Thanks for this post, Chris.  The story is quite complex, as you point out.
We need a rich conceptual framework for appreciating the rise of design.
Simon provides an interesting perspective, but it did not spring from a
void.  In fact, while his definition continues to be cited, the reason is
that it is a commonplace definition--commonplace in the sense of employing a
set of "places" that are common to a variety of approaches.  I find that his
definition is quite often cited for purposes that are not at all consistent
with Simon's approach to "design science."  Again, we need a richer
framework for exploring this, else we simply go around on the same wheel.

Ken's suggestion that there is an "era" before Simon must be simply a casual
phrase, because there is no "era" that I can find.  What I see is a complex
field shaped by different ways of conceiving design and exploring it in
practice and speculation before and after Simon.  Different approaches to
design and design history may yield divisions into "periods," "eras,"
"epochs," and so forth.  But such divisions would have to be argued very
carefully.

I might add that even in the area of engineering design, there is a rich
diversity of approaches that invite sophisticated philosophic analysis. I
hope that Terry and other philosophically inclined engineers would be
pleased with this idea, and Terry or others might help us to distinguish
some of the variations in approach.  I'm working on this myself at the
moment, but my approach is somewhat different from what Terry may see.

Dick

Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University


On 8/15/07 9:02 AM, "Chris Rust" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Ken Friedman wrote:
> 
>> Simon's description of design as "[devising] courses of action aimed
>> at changing existing situations into preferred ones" serves many
>> purposes. In the era BEFORE Simon published this description in the
>> 1968 lectures that became The Sciences of the Artificial, many people
>> treated design as a purely practical trade descended from the craft
>> guilds and dedicated to styling and advertising.
> 
> I daresay they did and will continue to do so. However the reality is
> that the disciplined and complex nature of design has been understood by
> its practitioners since long before Simon chose to propound his elegant
> but, for me, unhelpful definition.
> 
> On the one hand, long established disciplines such as boat and
> shipbuilding  have, over centuries, developed and refined complex
> techniques and bodies of knowledge, both explicitly through industrial
> ventures and tacitly through craft making (1). They may conform to
> Simon's definition but their richness illustrates the definition's
> sterility. On the other hand more recent developments such as the
> profession of Industrial Design, often characterised as "purely
> practical", also exhibit a high level of complexity and reflection on
> principles if one goes back to the pioneers like Raymond Leowy or Henry
> Dreyfuss. In writing about and discussing their work they may not have
> conformed always to academic expectations but then they were not
> academics, they were engaged in inventing a new way of thinking and
> acting :o). More recent practices in "traditional" industrial design
> tend to obscure the rich thinking that built the profession -
> three-dimensional problems have become much more routine and less
> significant than the "system" problems of contemporary product design.
> Many of Leowy and Dreyfuss' heirs may be, in effective, technicians but
> that doesn't make their heritage "purely practical"
> 
> (1) see Tim Severin's book "The Jason Voyage" (1986) for a fascinating
> description of what happens when the two meet, illustrating an
> exceptional level of congruence between the understanding of the naval
> architect and the "play it by eye" traditional boatbuilder once a
> suitable communication medium (a scale model) was identified.
> 
> best wishes from Sheffield
> Chris
> 
> *********************
> Professor Chris Rust
> Head of Art and Design Research Centre
> Sheffield Hallam University, S11 8UZ, UK
> +44 114 225 2706
> [log in to unmask]
> www.chrisrust.nethes from Sheffield
> Chris
> 
> .
>