Dear Klaus,

Thanks for your elaboration!

I too don't like others projecting motivations on my actions or the
actions of others, but my actions to theorise designing do not include
a concern for people's motivations.  I have a theoretical construct
that is supposed to stand for expressed needs or desires; an
expression of needs or desires that can be observed as, and is
admitted by the designer or designers to mark, the start of some
designing.  So, the construct (in my theory) called Expressed Needs or
Desires plays a Motivating role with respect to the subsequent goings
on.  This motivating role is a (theoretically postulated) relation; it
is not a motivation.  As a theoretical role identifying construct it
says nothing about any actual motivations that anybody might have, or
not have, ever: it has no such content, and cannot have.

To theorise the motivations of others (which you say would be
unethical) would, to me, involve developing a theoretical account for
how and why a person has, or will have, certain motives for his or her
actions under some particular (theorised) circumstances.

If such a theory proved to be useful in explaining and demystifying
the motivations people, when in the circumstances in question, admit
to having, then it might be a useful theory.  If this theory where
then used in a normative mode, to say what motives people should have
when in the circumstances, I would probably agree that this is
unethical.

But this is all somewhat of a digression, for I have no such
theorising of motives in my theorising of designing: I can't have,
there are no people in my theory, they're all abstracted out.  As a
theory of designing, it tries to offer clarification and
de-mystification of why design processes go the way they go, and have
the form they have, in terms of the kinds of knowledge involved and
the roles these kinds of knowledge play in designing, independently of
the people (or other agents) doing the designing; having the
knowledge.

I know that all this talking about and theorising about designing in
complete abstraction of the people involved is rather strange, and
possibly quite puzzling to many in design research, and may well look
uninteresting and useless as a result--many have told me so--but I do
have a use for this kind of thing when it comes to trying to design
knowledge based design support systems.

Terry will say, I think, that this puts all this in an engineering
domain--the engineering of design support systems--and not in design
research, but I think of it as kind of contribution to design research
because it offers a way (not _the_ way!) of understanding designing.

You too may see little interest in my efforts, but I see no unethical
theorising of peoples motives here.  Do you?

And just one comment on your point (2): I'd say it's the market that
applies the selection pressure on produced designs, not the production
process, as you seem to say.  And to be really unethical, I'd say that
what motivates all and every product change is a need to sustain or
increase sales in the market, even when the 
changes are made randomly. Natural selection in 
not in the business of evolving products to sell
at market, designing often is.

A new meaning of "wicked problems", perhaps?

Best regards,

Tim
Donostia / San Sebastián
The Basque Country

======================================================================

At 20:21 -0400 2/4/07, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>dear tim,
>i resist C to be subsumed under a theory for two reasons:
>(1) i don't like people to project motivations, particularly hidden ones, to
>my own actions when i have different motivations or none whatsoever.  by the
>same token, i think it would be unethical to theorize the motivations of
>others without inquiring with them what they are, or constructing them
>without their consent.  what i am teaching my students is to respect what
>people say how and why they do what they do.  understanding their
>conceptions in their own terms tends to predicts their behavior better than
>the conceptions by a detached observer/theorist.
>(2) in evolutionary processes, natural selection and random variations go
>hand in glove.  this is true for the evolution of technological systems as
>well.  engineers introduce changes and if such changes are not
>disadvantageous for the reproduction of their design, they may stay until
>challenged or eliminated by future selection.  if you take a birds' eye
>perspective on technological development, it is random mutations, that can
>get a technological lineage of artifacts out of one niche into another one.
>theory confines changes to what the theory demands.  therefore there is an
>important place for unmotivated design, changes that seem to have no reason
>whatever, yet can keep a class of artifacts alive.
>klaus
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Smithers [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tim Smithers
>Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 6:53 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: A problem of wicked problems for design research
>
>Dear Klaus,
>
>Thanks for your note.
>
>I accept your clarification that C is un-motivated by needs or desires, at
>least explicit ones.  Nor would I want to (somewhat artificially) extend my
>account to include implicit or tacit motivations, to cover play.
>
>Nonetheless, I do wonder why you would not want to subsume C under a
>particular theory: is it somehow a-theoretical for being non-motivated?
>
>Best regards,
>
>Tim
>
>================
>
>>dear tim,
>>a minor point of clarification, C is not motivated by a need or desire
>>to achieve something but unmotivated play, random variation in the
>>genetic sense, without purpose.  i don't like to subsume that option
>>under a particular theory kk
>>