Dear Juris,
Thanks for your question. While I generally agree with the kind of
inquiry you propose, I hope it doesn't seem that I've posed this as a
dichotomy
To say that "analyses of the outcomes of designing are to be found
largely 'under different labels'" also includes several labels within
design research. I simply stated that design research shows up in
several places. (For the sake of clarity, I'll say that I would not
using the phrase "analyses of the outcomes of designing," but for the
sake of simplicity, I'll accept it here. I used the term design as a
verb, and the verb design describes a process with outcomes and
results.)
The classic definition of design as I use it is Herbert Simon's:
"[devise] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones" (Simon 1982: 129).
Not only do people analyze the outcomes and results of design from
many different perspective, but people practice design in many
fields. People who design laws, for example, are called legislators
or legislative aids, and people who study the outcomes of their work
include political scientists, historians, lawyers, jurists, judges,
and legal scholars. Physicians, nurses, anesthesiologists, and others
like them design different kinds of medical processes and surgical
procedures. A wide range of researchers study the outcomes of their
work.
In Simon's terms, all kinds of people work as designers, and all
professional practices are design fields. Management, for example,
fits Simon's definition of design and management study is a design
science as Simon saw it.
There are many kinds of design research that study the design process
and its outcomes. One kind studies design and the design process as a
generic field or activity without regard to the target field of the
design process. This is the sense in which Warfield (1994) writes
about a science of generic design. Another studies design processes
and outcomes situated within a specific design practice. This, for
example, is the case of those who study managing as designing (Boland
and Collopy 2004; see also: Managing as Designing 2002).
If I were to expand your definition slightly from "design design as a
social and cultural system of classification" to "design as a range
of professional practices aimed at changing existing situations into
preferred ones," then it would be possible to answer the rest of your
question about who studies "[design as a range of professional
practices aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones
... ] functioning within, through, and separately from its
profession(s) - as a contributor to or creator of enduring structures
of social order. In other words, how is the concept of design (no
matter the field in which it is deployed) shaping political realities
(which are inherently cultural and social), such as relationships of
power, public policy, behavior, identity, taxonomies of value,
philosophical questions, the human condition, and so on..."
The answer is that many people do, again under a variety of labels,
from many perspectives, and within different fields. This is a
necessary corollary to the fact that people practice design from many
perspectives and within many fields, and their inquiries generally
draw on the backgrounds from which they come.
This is also related to a range of the kinds of issues that are
coming to be described -- in the words of Nigel Cross's (2006) recent
book -- as "designerly ways of knowing." In this sense, design is not
a set of technical skills, but a process, and designerly ways of
knowing involve ways of thinking and knowing that form part of the
process. From this perspective, there are three broad ways of knowing
the world. Science examines the natural world including human beings
in their role as natural creatures. Science seeks objective truth.
The humanities examine the world of human experience. The humanities
seek subjective understanding. Design in this larger sense examines
and works with the artificial world. Design works through practice
and examines the realm of the appropriate.
One key aspect of design problems is that fact that they are situated
in a context and constrained by conditions that arise from the
contingent nature of most design problems. Science ultimately seeks
truth and humanities seek increasingly deeper undemanding against a
perpetually unfolding background of time that allows for renewed and
extended research. Design solves problems embedded in the world of
human action, where limits on time, resources, and information
constrain every design process as solution-oriented but imperfect.
Every solution must - in Herbert Simon's (1956) term - satisfice by
selecting among constraints. Meeting one constraint more fully means
accepting lower values on others. Understanding design as a general
human phenomenon therefore requires us to understand the nature,
conditions, and consequence of successful design process.
It is this last issue that involves the kinds of question that Victor
asked and that you extended.
Cross (2006: 12) , to stay with this example, identifies five aspects
of designerly ways of knowing. Designers struggle with ill-defined
problems. They attempt to solve these problems by proposing and
trying solutions rather than by seeking all possible information.
They think in constructive ways, developing proposals and building on
them in practice. They use professional codes to translate abstract
solutions into working objects. Using codes enables them to read and
write the object languages of design. So much for the process in
Cross's model. But this process is anchored in a contingent world,
and the process shapes results that change the world -- therefore
changing the context in which the future iterations of a problem may
be embedded, and changing the next cycle of contingencies.
Cross (2006: 101) proposes a field of design research with three
major branches: a field in which "design epistemology (studies)
designerly ways of knowing, design praxiology (studies) the practices
and processes of design, and design phenomenology (studies) the form
and configuration of objects." If I were to propose something more
expansive, I'd probably add branches to cover the kinds of issues you
propose.
If fact, I have been working on this problem in several ways. In one
presentation (Friedman 2000, full text at URL below), I proposed a
taxonomy that includes many of the issues in your note. I haven't
really been satisfied with that attempt, and I've been working on an
extended inventory and taxonomy together with Terry Love, M P Ranjan,
and Fil Salustri. We're slowly picking away at it -- one reason this
is so challenging is that we've managed so far to identify some 750
fields and subfields, disciplines and subdisciplines in design and
design research.
One way to make some progress in seeing how many ways people are at
work on this -- and in what fields -- would be to undertake a
bibliography of articles, books, and published reports on "[design as
a range of professional practices aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones ... ] functioning within, through, and
separately from its profession(s) - as a contributor to or creator of
enduring structures of social order. In other words, how is the
concept of design (no matter the field in which it is deployed)
shaping political realities (which are inherently cultural and
social), such as relationships of power, public policy, behavior,
identity, taxonomies of value, philosophical questions, the human
condition, and so on..."
If someone were to do this or edit it with the help of colleagues, I
can most likely arrange to get it published in a good journal or --
if it is too large for a journal -- as a book from a good publisher.
Any takers?
Yours,
Ken
Reference
Boland, Richard and Fred Collopy, editors. 2004. Managing as
Designing. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.
Cross, Nigel. 2006. Designerly Ways of Knowing. London: Springer Verlag.
Friedman, Ken. 2000. "Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into
Practice." In IDATER 2000: International Conference on Design and
Technology Educational Research and Development. P. H. Roberts and E.
W. L. Norman, eds. Loughborough, UK: Department of Design and
Technology, Loughborough University, 5-32. Available from:
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2134/1360
Simon, Herbert. 1956. Rational Choice and the Structure of the
Environment." Psychological Review, 63, 129-138.
Simon, Herbert. 1982. The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press.
Managing as Designing. 2002. Managing as Designing: Creating a
vocabulary for management education and research. Case Western
Reserve University, June 14-15, 2002.
URL: http://design.case.edu/2002workshop/index.html#
Warfield, John N. 1994. A science of generic design: managing
complexity through systems design. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University
Press.
--
Juris Milestone wrote:
--snip--
If analyses of the outcomes of designing are to be found largely
'under different labels' (as Ken Friedman explains), and an
understanding of design processes (internal to design, primarily) is
to be found largely within design research, then what I mean to
suggest is the need to recognize the value of research into the
broader functioning of design as a social and cultural system of
classification - functioning within, through, and separately from its
profession(s) - as a contributor to or creator of
enduring structures of social order. In other words, how is the
concept of design (no matter the field in which it is deployed)
shaping political realities (which are inherently cultural and
social), such as relationships of power, public policy, behavior,
identity, taxonomies of value, philosophical questions, the human
condition, and so on? I would think that as the influence and
presence of design grows, these questions would grow in importance.
Does anyone know where this kind of enquiry is taking place?
--snip--
--
Prof. Ken Friedman
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Oslo
Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen
+47 46.41.06.76 Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95 Tlf Privat
email: [log in to unmask]
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