John

> My own view is that the design community, design educators in particular,
> were discouraged from the systems perspective by the hard systems
> methods introduced in the late 1950s through the 1960s.

I think this is correct, certainly in Information Design.

> this experience led to the development of soft systems methods through the
> 1970s/early 1980s.

Yes, we did too, but it didn't work very well for us. The same
'cause/effect' logic applied and we found it extremely difficult to
discriminate between hard and soft situations. When were we dealing with
something that would lead to predictable outcomes, if only we had the right
methods or understanding, and when were we supposed to accept that we were
dealing with a soft system that could not lead to predictable outcomes? It
became impossible for us to answer this type of question. Moreover, we found
ourselves dealing with many situations which were outside of 'cause/effect'
logic. These were not so much unpredictable as 'non-predictable' (See my
Common Ground Paper)

The solution was a radical paradigm shift (See my paper 'Transitions in
Information Design' http://www.communication.org.au/html/paper_26.html

This happened to us in the mid-eighties and it took us into a very different
kind of space. Dick Buchanan mentioned in his recent post something he said
in his 'Common Ground' paper:
> that the design community needs to explore arts of rhetoric and dialectic
> along with logic and grammar in order to build the field.
I think Dick is absolutely right. This was the different kind of space we
moved into in the mid eighties and we have moved a long way into that space
since then. By the mid nineties we took an even greater transition and we
are still working our way through the practical implications of that,
particularly as it relates to government regulation of design (See my paper
'Transitions in Information Design'
http://www.communication.org.au/html/paper_26.html. But nothing stands
still. Unless I am mistaken, I think we are about to make another radical
shift which I foreshadowed in my Common Ground paper.

Where this leaves design education, I don't know. And I find it quite
worrying. Bruce Archer at the Co-designing 2000 conference spoke of a thirty
year gap between research findings and professional training and practice.
At the InfoDesign ed 2002 conference a week after 'Common Ground' Liv
Nielsen from Oslo University College spoke of a major government initiative
to make Business and Government more aware of design, and she spoke about a
30 year time frame. I asked her what we would have to do if we wanted to
shorten that time frame by 15 years. Her answer was that the design
professions would need to get involved in all levels of the initiative.

I suspect that is what some of us on this list are doing by being involved
in these discussions. It worries me, however, that many of the potential PhD
proposals I see, and some of the PhDs I get asked to assess, are
recapitulating the findings and thinking of the last thirty years rather
than building on those achievements. Much of this has to do with the highly
fragmented nature of our field (certainly this is true in information
design). And I'm pleased to say that we are collaborating in a number or
initiatives that will bring together much of our scattered knowledge. But it
all takes a long time and, of course, money.

I mention once again. We are looking for funding to make many of our case
histories of the last 15 years publicly available (some 200 projects). If
anyone knows of sources of funding, we would be delighted to hear from you.

David

--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
** helping people communicate with people **

PO Box 398 Hawker
ACT 2614 Australia

Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795

phone:  +61 (0)2 6259 8671
fax:    +61 (0)2 6259 8672
web:    http://www.communication.org.au

> From: John Broadbent <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: John Broadbent <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 07:15:53 +1000
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Building Research Communities
>
> Dear Cameron,
>
  As noted in my
> Common Ground paper 'Generations in design methodology', this
> experience led to the development of soft systems methods through the
> 1970s/early 1980s.  These methods seem well suited to dealing with
> the 'wicked' problems so familiar in design practice.  We are introducing
> soft systems methods into our industrial design program here next year,
> to respond to what we believe is a significant gap in methodology at
> present.
>
> Kindest,
> John Broadbent
>
> Senior Lecturer,
> Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building,
> University of Technology, Sydney,
> Australia.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Cameron Tonkinwise <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Friday, October 4, 2002 11....................