Dear Tim,
I feel that you raise an important point useful in cutting an
epistemologically justifiable foundation for theories about designing. In
your response to Keith Russell you asked, 'Surely don't mean to say you are
designing when you select options in your Email client?'.
To my point of view this sort of query beautifully brackets a particularly
useful approach to defining designing. I suggest 'selecting options in an
email client' (and the multiverse of similar tasks)consists of two sorts of
activity. The first sort includes routine micro activities such as looking,
mouse moving, thinking, reasoning, information and data gathering and
including the routine aspects of decisionmaking. The second sort of activity
consists of one or more micro-elemental acts of designing - addressing the
non-routine - that is what gives agency and direction to the whole process.
This approach offers many benefits in clarifying a whole bunch of
epistemological, practical and conceptual difficulties. What it requires,
however, is regarding designing as a different sort of activity from all
those other activities that are commonly held to be 'designing' such as
drawing, calculating stress analyses, craft activities, technical
activities, and all the usual forms of data gathering, analysis, reflection,
and action etc. In short, defining designing only as addressing the
non-routine.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr. Terence Love
We-B Centre
School of Management Information Systems
Edith Cowan University
Churchlands, Western Australia 6018
[log in to unmask] +61 (0)8 9273 8682
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