terry,

i don't see how you can CLAIM to DEFINE design without using the language in
which you reside, or consider language as an activity secondary to
(understanding) design.  design is a word we use to DISTINGUISH design from
what it is NOT.  without that (or similar words) we couldn't TALK about the
DIFFERENCE.  

you seem not to be willing to reflect on (TALK of) what you are SAYING when
you DEFINE, DISTINGUISH, IDENTIFY, ARGUE (such as in the email to which this
RESPONDS), and PROFESS to others in CONVERSATIONS how you want to be seen
as.  by believing that whatever language constructs as real is real indeed,
you treat language as transparent and are cutting off the branch from the
epistemological tree you are sitting on.  this is a trap in need or
examination.

klaus    

-----Original Message-----
From: Terence Love [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:31 AM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: On design - again?

Hi Klaus,

You say:
" in my working with engineers, they usually profess to be engineers first
and then say the are designing a transmission, for example.  engineers go to
engineering schools, not design schools and get a degree in engineering. so
by their own identification they are not designers."

It may be when you are asking them, they see you as a bit 'out of the
action' as it were. It may be this is an 'emic' /'etic' issue. 

When I'm with people who don't know much about design research or design and
they ask me what I do, I answer something like ' I work in Humanities' or' I
work in my own business' or 'I'm a researcher'. Whatever, they are general
answers suited to the situation. When asked by designers I'm much more
specific.

Similarly, some people when asked what they do by outsiders answer 'I'm an
engineer'. It's a way of providing an answer that's easy to understand for
people who don't understand the subtleties.

You can be absolutely sure that the person responding "I'm an engineer"
knows the differences between engineering designers, software designers,
process designers, project engineers, dynamicists, stress engineers, QA
specialists etc. and knows exactly which of them they work at. Some people
specialise in engineering design  and become engineering designers. That's
why there is such a huge research literature about engineering design.
Engineering Design is a sub-field of Engineering in the same way that
Graphic Design is often considered a sub-field of Humanities or Art ( as in
many graphic designers when asked what they do say something along the lines
of 'I draw stuff'.)

You say:
"the point i was making that all of what you hear from me in[sic] cast in
linguistic terms.  although i had a chance of meeting you once, all your
arguments occur in language and i would argue that professional designers
profess in language, are given brief in language, collaborate among
themselves in the completion of a project by talking, and justify their
proposals to stakeholders in an ideally compelling design discourse."

My feeling is that this is best seen as there are many things that happen in
parallel to another process, but association isn't the same as identity and
just cos language happens at the same time as design, its not obvious to me
that it  should be taken as central to defining design as an activity.

A silly example: When doing design work people use their bums to sit on.
Bums are also useful as they attaches people's legs to their bodies while
they are designing. It makes sure that their body is the right distance from
their knees when designing, and it's a useful bump to hang their trousers on
to stop them falling down - which might be problematic whilst designing. For
most designers their bums are  a significant part of their history. People's
bums are deeply associated with their design work (and usually regarded as
essential to it!) but the lives of our bums are relatively parallel in their
existence to the activities of doing design. Is it essential to define
design activity in terms of our bums? - or the language that they talk?
Similarly the connection between designing and language.

For me, it seems a similar sort of value  to define design theory and design
activity in 'language'. It blurs the situation. Assuming that language or
social processes should be central as a matter of course is problematic. If
you assume language and social processes are secondary parallel issues it
seems to me that it makes it much easier to identify essential features of
design activity along with associated internal and external processes of
creativity, affect, visualisation and decisionmaking etc. 

All the best,
Terry


-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 22 September 2009 11:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On design - again?

terry,
yes and no.

in my working with engineers, they usually profess to be engineers first and
then say the are designing a transmission, for example.  engineers go to
engineering schools, not design schools and get a degree in engineering. so
by their own identification they are not designers.

the same with public opinion researchers.  they say they inquire into public
opinion, usually are trained social scientists, but they readily tell you
that they design a questionnaire and the survey they are conducting with it.
while the design of questionnaires is part of their job, they do not call
themselves designers nor do they go to a design school to get their degree.

i think one has to listen to how people fit themselves in various
institutional frameworks before theorizing and categorizing what they do in
one way or another.  of course one can argue with all of them, try to
preserve one's own favorite term for one's own activities, but then one
becomes a politician or lawyer who designs conceptual systems for the
allocation of authorities and the distribution of resources.

the point i was making that all of what you hear from me in cast in
linguistic terms.  although i had a chance of meeting you once, all your
arguments occur in language and i would argue that professional designers
profess in language, are given brief in language, collaborate among
themselves in the completion of a project by talking, and justify their
proposals to stakeholders in an ideally compelling design discourse

klaus