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françois, you are asking: True, design "develops proposals for actions that bring forth a desirable future". But a future desired by whom? desired by all those who will have to live in that future, are affected by a design, have a stake in what it brigs about. designers are not the only one's that count. much of their efforts must consist of listening to others, convincing those who matter, in other words, they need to communicate their design and act in view of promised futures. you say: We are ... advocating that design proposals (briefs, specifications, etc.) be anchored in a certain reality, as EVIDENCED in the situation on hand. sure enough, the presence is the only reality we can observe, re-search. you say: In my opinion and that of many colleagues, problems to be adressed by professionals called "designers" are not imaginary problems, in future. i think you do a disservice to concerns for desirable futures when you relegate such concerns to be merely "imaginary, abstract, or theoretical" (as opposed to presently real). what has not yet arrived can only be speculated about, predicted, inferred, theorized and in any case talked about. this is an epistemological given. designers cannot help but act (in the present) in view of what their actions can bring forth. as a profession, designers have to be trusted. and one way of gaining this trust is to develop compelling arguments for what not yet exists but could become a future fact you say that our activity of designing starts in the real life present, informed by the past of our own experience and that of all assembled, both humans and non humans. It is this past experience, present positionning and negotiations that, me and many others, consider as not sufficiently researched, prior to most present design proposals. yes, you always have to continue a journey from where you are. however, where you come from may not inform you about where you want to go. i am far from denying the value of investigating the resources that designers have presently available. but, whereas scientific research aims at describing past experiences with what was and has continued to exist, in my opinion, inquiries of the kind that supports design decisions should aim at what is variable, what one can change, what is possible yet would not come about naturally. i prefer that these two kinds of knowledges not be confused, and that scientific re-search be not mixed up with inquiries that are supportive of design. klaus _____ De: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design de la part de Klaus Krippendorff Date: dim. 2006-02-26 17:39 À: [log in to unmask] Objet : Re: Three motives for design -- reply to Klaus nsenga, you plead for "gather(ing) solid and undisputable evidence observed in various layers of reality, as back up to our design proposals, briefs, etc." this sounds superficially appealing. but what do you count as evidence? design, the way i understand, develops proposals for actions that bring forth a desirable future. the future yields evidence only in the future, not in the presence or in the past. it does not theorize based on available data. it proposes something that does not yet exist. to have a proposal accepted and enacted requires trust, not evidence. there are methodologies available to generate the trust needed for a design to be trustworthy, but this is not evidence in the strict sense of evidence for scientific hypotheses. klaus