Dear Ranjan,
Thanks you for your generous response and your interest in my "tool." Yes,
I also think about it as a tool or rather, a big tool box, and have spent
many years tinkering, forging and testing what I call intellectual tools for
designers. Carpenters have tools. Why shouldn't designers?
Terrance Love (although he doesn't know it) has been quite helpful to me in
thinking about the three levels of modeling I've been exploring. The central
level is the more familiar process level that we have been talking about in
our various personal vocabularies. The meta-level is made up of my attempts to be
clearer about the central concepts that are needed (or that I have thought I
needed) in order to situate designing and design thinking in what I call the
human valuing experience. The more specific level contains tools that are
more design phase oriented, such as my Fan of Values, Fan of Intentions and many others.
Designer PiE is then a model of models, some old, some new, some abandoned and
left behind, some more recent such as my version of the designer's use of
metaphor as a quality pump (after Lakoff).
The Mac software embodies my view thatTHE DESIGN PROCESS is a good
example of "the fallacy of misplacedconcreteness" and is better
represented as Ways of Thinking in Design.
This particular combination of nonlinear and cyclic models in hypertext format is
"intended" to encourage one to just start where they are and then move on to
cover more ground, the object being to enrich, widen and deepen the inquiry.
The PiE's formative expression as a large and endlessly layered mnemonic
pizza is at the same time a memory bank, a guide, a legal stimulant and
symbolic snack for the hungry designer.
As you might begin to suspect, I've had far too much fun with it. But it's
been a useful tool (for starting and focusing discussions if nothing else)
especially for advanced designers, when they are asked to choose and develop
their own projects, and when they begin to more consciously explore what
design "problems" are and where they come from. (Hint: it's not from
Wal-Mart).
Sorry, it only comes in one flavor (Mac) but is free to all (and some would
say worth about as much).
I'll comment more later on your notion of a reflexive process since I think
it relates very well to what I've been calling environmental valuing and the
idea of an environmental field.
Warmly,
Jerry
On 8/16/05 1:36 AM, "M P Ranjan" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Jerry
>
> I agree with this line of thinking entirely. This is why I changed the
> name of my course from "Design Methods (Theory and Practice) to "Design
> Concepts and Concerns", the intention of the designer and (their client
> and stake holders) the belief system that informs them and their
> openness to feedback is central to effective design. Design itself is a
> meandering process, impossible to predict (unknowable - thank you
> Jonas) and satisfying when it succeeds, in each particular instance.
>
> Design is also a "reflexive process" since it is effected in a
> populated space that affects others (other humans, competition, other
> beliefs or dogma of truths held by history etc.) who will in turn
> respond to any offering with their own response in both time and space,
> which makes it all the more complex and at times controversial,
> especially in projects of public good and macro-economic ventures that
> include social change, like using public transport instead of private
> cars. Design advocacy may include systems offerings that are not
> products but suggested behavior change in the users, which make it
> political as well. Making new laws is a great design act by this line
> of thinking, and our Supreme Court has been very effective in this area
> where our democratic legislative processes seem to have failed, for
> example ban on felling forests to stop the destruction of bio-diversity
> in the Himalayan region of India. My own work on bamboo as an economic
> driver for development in India touches on some of these economic and
> socio-political aspects and they are an integral part of our frame of
> reference.
>
> Thank you for the link to your website and your tool (see link below)
> "Designer PiE2K: Ways of Thinking About Design" which is quite
> fascinating and deep. I have downloaded the application to my Mac at
> home and office, but do you have a windows version (or a pdf file that
> I can recommend) , most of my students use windows at our school.....
> <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~diethelm/next3.html>
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my office at NID
> 16 August 2005 at 1.30 pm IST
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Faculty of Design
> Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives
> Faculty Member on NID Governing Council (2003 -2005)
> National Institute of Design
> Paldi
> Ahmedabad 380 007 INDIA
>
> Tel: 91+79+26610054 (Res)
> Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 1090 (Off)
> Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 4095 (Off)
> Fax: 91+79+26605242
>
> email: <[log in to unmask]
> web archive: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>
> __________________________________________________________________
>
>
> On 16-Aug-05, at 12:31 AM, Jerome Diethelm wrote:
>
>> Proposals in design processes of any complexity are quite naturally
>> and regularly subjected to evaluation against the forces that are
>> driving the process, whatever we call them - needs, interests,
>> concerns, desires, fears, beliefs – as the process unfolds.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Public Service
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
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