods to date is insufficient compared with what we ought to know. Nevertheless, we know a great deal, and what we know certainly makes it difficult to argue that we do not and cannot develop workable methods. I would suggest the question is open, partly because it is so difficult to analyze and understand the kinds of processes in which we have made so much progress. Part of our progress consists of defining ever more subtle and difficult areas where we continually learn that we do not always know what we think we know - and we sometimes find out that we do not yet know what we do not know. At the same time, we have made huge strides over the past five decades in expanding the field of what we know, and we have learned enough about what we do not know to define and open new fields for investigation. (2) What we have in the way of workable and effective design methods. As noted, value analysis and TRIZ are both workable methods being used successfully in industry today. There is another strategic problem solving method that some of us know that is being applied directly to design methods and design practice with great success. Those who took Anders Skoe's the La Clusaz conference (and those who have worked with him in educational programs or design firms) know this work. During his career as a strategy planner and process consultant in the telecom industry, Anders Skoe developed a series of problem-solving techniques that rely on the natural information-structuring capacities of the human mind. He has now worked with this process for problem solving in programs with men and women from over 240 different nations and territories. It is not my purpose here to discuss this technique in detail. The method is described more fully in Skoe's works (1992; 1994; 1997; Nordby and Skoe, 1997). Skoe has had the opportunity to test these methods across so many cultural groups that the claim of universality can be fairly well verified on an empirical basis. Between 1990 and 1998, Skoe conducted programs for SITA, the International Society of Aeronautic Telecommunications. SITA is one of the world's largest telecom value-added private networks, serving the airline industry in every nation and jurisdiction served by the airline industry itself. These findings were further verified in projects involving another 3,000 people conducted for Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the Norwegian national telecom authority now reorganized as Telenor as well as a host of smaller companies in the telecom, air transport and computer sectors. He has also taught his method in design schools and worked with design firms. Having seen the results of his work, I am willing to argue that I have seen first-hand evidence of a design method that succeeds in situated practice. This method can be taught, learned, and mastered with practice. Like W. Edwards Deming's methods, or any other, it does require continual attention to practice and improvement until it becomes situated in the culture of the organization that adopts it. Only through situated use is the method truly adaptable. only when it is adapted to the work and practices of a specific organization is it truly adopted and put into practice. This is a separate issue from the question of whether the method works as a design method. This method applies to the process of design rather than to specific skills that designers in different fields use to implement the design (i.e., programming and writing code for software design, typesetting and layout in some forms of graphic design, drawing or fabricating for product design, etc.) Back in 1998 and 1999, Skoe taught seminars in his methods to industrial design students at Lund University. The students found this a useful and exciting process, and the student evaluations on Skoe's seminars were outstanding. My colleagues and my students at the Norwegian School of Management have had the same experience. (3) What we have learned about teaching design methods The history of human craft demonstrates a rich progression of different ways to teach and learn design methods. While there is much talk of the guild system in designer circles, designers often have romantic and vague impressions of the way the system worked. It had great virtues, and significant drawbacks. While the guild system is no longer suited to the skills and knowledge required for the modern economy - especially not the skills and knowledge required in design! - we can nevertheless learn a great deal from apprenticeship and guild learning. Some of the best material on this topic is located in discussions of Japanese culture and martial arts training (see, f.ex., Blomberg 1994; Lowry 1985; Musashi 1974, 1982a, 1982b; Yagyu 1982). Bryan Byrne and Ed Sands (2002) consider these issues in terms of the contemporary design studio. You will find an extensive discussion of these themes in an article (Friedman 1996) I wrote on design education, contrasting different issues in design education in relation to the kinds of design methods we use or ought to use in practice. [See below if you want a copy.] The two greatest drawbacks of guild education today are the result of chancing times, rather than flaws in the system itself. The first is the fact that true apprentice learning cannot be reproduced in the short times available for a university degree in design practice. The second is that designers must know much more than can be taught through the methods of knowledge transfer used in guild training, of which modeling is most common. At the same time, many of the virtues of guild education can be brought forward into contemporary design teaching and learning if they are coupled with multiples modes of learning and a rich knowledge creation cycle. The knowledge creation cycle explicitly requires a series of exchanges in which tacit knowledge is subject to articulate inquiry. This knowledge is rendered explicit to the greatest degree possible. It is then embodied in repeated practice to become tacit once again. This parallels the learning cycle that moves from unconscious incompetence through conscious incompetence, and conscious competence, on to unconscious competence (Friedman 1996: 64-65). (4) What we know about the effects of population size on design process This question involves a central issue in knowledge management and knowledge transfer. This is a huge literature, so I will simply suggest a few classic titles (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Quinn 1992; Zuboff 1988). The related dimensions of organizational size, internal communication, learning, and transaction costs form a central stream in the literature of organization theory. In one sense, it even poses one of the puzzles that Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase partially addressed in his 1937 article, "The Nature of the Firm" (Coase 1937, 1988). Because size directly affects transaction costs, the question of size - and the issue of how we deal with the size of organizations - touches on the very questions of why firms exist at all and why they succeed or fail. You can get a nice overview of how size affects most organizational processes in Daft's (2001) Organization Theory and Design. Chapters 1, 8, and 11 shed useful light on these issues. To understand the relationship of organizational size to the wide range of challenges that affect an organization's use of design, however, it is helpful at least to skim the whole book. That allows you to understand the general nature of organizations in relation to all the tasks and processes required. Since all of these ultimate affect the design process, an overview is helpful. This is a core book for my management students in organization and leadership. They go through a deep and serious learning cycle as they read the book and examine its contents in a process of critical thinking, reflection, and research. I once adapted that course for a group of industrial design students. the course succeeded, in that it gave them a much better sense of the design process in the context of working organizations than they had before they took the course. At the same time, we had difficulty adapting the course to a curriculum that was primarily located in the studio. The problem was cultural. While the department head wanted a course that helped students to understand organizational life and strategic design, teachers who did not encourage reading and writing staffed the program. This made it difficult to create an appropriate learning environment for a course that requires critical inquiry and close reading. I suspect that this course would be a great success in any design school that balances studio work with the theoretical skills and research skills that are coming to be important in a balanced design curriculum. At any rate, the book will help any scholar who wishes to examine the question of population size on design process. Most organizations involve many kinds of design process. This includes both the specific design of products and services, and the many design processes and decision process that affect the organization itself. Anyone who designs products or services outside the craft studio works with design in an organizational setting. This kind of question is therefore most important. Peter Drucker (1990) placed many of these issues in a large social content in his critical masterpiece, The New Realities. Five books spanning several generations of industrial work demonstrate different approaches to the problem of organizational size. Henri Fayol (1949) and Alfred P. Sloan (1986) both discuss the challenges and struggles they faced as the leaders of large industrial organizations. While their solutions were not always effective, the problems they describe offer a rich understanding of how organizational size and scale affect design. David Halberstam's (1987) book, The Reckoning, shows how thee forces often played out in one industry, the automobile industry. Among the many virtues of this book is its close concentration on exactly how the parts of an organization so often conflict one another to adversely affect overall organizational goals and success. He also shows how (and why) important thinkers such a W. Edwards Deming brought new clarity and purpose to organizations. Two remarkable books specifically demonstrate how two industrial groups meet the challenge of size. Kuniyasu Sakai's (1993) contribution shows how a Japanese company accounts for size and scale effects. So does Ricardo Semler's (1993) book, Maverick. You ask a profound question -- "How does organizational size affect the design process?" Answering it requires a tour of several fields and some in-depth study in one. While there is a large and applicable body of literature on this topic in a general sense, it seems to me there have been relatively few empirical studies of how these issues function in specific contextual settings. Applying the large-scale work to the narrower context of industrial design would be a great service to our field. This would pave the way for case studies that would teach us a great deal about this question. Best regards, Ken Friedman p.s. If anyone wishes a copy of my 1996 article on design education should send a note to: [log in to unmask] Please the words "Design Science" in the Subject: header, and you will have a copy of the article by return mail as an email attachment in Microsoft Word. References Argyris, Chris. 1977. "Double-loop learning in Organizations." Harvard Business Review, 55, 5: 115-125. Argyris, Chris. 1990. Overcoming Organizational Defenses: Facilitating Organizational Learning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Argyris, Chris. 1991. "Teaching Smart People How to Learn." Harvard Business Review, May- June: 99-109. Argyris, Chris. 1992. On Organizational Learning. Oxford: TJ Press. Argyris, Chris, and Donald A. Schon. 1974. Theory in practice: increasing professional effectiveness (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Argyris, Chris, and Donald A. Schon. 1978. Organizational learning: a theory of action perspective. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Argyris, Chris, and Donald A. Schon. 1996. Organizational learning II. Theory, method, and Practice. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Binder, Thomas, Judith Gregory, and Ina Wagner, editors. 2002. PDC 2002. Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference, Malmö, Sweden, 23-25 June 2002. Palo Alto, California. 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General and industrial management. London: Pitman. Finke, Ronald A., Thomas B. Ward, and Steven M. Smith. 1996. Creative Cognition. Theory, Research, and Applications. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Friedman, Ken. 1997. "Design Science and Design Education." In The Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki, 54-72. Gerdenryd, Henrik. 1998. How Designers Work. Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities. Lund University Cognitive Studies [No.] 75. Lund, Sweden: Lund University. Halberstam, David. 1987. The Reckoning. New York: Avon Books. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lowry, David. 1985. Autumn Lightning. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc. Musashi, Miyamoto. 1974. A Book of Five Rings. Translated by Victor Harris. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. Musashi, Miyamoto. 1982a. The Book of Five Rings. Gorin No Sho. Translation and commentary by Nihon Services Corporation: Bradford J. Brown, Yuko Kashiwagi, William H. Barrett, and Eisuke Sasagawa. New York: Bantam Books. Musashi, Miyamoto. 1982b. The Book of Five Rings. (With Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyu Munenori.) Translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston and London: Shambhala. Nadler, Gerald. 1981. The Planning and Design Approach. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Nadler, Gerald, and Shozo Hibino. 1994. Breakthrough Thinking. The Seven Principles of Creative problem Solving. Revised Second Edition. Rocklin, California: Prima Publishing. Nadler, Gerald, and Shozo Hibino with John Farrell. 1995. Creative Solution Finding. The Triumph of Full-Spectrum Creativity over Conventional Thinking. Rocklin, California: Prima Publishing. Nonaka, Ikujiro, and Hirotaka Takeuchi. 1995. The knowledge-creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. Nordby, John Wiig, and Skoe, Anders(1997) Praktisk strategiarbeid. Oslo, Norway: TI-forlaget. O Cathain, Conall. 2002. "Subject: anniversary of the conference on design methods, 1962." DRS List. Date: Fri, 20 Sep 2002 11:08:21 +0100. Polya, G. 1957. How to Solve It. A New Aspect of Mathematical Method. Second Edition. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Polya, G. 1990. How to Solve It. A New Aspect of Mathematical Method. Second Edition, with a new preface by Ian Stewart. London: Penguin Books. Quinn, James Bryan. 1992. Intelligent Enterprise: a Knowledge and Service Based Paradigm for Industry. New York: The Free Press. Rogoff, Barbara, and Jean Lave. 1999. Everyday Cognition. Its Development in Social Context. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Sakai, Kuniyasu. 1993. To Expand, We Divide: The Practice and Principles of Bunsha Management. New York and Tokyo: Intercultural Group, Inc. Semler, Ricardo. 1993. Maverick. 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Skoe, Anders (1994) Creating Customer Care. Neuilly sur Seine, France: SITA - Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautique. Skoe, Anders (1997) Lectures in Leadership and Human Behavior. Norwegian School of Management. Oslo, Norway. Sloan, Alfred P. 1986. My Years with General Motors. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Sternberg, Robert J., editor. 1994. Thinking and Problem Solving. San Diego: Academic Press. Toulmin, Stephen, and Bjorn Gustavsen. 1996. Beyond Theory. Changing Organizations through Participation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Von Krogh, Georg, Kazuo Ichijo, and Ikujiro Nonaka. 2000. Enabling Knowledge Creation. How to Unlock the Mystery of Tacit Knowledge and Release the Power of Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yagyu, Munenori. 1982. Family Traditions on the Art of War. (With The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.) Translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston and London: Shambhala. Zuboff, Shoshana. 1988 In the Age of the Smart Machine. New York: Basic Books. -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Leadership and Organization Norwegian School of Management Visiting Professor Advanced Research Institute School of Art and Design Staffordshire University