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Hi Gunnar, Kristina and all, Thanks Gunnar and Kristina for your feedback. It was something different I was suggesting. Must try to improve my explanations! From a different angle, some issues in design theory can be seen as: 1. Many 'theories' in design research are better seen as something other than theories. That is, they do not have the form of theories. For example, some are data, some are standards, some are findings of research tests, some are guidelines, some are folk stories, some are associations. 2. Many design theories that have the form of theories are false, inadequate, unproven, underdefined. A common characteristic are theories that tacitly presume and depend on a 'taken for granted' context. This matters when they are presumed to apply outside that context without realising they were only valid within the context. Without good theory making this is difficult to see because the dependence on the context isn't mentioned in the theory. (This applies also to those theories that are better regarded as data). An example is the statement that ' water boils at 100degrees centigrade'. It doesn't. The statement assumes the persons doing the boiling are at sea level with an air pressure of 1 bar. Boiling temperature reduces with pressure. As a theory it's in adequate if it doesn't include pressure. The boiling point of water varies by over 30dgrees centigrade at different points on the earth. The same type of problem occurs in many design theories. 3. Design activity does not include everything. It is important to work out what is the best way to use the term Design to minimise confusion and its negative effects that are currently commonplace and compromise the professionalising of activities of designers and design researchers. 4. Design activity occurs in hundreds of different fields. To date, theory development has been isolationist. An important question now is how to arbitrage design theory and research findings between design fields. This is especially important to avoid waste of research resources. Currently, design fields new to research are having the same research and theory problems that engineering design fields resolved 50 years ago. 5. In design, there is a theory mess in the literature that is ongoing. Getting out of this mess requires radical change to how theory is understood and theorymaking undertaken in many Design fields. 6. It's fairly obvious that design theory making in any design field will have to address the following issues: a) How we chose bits and name them (the subsystem problem relating to how we conceive and label reality), b) how we model how bits of things behave, c) how we make theories about how people choose things, d) theories about the internal processes of designers and users, e)How we bring a) to d) together into integrated general theories of design, f) the epistemological perspectives we use that underpin the theoretical detail and structure of design theory paths of e), g) the ontological positions, including human values, that underpin theories in a) to f). Different pathways through this mix are different approaches to theorising about design. 7. Doing the validity stuff about theory making that Ken's posts addressed. None of the above was what my recent posts were about. I was taken all of the above as given and old hat. It has been so for a couple of decades. My current posts were going beyond this into exploring establishing coherent approaches for the theory foundations necessary for design optimisation in areas of complex design that designers and design researchers have not yet been particularly good at. Typical design problems at this scale are designing interventions for Iraq and Afghanistan, designing new national health systems, developing good addiction management interventions at a large scale social level, developing interventions to provide better alternatives than corruption, developing interventions to reduce social and individual developmental problems caused by media, developing improved forms of education. A challenge: How would you make design theory about optimising the design of a replacement for the university system worldwide? This is a problem involving people, technology, development, national identities, economic development, the future of knowledge and a host of other issues. The theory foundations of design research should be able to address these sort of design contracts. I'm asking what kind of theory foundations do we need? Best wishes, Terry Gunnar wrote> Is there anything that has to do with functioning that is not design? Is there related functioning that should not be improved? Terry seemed to be making a connection between "emotional design" and "engineering design" but wasn't clear what the connection was. I inferred that the connection was the "design" part and that he meant to imply that all "design" is one thing. For that to have any meaning, we would have to assume that there is a lot of "not design" that is not that one thing. And he did not merely imply that there were connections between various sorts of design. He called for an overarching theory. Terry has also recently dismissed various sorts of design that don't fit his notion of what is interesting or important about design. This seems to add up to 1) Design is all one. 2) The all one is defined by one specific cluster of design fields or specific set of interests. Unless we make this into a strict definition and then try to enforce court orders enjoining those that fall outside our tautology from use of the word "design," I think it's incumbent on those who insist that only overarching theories of design are worthy of our attention to at least be clear about what we're theorizing. It would be great if theories of emotional design and engineering design were connected but, as you indicate, they might also connect with theories of sociology, cognitive psych, etc. If someone reacted to a statement about politics by asking how it connected Newtonian physics and theater criticism, wouldn't we tend to reply with something akin to "Huh?"? So let me rephrase my earlier post: Huh? Unless we're hoping for the Unified Theory of Everything, what's up with all of this insistence on design hypermetatheorizing? I can't understand why we should dismiss, say, a useful statement about the dark by saying that it doesn't unify nightclubs, night soil, the conduct of basketball coaches, chess pieces that can move in a L shape, early Ingmar Bergman films, David Hasselhoff television shows about talking cars, the investment strategies of the Knight Capital Group, and the manufacturing of night vision goggles. Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1901 East 6th Street Greenville NC 27858 USA [log in to unmask] +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com On Apr 30, 2010, at 7:16 AM, Kristina Börjesson wrote: > Dear Gunnar. > Shouldn't all designed products, material or immaterial, be aimed at > improved functioning, which must encompass [design] theories which > considers as well body as mind? > Isn't this exactly the problem we are often facing, not least what > concerns design for sustainability, that theories within i.e. > environmental engineering are not configured/does not connect to theories > within sociology, cognitive psychology etc. > Best wishes > Kristina > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gunnar Swanson" > <[log in to unmask] > > > To: <[log in to unmask]> > Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 2:40 AM > Subject: Re: A new field of design research > > >> On Apr 29, 2010, at 8:22 PM, Terence Love wrote: >>> I wonder how you would see it as connecting theories of say emotional >>> design >>> and engineering design? >> >> Is there a reason to assume that theories of emotional design and >> engineering design should be connected (beyond any assumptions that >> everything is connected)? >>