In his reply to Karel, Ken quotes in extenso Simon :
"Engineers are not the only professional designers. Everyone designs
who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material
artifacts is __no different fundamentally__ (emphasis mine) from the
one that prescribes for a sick patient or the one that devises a new
sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state."
One of the thing that has never been very clear to me is the "no
different fundamentally". I do not have the book at hand (I probably
should), and can't find in my (old) notes any element that reminds me
of how Simon did draw this proposal. I probably did agree to well at
that time to question the assumption.
For instance, if you consider the second part of the proposal, it is
unclear whether "everyone" is equal to (a doctor ?) (a sales
manager ?) (a politician ?) or an (expert system + a doctor ?) (a
marketing department ?) (a task force ?).
In other words, it is not so clear whether Simon suggests that
"everyone" designates any individual, whether it is a metonymy for
people, or if, given the current "state of affair", the proposal
could be applied to an expert system.
I think that, at the time Simon wrote his book, there was a strong
focus on "plans" as a paradigm for exploring the issue of "problem
solving". I am not saying that "devises... ones" is strictly
equivalent to "proble solving" as it is used in cognitive psychology.
But if we want to consider the design activity through its output
(which is, in my understanding, the demand raised by Victor), I think
that most of us will admit that the simple wording of "problem
solving" must be mapped in a new way : most of it would fit under the
somehow generic hat of "sustaining the sales of the company". In such
case, who is everyone ?
If we would restrict ourselves to what happens in a design
consultancy (which is a smaller field), yet, should the "design"
activity include the rethorics (verbal, visual etc.) used to create a
platform with the project stakeholders?
If we restrict ourselves to the steps that run from the preliminary
statement of the problem ("the brief") to the creation of a set of
proposal (the concept, the design), then we might be closer to the
(traditional ?) (implicit ?) definition of the design activity as it
is practiced and tought.
I am not sure whether it would be very valuable for design-as-it-is-
practiced to include the issues of social, economical and cultural
impact in its core. It would be essential though to get a strong
knowledge about such issues (BTW I am currently examining the way
Philips promotes its research in design. It raises many questions in
terms of the integration of such issues in the design process).
I think that getting these issues deep in the core of the activity
would require a change of paradigm, but I do not want to elaborate
about this in this thread.
Regards to all,
Jean
Jean Schneider
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