Dear Glenn,

Thanks, Glenn, for your response. I have been reading your
interesting exchange of ideas with Rob Curedale, and Karen Fu's
important contribution. Rather than enter that thread, I will respond
briefly to two issues in your initial response.

The list of kinds of designers who are not labeled as designers was a
series of selected examples. It was not exhaustive, though. The full
list of fields and subfields of design is long, and so is the list of
professional designations. Terry Love and I have been working on a
list of design domains, an inventory of the processes, activities,
systems, and networks of design activities, together with the
conceptual or professional locations within which these activities
take pace. It has been a while since I ran a count: my earlier note
gave a number too low by half. The list is now roughly 800 items.
Many different kinds of people practice in the professions of these
domains.

The perspective from which you state you view of designers is one
perspective among many. People use many different definitions for
design, and each of these reflects a perspective and a history of
usage. Each of these is valid within a clearly defined framework.
What I try to do in establishing definitions is to clarify how I use
a term, giving it context and meaning as I use it. Simon's (1982:
129, 1998: 112) definition and Fuller's Fuller (1969: 319) cover all
forms of design activity. The problem with most other definitions is
that they generally do not cover the many activities of design. These
definitions often fail to cover even the range activities described
by writers who use narrower definitions.

Everyone may use the definition he or she prefers. To clarify my
view, I want to examine an issue you raised where we partially agree.
I am also going to disagree with you on one historical point of
language.

You write,

"Many people create - they model, engineer, fabricate, compute,
program, construct, layout, draft, organize and a myriad of other
terms describing the traditional way in which things have been
created. Design as a word could be swapped out for any of these
activities and hence, to some extent, negate the list.

"However, not all of these folk have a developed sense of aesthetics
or fitness for purpose (FFP), which is why design came about in the
first place.

"Try as we might, there is a fundamental chasm between those that
create in this aesthetic and FFP fashion, and those that create to
fulfill a need, a specification or a requirement.

"Long live the 'commercial artists' of this world.

"Design originally had this awful label and it is an amazing fact
that technologically based fields now look to be classified as
'designers'.

"Would this still hold true if they were to be referred to as
'commercial artists'?"

The quality you describe as "aesthetics" or "fitness for purpose" is
an important attribute of good design.

Many people use the term "elegance" to identify the aesthetic
qualities of a good solution, that is, the degree to which it is well
fitted for a purpose. In many of the fields that Simon would label as
design sciences, the issue of aesthetics is becoming increasingly
identified as a key factor. In management studies, for example, the
field of management aesthetics has become the focus of an
international network of scholars and thinkers. Three current
examples are the international ACORN network, the forthcoming
European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management conference
titled: Workshop on Aesthetics, Art, and Management: Towards New
Fields of Flow, and an intense research program at Stockholm
University funded by the Swedish Riksbank Jubileumsfund.

Nevertheless, a definition describes something. In this case, the
term design describes a kind of process or activity. A definition
cannot cover only good or excellent examples of the process or
activity.

You and I agree on a significant principle. Aesthetics and fitness
for purpose are significant criteria in design. These qualities do
not distinguish designers from those who do not design or those who
are called designers from those who are not called designers. These
qualities distinguish good or excellent design processes from poor or
problematic process, and they distinguish good or excellent designers
from those of lesser skill. Designers in all domains meet these
criteria - and designers in all domains fail to do so.

One statement in your note calls for a clarification. You write that
design was originally designated as commercial art and designers were
originally designated as commercial artists. This is historically
inaccurate. The term design entered the English language five
centuries ago, long before the term commercial art came into being.

The word "design" appeared in the English language by the 1500s. The
first written citation of the verb "design" dates from the year 1548.
Merriam-Webster (1993: 343) defines the verb design as "to conceive
and plan out in the mind; to have as a specific purpose; to devise
for a specific function or end." Related to these is the act of
drawing, with an emphasis on the nature of the drawing as a plan or
map, as well as "to draw plans for; to create, fashion, execute or
construct according to plan."

Half a century later, the word began to be used as a noun. The first
cited use of the noun "design" occurs in 1588. Merriam-Webster (1993:
343) defines the noun, as "a particular purpose held in view by an
individual or group; deliberate, purposive planning; a mental project
or scheme in which means to an end are laid down." Here, too, purpose
and planning toward desired outcomes are central. Among these are "a
preliminary sketch or outline showing the main features of something
to be executed; an underlying scheme that governs functioning,
developing or unfolding; a plan or protocol for carrying out or
accomplishing something; the arrangement of elements or details in a
product or work of art." Only at the very end do we find "a
decorative pattern."

These definitions conform to the usage visible in the Simon and
Fuller definitions. The definitions end with a noun describing a
process: "the creative art of executing aesthetic or functional
designs."

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online 2002) provides a rich
overview with hundreds of usage examples. A more detailed discussion
of the etymology and meanings of the word design appear in Friedman
(2001, 2002).

Clear distinctions enable us to focus on appropriate objects of inquiry.

Many threads on this list and others that begin by enquiring into the
design process go astray because they confuse the general design
process with the activity sequence of one specific field or subfield
of design. To ask such questions as "what is design," or "what is the
design process," or even "what is designing," requires that we
distinguish the general process from its instantiation in applied
programs or clinical engagement.

Understanding the process is important, and underestimating design
process remains one of the serious and underdeveloped areas of design
research.

The field does somewhat better in analysis of design activities
within subfields. I suggested this distinction to Ben Matthews in
proposing that he enquire about symbolic interactionist accounts of
design processes rather than symbolic interactionist account of
designing. Some of these may also exist in the unpublished
literature, but a richer search will yield more.

All three levels of analysis are important. I do not suggest that
basic or high-level studies of design process are more important to
the field that studies of designing or design activity situated in
fields or subfields. Both kinds of inquiry and important and each
requires the other.

What I do suggest is that most design programs examine and teach
design on the level of applied theory and clinical practice. These
programs would be enriched by greater attention to design process
taking place in the networks, systems, and event flows in which
design is embedded in general industrial and managerial practice.

Recognizing the distinctions that Simon and Fuller address generates
an understanding of how human beings shape the world around them in a
web of linked systems. The past century has seen a shift from a
generally natural world to an increasingly human-created world. This
also involves - to borrow the title of Victor Margolin's excellent
new book - the politics of the artificial.

Until recently, human beings were a relatively small group of
creatures located on the surface of the planet. While humans were
numerous and powerful enough to reshape local ecosystems and dislodge
other species from habitat while restructuring environmental niches,
they were not significant enough to reshape the entire planet. That
is no longer the case. Thus, it is that understanding the sciences
and politics of the artificial makes design an increasingly central
theme of the new century.

To understand design, we must engage in all three levels of inquiry
and research, basic, applied, and clinical.

Thus, we must examine design in its large scale.

It is often said on this list and elsewhere that design has become a
primary intellectual concern of the twenty-first century. This is
true. It is true precisely because the design domain is extensive,
involving the many design fields and subfields that give rise to what
Fuller (1981: 229-231) labels class-two evolution.

To understand these issues requires understanding design process and
it requires inquiry into problem-finding, problem-solving,
heuristics, and such disciplines as the philosophy of science and
sociology of knowledge in which we consider the properties of
elegance (aesthetics, fitness for purpose).

Karen Fu's excellent post captured important concepts about the
design process and the activity of designing, as did Monica
Cardella's response.

Jens Bernsen (1986: 10) captured much of the same idea when he
described design as "translating a purpose into a physical form or
tool."

It seems to me that most of us agree that this counts for a great
deal in design, and that design - to serve a purpose - serves best
when solutions are elegant and well fitted to their purpose.

In asking for epistemological clarity, I point out that a large and
abundant group of professionals across many domains engage in the
design process, designing for an even larger group of stakeholders.
The scale and scope of the design process as a broad human activity
gives design the importance it has now acquired. It is important,
therefore, to study the design process and the networks of design
activity as well as the practice and profession of designing.

Best regards,

Ken


References

Bernsen, Jens. 1986. Design. The Problems Comes First. Copenhagen:
Danish Design Council.

Friedman, Ken. 2001. "Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into
Practice." In Design and Technology Educational Research and
Development: The Emerging International Research Agenda. E. W. L.
Norman and P. H. Roberts, eds. Loughborough, UK: Department of Design
and Technology, Loughborough University, 31-69.

Friedman, Ken. 2002. "Theory Construction in Design Research.
Criteria, Approaches, and Methods." In Common Ground. Proceedings of
the Design Research Society International Conference at Brunel
University, September 5-7, 2002. David Durling and John Shackleton,
Editors. Stoke on Trent, UK: Staffordshire University Press.

Fuller, Buckminster. 1969. Utopia or Oblivion. The Prospects for
Humanity. New York: Bantam Books.

Fuller, Buckminster. 1981. Critical Path. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1993. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
Tenth edition. Springfield, Massachusetts.

OED. 2002. OED Online. Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. J. A. Simpson
and E. S. C. Weiner. 2nd ed, 1989. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oxford
University Press. URL: http://dictionary.oed.com/. Date accessed:
2002 January 18.

Simon, Herbert. 1982. The Sciences of the Artificial. 2nd ed.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Simon, Herbert. 1998. The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University