 |
 |
Hi Chuck, Perhaps others' memories are better than mine on this. What I remember is that in the 60s and early 70s there was a strong movement in design research (it was the early days of this current design research 'tradition' and the start of the DRS) to build a body of classical theory about design. That is, the aim was to define a conceptual body of theoretical representation of design in which the relationships between concepts were formally and uniquely expressed in terms that could be expressed mathematically in whatever form was appropriate. The origins of this endeavour were in the successful approaches developed to support the military in the second world war. The same approach was at the roots of many of the ways to understanding and managing complexity that we take for granted nowadays: systems thinking and analysis, operations research, control theory, cognitive science, multiattribute modelling, optimisation methods, queuing theory, complexity theory etc. This was a time of 'systematic design', 'systems models of design activitiy' and design consultants advising design organisations in terms of understanding the feedback and control loops of their design processes. It was this work that laid the foundations for consultant models of advice such as Schon's differentation between theories in action, etc, his simplified models of reflective practice, and Kolb's simple models of types of learning. It was also a time of confusion between different categories of 'object' in theorymaking in that fish, bicycles, cognition, action, chairlegs and feedback loops might all be included in the same model as if they were similar entities. A problem that sometimes causes theory problems now. There was awareness, however, of the differences between two discourses. On one hand are the formal concepts and theory; forming a tightly defined coherent unambigous, contiguous representation of the activity of designing that offers all the usual benfits of formal theories such as prediction, one-to-one representation etc. On the other hand, were the discourses of the consultants and practitioners - informal rough models that could be easily visually expressed and that captured the basics of the formal theory in ways that might be useful to practitioners and that could be explained in a lowest common denominator language to all the different groups in an organisation. I've written about this in more detail in a paper presented at last year's Cumulus conference in Lisbon. Copies of the proceedings are available from www.IADE.pt. I'll put a preprint is on my website at www.love.com.au. So on one hand there is the formal theory written in unambigously defined concepts and relationships and validated on the basis of empirical data and careful reasoning from previously tested theory. On the other hand were the products of this theory making and design research distilled into simple, easy to remember rules of thumb that offered big improvements in design practices without needing any great understanding of the underlying research by design practitioners. That the research and theory has been effectively hidden form practitioners has led to the peculiar position that the 'rules of thumb' and gudielines for practice are now often believed to be design theory and design research. Examples of such products/'rules of thumb'/heuristic guidelines are: 'Move from concrete to abstract then back to concrete' 'Abstract until it ceases to be useful' 'Pretend you are the object you are designing' 'make it the same or very different' There are many, slightly more formal, heuristics in building design that are also simplified and generalised consequences of research. In other areas of design, such as engineering design, these simplified outcomes of design research became called 'design principles'. The key difference between the two discourses, and why 'rules of thumb' and 'design principles' are not part of design theory, is that they do not have the definition, validation, unabmbiguity, and singularity of properties required of concepts distilled to the point that needed to form a coherent body of unambigous, validated theory. Not surprising - that is not their role. They are guides to action and as such it is necesary for them to made in such an accessible form that anyone can understand and get something from them. This process removes from them the properties necessary for accurate theory. Reviewing the literature of design research I reaslised that confusion between these two discourses and widespread belief that there is only one discourse, is at the heart of much of the confusion in theory making in the design research literature. One of the puzzling things for me is that these understandings are clear in the writings of many key theoreticians of that period including e.g Schon, Kolb, Checkland, Churchman, Sterman, Hubka, and Simon and are ignored in many of the texts in which these authors are quoted. Warmest regards, Terry ____________________ Dr. Terence Love Curtin Research Fellow at Design-focused Research Group Design Out Crime Research Unit Key Researcher at Centre for Extended Enterprise and Business Intelligence Research Associate at Planning and Transport Research Centre Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845 Tel/Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629 (home office) [log in to unmask] ____________________ Visiting Research Fellow Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development Management School, Lancaster University Lancaster, UK [log in to unmask] ____________________ Visiting Professor Member of Scientific Council UNIDCOM IADE, Lisboa Portugal ____________________ -----Original Message----- From: Charles Burnette Sent: 23/11/2005 9:09 AM To: Terence Love; [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Distinguishing design from art-and-design Terry, Jerry, et al On 11/22/05 7:52 PM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > As I read it, these are a restatement of a single > concept that has been around since the early 60s > at least. > One of the earliest and perhaps most succinct > versions was, > 'move from concrete to abstract and back' > The original perspectives on this heuristic had > the subtlety you are outlining plus more because > it also applies within mathematical realms. The > aim at that time was to produce simple universally > useful mnemonics to assist designers in improving > design practices. > From what I remember, as 'rules of thumb > for practice' these were not themselves seen as > design theory. They were viewed as a consequence of > design research rather than part of design research. Tell us more? Just how are rules of thumb, ie guides to thought and action that are portable (or metaphors to fuel imagination for that matter), the consequences of design research rather than part of it? And why were they not seen as design theory? Chuck