Dear Ken,
First, before saying anything more, I wish to apologise if the comment about
Ferraris appeared harsh or critical. I did not intend it to be - rather I
intended it to be the simplest mental picture I could imagine of where an
issue is investigated using a framework that appears to apply but does not.
Second, I'd like to emphasise that my interest is in better design outcomes.
The educational formation of professional designers has a strong ethical
dimension because of the way that their decisions can significantly affect
large numbers of people's lives for the worse as well as better. This is
significantly different from committing energy to support the ecological
survival of academic activities.
Between us (you and me) we appear to be in a strange communication
situation. Here is how I see it. It may be you see things differently.
To date, for many in Design education, Design history very strongly
influences how issues of Design are viewed, discussed, interpreted and
theorised about. Shifting the focus onto historiography (in its modern
meaning) simply shifts the focus on to the mechanics of the historical
analysis: the frame and lens of viewing things through the lenses and
cultures of historical analysis remains.
I am arguing the viewing of design as an activity through the lenses of
history is a problem, and suggesting we should look at Design activity from
other viewpoints in which design history is either excluded or minimised.
To say it differently, I'm suggesting we view and analyse design activity
from a non-history-based perspective, and validate everything about that way
of seeing and interpreting Design issues outside the validation and
interpretations of design history perspectives. I've pointed to some of
the reasons why other disciplines have found this useful and why it appears
to be of significant benefit for the future of Design as a field. I
appreciate this is culturally difficult for those who have been immersed in
ways of thinking in which design and design history have been seen as
contiguous, overlapping or interdependent.
Your reply seems to be that I must be mistaken because, viewing things
through a design history perspective, the world looks differently from what
I am suggesting.
I think that is making my point.
Three additional issues may be relevant to the discussion more broadly.
The first is that other design fields act as exemplars in that they have
already been through the same process. One is the Engineering Art that
became Engineering Design. Another is the Islamic Arts of the middle ages
from which emerged Natural Philosophy and then Science as we now know it
(apparently in part through insulting criticism by Natural Philosophers of
those who ignored the history dimension and were interested more in the
'physical behaviour of phenomena' and were nicknamed the 'physicalists' -
which became shortened to 'Physics').
The second, as I've written about earlier, is the problem of complex
situations involving 2 or more feedback loops influencing the behaviour of
design outcomes. Observation indicates that individuals cannot 'in mind'
understand or predict the dynamic behaviour of situations with 2 or more
feedback loops. In this situation, there are several typical classes of
response. None of them work, but their appearance is diagnostic of failure
of organisation, design outcomes and understanding. One is to simplify the
understanding about the situation until it is reduced in complexity to the
level it can be thought about. This is common in Design and fails because
the complexity of the 'understanding' is insufficient to match the real
complexity of the situation. Another way is to view things from
'perspectives'. This fails for similar reasons. A diagnostic of this
approach is where a field or group suggests 'understanding a situation
depends on the perspective that one uses'. A third way, is when designers
attempt to use group think to address situations that are too complex for an
individual to understand. This fails because all that occurs are
combinations of the above two: i.e. rather than a single person that doesn't
understand and is incapable of predicting outcomes, there is a group of
people who all individually do not understand and are incapable of
predicting outcomes.
Historical analyses undertaken in the ways outlined above would be expected
to have the same failures and same relative irrelevance to design practice
and theory making.
Most of the interesting and socially important kinds of design situations
are typified by the outcomes being influenced by two or more feedback
loops. It is these that require a different approach.
The solution for Design (as Herb Simon identified in the 50s) is to create
computer models and understand and predict outcomes through modifying the
models - the role of historical analysis is primarily to provide the data
for calibrating the models. Simon simply distinguished between more and
less complicated/complex design situations. I've found that the 2 feedback
loop boundary is an important differentiator between simple design
situations and omplex (in Don's terms, 'complicated') design situations.
A third issue understanding and theorising about design activity involves
distinguishing between design *outputs* and design *outcomes*. There are a
number of reasons: the most obvious are typified by the application of
program models to theorise and manage design. Ethel pointed to this
difference between design *outputs* and design *outcomes* in her post that
referred to Maldonado and refrigerators. The design that specifies how to
make a particular kind of refrigerator is a design output. In contrast, the
ability for people to have better food is a design outcome. The distinction
is conceptually essential for developing improved design outcomes.
Currently, it design history appears to privilege its focus on design
outputs.
Viewing things in a slightly different light, I'm suggesting there are other
reasons for rethinking the relationship between design education and design
history and these include that a) design historical analyses are a long way
from being well suited for complex/complicated design situations, and b)
most of the design situations of interest are complex/complicated design
situations for which it appears at the moment that design history methods of
analysis are not yet sufficiently developed to address or choose not to
address using the tools necessary. I'm open to correction on this. If so,
please point me to appropriate material.
On a more concrete level. It's unclear how design history really helps. For
example, it looks like the world is likely to have an epidemic of damaged
hearing due to power levels in designed devices delivering music direct to
the ear (iPods and the like). Historically, I know in the late 70s, many of
us developing such devices halted design and production because it was
obvious that the devices exceeded industrial occupational health and safety
maximums for noise levels. Where were, or are, the design historians drawing
on the experiences of this past and advising designers to not create such
devices and making the design problems known to the public? Practically, I
feel it's necessary to ask how input from Design History can be better
realised.
I feel understand your comments and the traditional understanding of the
role of design history in design education. Please advise if you think it is
not so. To me that kind understanding seems insufficient, and 'more of the
same' in the development of Design education does not appear to be the best
way forward.
Regards,
Terence
---
Dr Terence Love
BA(Hons) PhD(UWA), PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----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 Ken
Friedman
Sent: Friday, 24 August 2012 9:12 AM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: Hurrah! Re: Design Education - Rethinking the role of Design
History
Hi, Terry,
It seems to me that you don't quite understand the issues at stake in
history or historical studies. To state that the exemplary publications I
put forward were "lumped under Design History" misses the point of my note.
As I wrote yesterday, the field of design history has moved beyond formalist
notions that treat the history of designed artifacts as a division of art
history. There are doubtless programs where formalist design history remains
a branch of art history this kind. Progress is never distributed evenly. The
* field * of design history is moving forward.
You are neglecting the emergence of historiography in the design field. The
term historiography has two major meanings. One is "the writing of
history<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/history>; especially: the
writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the
selection of particulars from the authentic materials, and thesynthesis of
particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods."
The other is "the principles, theory, and history of
historical<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/historical> writing."
As an academic discipline, design is a young field. Given the young status
of the professional practice of design as an academic discipline and the
even-younger status of the scientific or theoretical study of design, it
makes sense that the historical disciplines are also young and articulate
historiography younger still.
It seems to me that you do not recognize what historiography means to our
field. It makes perfect sense that design history would have grown from
other historical fields, drawing on and making use of their principles. To
this day, Australia has not yet mounted a full-fledged design history
program anchored in a design school. There have been important attempts. For
example, I understand that Tony Fry launched aprogram that flourished
briefly, dissolving when his departure deprived theprogram of his driving
energy and intellectual force. A while back, we hosted a symposium of
Australian design historians here at Swinburne - I learned that they
struggle in circumstances that design historians elsewhere overcame long
ago. The views in your post about design history reflect the problem
ratherthan the solution.
The first thing to understand is that historiography necessarily blossoms
after history. As fields mature, they develop variegated and robust
intellectual ecologies. Because every ecology is path-dependent, the
approaches and fields of interest emerge with respect to the interests of
the scholars and researchers doing the work.
The historical disciplines offer many branches. Just consider a few of the
broader branches: general history, world history, political history,
intellectual history, history ofideas, history of religion, history of
science, history of science with respect to the philosophy of science,
history of technology, science and technology studies, history of
mathematics. Within these, there are sub-branches according to region,
nation, locality; scientific specialty, mathematical discipline,
orconceptual approach to science; and so on.
To argue that the disciplinary focus of the examples I gave "was elsewhere"
is rather like saying there is a single design history emerging from a
single approach. That is the problem you criticize in your earlier post, and
now you are saying that thewealth of rich approaches to history is also a
problem.
If you want to look at it that way, the disciplinary "focus" is indeed
elsewhere. The focal point of any lens is set with respect to what we design
the lens to see. The scholar or researcher doing the work establishes the
focus of a research project, a method, or a scientific problem according to
his or her interests and needs. This accounts for the path dependency of any
research field, design history included. Even so, the resources are here.
It's up to new scholars and new researchers with new questions and different
interests to bridge these fields, develop them, and tie them together.
I was quite taken aback by your statement that, "The result is a bit like
studying the engineering design of Ferrari in terms of what colour the cars
were painted, or trying to understand the paintings in the Louvre by
studying the mechanics of how well they are hung."
Each of the example I offered has its own lens, all showing in some respect
how things work or fail to work, how things evolve. These studies tell us,
partially, why they evolve the way they do, recognizing that that history
can only every answer the question "why" in halting and partial terms. These
examples offer the background knowledge and internalized understanding that
expert design practitioners need.
Saying that, it means that readers must think and choose. It's not possible
for everyone to knoweverything, and in this sense, there is a need for
selectivity. This is what Don means with respect to helping students find
the right historical cases at the right time.
Victor must have posted just as I was sending my note, so I'll add that the
formative value of historical discourse is vital. For me, as I wrote, this
requires placing design in a social and ethical context, against the
background of economic and macro-historical development - each of us
approaches history in different ways. In saying this, I say pointedly that I
am not an historian: I lack the expertise. I've got a good grasp of history
for a layman though, and I make frequent and rich use of history for the
work I do. In this respect, I say again, you've missed the point.
Because design is situated, solving design problems requires situated
judgement. These, in turn, benefit from the kinds of understanding that
historical inquiry provides.
In this sense, I'll argue that Henry Petroski's Evolution of Useful Things
or Catharina Blomberg's Heart of the Warrior offer the rich, theoretically
astute historical analysis of designed artifacts in economic and industrial
context that you say we need.
It's not the same as Johannes
Preiser-Kapeller<http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller>'s
analysis of the Byzantine polity, but we're talking swords, forks, and
paperclips rather than ecclesiastical governance or late medieval economics.
Moreover, Preiser-Kapeller<http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller>
uses some modelling and visualization tools that Petroski and Blomberg do
not - these tools did not exist when they wrote their studies. As a leading
engineer, Petroski can use these kinds of tools when he feels it
appropriate, but I'm not sure that one would need to do so to adduce the
appropriate conclusions forsome of his historical studies of artefact
evolution or situated judgement.That said,
Preiser-Kapeller<http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller>'s paper
is a working paper - it has not been through peer review. While I see the
value of the tools, the point of using this as an exemplar is not clear, and
the value of the paper within its own field is not yet established. What
point are we to take from it?
As I say, I was taken aback by what seemed to me a loose salvo shot
broadside without aiming: "studying the engineering design of Ferrari in
terms of what colour the cars were painted, or trying to understand the
paintings in the Louvre by studying the mechanics of how well they are hung"
is hardly the point.
While you've started a debate on the nature and uses of history in design
education, it seems to me that you have not engaged responsibly with those
of us who responded to you.
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty ofDesign | Swinburne University of Technology |
Melbourne, Australia |
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Ph: +61 3 9214
6078 | Faculty
www.swinburne.edu.au/design<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>
|
