Hi Terry
Thanks for the reply. I understand more what you were saying now and hat you
mention in your reply I do agree with. Designers need to be more researched
and able to provide  a rationale for their designs and also, as best as they
can, lay out the consequences and potential consequences of their design,
and to provide "evidence" (I use it loosely here) for that. No problem
there. That is also why I wrote "the complexity in design is increasing, and
I also agree that new tools can help designers to address certain aspects of
that complexity". This is the reason why I see "traditional" design as
practiced in many Art & Design schools to be out of date, since they do not
appreciate what research can do for design (which does not mean that design
should become research :-)

Then to your question about how design can deal with complexity. Well, my
point is that design has developed as an approach that always have been
"forced" to deal with the full complexity of reality. A designer can't
choose to only care about one or certain aspects of a design (say,
functionality, appearance, performance, etc) and not care about others. Each
design is a complete whole and when deployed into reality it becomes  a
extraordinary complex composition of the new and the existing. So, to cope
with this complexity designers do the stuff they do, they have developed an
approach that is suitable for this type of complexity. And the way they do
it is nothing strange, they do user research,background research, exemplar
research, ideate, sketch, iterate, critique, experiment, prototype, test,,
etc. The process is in itself complex, but from a design perspective highly
rational and logical. Designers use their developed judgement, their trained
sensitivity to complexity, composition, and quality as their guiding tools.
However, design has been really bad at developing a good description of this
process, of its real merits, and failed in describing it as a rational
process with its own logic.

Ok, this is a big discussion and maybe that is enough for now :-)

Erik

On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  Hi Erik,
>
>
>
> Thank you for your message.
>
>
>
> The problem I raised is that current design methods don’t enable designers
> to know how the designs they create will behave once in the real world when
> these designs include two or more feedback loops – unless the designers  use
> special approaches to model the behaviour of what they design.
>
>
>
> I suggest that if a design team  doesn’t know how the designs will behave
> then they at very least open themselves up to legal claims and more they
> open themselves up to the ridicule of incompetence: that  their practices
> can hardly be regarded as professional behaviour – more like chancing.
>
>
>
> I’m suggesting that designers need essentially to be able to use methods to
> explicitly model how their guesses will behave – rather than simply trying
> to sell guesses and pretences as designs.
>
>
>
> You say” Design is an approach that can deal with infinite complexity due
> to its different philosophy, methods and techniques. It can deal with the
> complexity of people's wants, needs, and desires.”
>
>
>
> Tell me how.
>
>
>
> How does this ‘Design as an approach’ enable designers to know that their
> designs will behave the way they say?
>
>
>
> Warm regards,
>
>
>
> Terry
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Erik
> Stolterman
> *Sent:* Saturday, 19 September 2009 3:55 PM
> *To:* Terence Love
> *Cc:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Ways of finding where we are (was: current trends...)
>
>
>
> Dear Terence,
>
>
>
> Thanks for your interesting description of the change of design. Even
> though the changes you point to are in many cases real and happening, I
> cannot agree with your conclusions. You are correct in that the complexity
> in design is increasing, and I also agree that new tools can help designers
> to address certain aspects of that complexity, but design is still about
> creating something new, something that will fit an infinite complex reality,
> and not a problem to which more sophisticated methods and tools can find
> "solutions". Your five changes at the end of your post rest on a notion of
> design that is contrary to how I understand design. To me, you are
> advocating a development where design is moving into a problem solving
> paradigm, which to me is exactly what design should not do! Your push for a
> "scientification" (if that is a word) of design is clear.
>
>
>
> To me, the increased complexity in the world, leads to the opposite
> conclusion. Design is an approach that can deal with infinite complexity due
> to its different philosophy, methods and techniques. It can deal with the
> complexity of people's wants, needs, and desires. These problems do not have
> given solutions, they constantly change, people change, desires change.
> Reality change. It is not about finding perfect "solutions" that can be
> "discovered" with scientific methods, it is about being able to on a
> detailed level understand human conditions and create inspiring designs that
> support people in their handling of their lifeworlds. So, it is crucial that
> design as an approach recognizes its own strength and do not try to copy
> science or engineering in order to cope with complexity. Design can and
> should develop its own rationality, logic and rigor for its own purposes
> without copying less suitable methods from other approaches.  And there are
> good signs in the field today that design is slowly moving in a direction
> where it is developing its own uniqueness and of course removing old habits
> not suitable for today's design challenges.
>
>
>
> Best
>
> Erik
>
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Alireza,
>
> In looking at the trajectories of development of  subfields of design, it
> is
> obvious that there are changes afoot that are much bigger than people are
> recognizing. This is in much the same way that many designers and design
> researchers haven't realized how completely computer automation has
> replaced
> many  professional design practices of 20 years ago.
>
> Design activities and theories are changing very very fast - many current
> ideas in design research are already dead - just not yet buried! The
> following is how I see things. I'm aware others see things differently and
> some will try to cling to the past.
>
> Design research and design activity is changing significantly in several
> ways. The changes are particularly relevant to the Art and Design
> traditions
> of designing. They are especially significant for human-centered or
> user-centered design practices and research.
>
> These changes require a new way of discussing 'design' in 'art and design'
> and 'human-centered design' and a move away from earlier ways of thinking.
>
> The central issue is the limitations of human thinking, intuition and
> emotion for being able to design in complex situations.
> Designers are unable to understand the behaviour of designs complex
> situations with feedback loops. If designers cannot understand the
> behaviours of a designed outcome then they cannot design. This issue CANNOT
> be resolved by consulting with stakeholders, group design, participatory
> design, or any consultative tools. All these tools  do is convince people
> that they accept a faulty design.
>
> The problem is that many designers in 'art and design' and 'human-centered
> design' are now designing in areas of complexity in which conventional
> design practices, design theories  no longer apply (see
> http://www.love.com.au/PublicationsTLminisite/2009/complex-ad.htm ). Of
> course, they still use traditional methods. The outcomes are faulty designs
> which from experience are then blamed on others  - or on God (wickedness).
> This is an increasing trend and an increasing problem that designers are
> imposing on the world with the moves into Design Strategy and Social
> Design.
>
> In parallel to this complexity problem is the epistemic shift in which
> classic social and psychological approaches to understanding group and
> individual sense-making and behaviour are being replaced wholemeal by
> information coming from new disciplines..
>
> As I see it, the significant  five changes that are happening to transform
> 'art and design' and 'human-centered design'  are:
>
> 1. Increasing tendency to address complex problems in 'art and design' and
> 'human-centered design' fields. This will make irrelevant all  current
> design methods based on 'feelings', 'intuition', 'design thinking',
> 'participative design', consultative design' and all classic social
> 'group-based' design methods from the 'art and design' and 'human-centered
> design' fields.
>
> 2. Replacement by new understandings from cognitive-neuroscience  in design
> theory and research of the current theory foundations of concepts of
> 'emotion' (as in 'design and emotion'),  'intuition', 'feelings' and
> 'meaning'. This is already happening in many other fields - design research
> is lagging.
>
> 3. Replacement of sociological, anthropological and ethnographic theories
> in
> design theory and research by new understandings from fields associated
> with
> ethology and evolutionary biology.
>
> 4. Massive increases in the mathematisation and computer-based automation
> of
> art, creativity and design of several orders greater than what we have seen
> in the last two decades.
>
> 5. Influence of media resulting in increased levels of directed personal
> automation of thinking and self-derivation of meaning. This will result in
> people's attitudes and ways of living increasingly aligned with their use
> of
> designed objects/situations, rather than designing outcomes to align with
> people's wants and understandings.
>
> Best regards,
> Terry
>
>
>