Dear Ken,
Thanks for your thoughtful discussion of the issues as always.
Re: D1,2,3,4...I guess it is my Lakoff training to wonder about categories,
not to question the making of them, but the purposes behind their
construction, how useful they are, and if there are conceptual side effects.
If, as you and Terry have pointed out, that there are some 650 identifiable
areas that involve design or designing, then it is more than reasonable to
want to classify and categorize them. In the same spirit as your efforts at
gathering, I was just wondering about the criteria for sorting. I suspect,
as you do, that there is something important to our inquiry here that needs
more thought. Simon's synthesis and its extensions still seems like a
reasonable and productive base to build on.
I suppose too that I react to the D language, since I consider them all
artifacts, just artifacts of different kinds, ones that require expanded
kinds of education, knowledge and preparation for professional practice. I
question where policy design fits in the model. Is it a social service? I
like the model if it implies a complex, expanding field, a train
continuously arriving, gathering momentum and bringing all previous stops
along with it and not if it is used to divide up designing for purposes of
comparative importance. As designing deepens and expands, the medical model
of core and specialization makes more and more educational sense.
I expect that one day when designing has become a basic core of education,
that our era will be considered a dark ages when design was kept alive in
the monasteries of the professional schools before its eventual renaissance.
I look forward for example to the time in English departments when
composition is at least as important as literature and understood as
designing.
Yes, I read the Lucy Kimbell articles when they came out and thought she'd
performed a thoughtful, scholarly service. Yes, designing is being
discovered as broadly useful.
My quibbles are that I don't think designing is a cognitive "style" just as
scientific thinking is not a style. Style misses the point. Design
thinking isn't a theory so much as it is an effort to describe the complex
human thought that goes into making things. And the literature may have
given evidence of past problems with dualism, but if anything, design's
unity of thought and action is the perfect refutation. Dewey et al did
dualism in in the last century. Some people just didn't get the memo.
I also don't think that designing ignores situated, contingent, historic
practice, although one could argue that this was a distinct flaw of cultural
modernism. The fundamental difference today is that designing is emerging as
a general human process that serves to further the expression of the
culturally specific.
I'm afraid that the "sage on the stage" vs. the "guide on the side"
comparison has gone beyond its 1980s shelf date. I think we're better off
today to talk about the kind and amount of agency a situation requires and
how an integrated design firm appropriately tailors design services. The
political dimensions of designing, ownership of the problem, stakeholding
and participation may be considered alive and well, but this too is old
news, having become an active dimension of professional practice since the
1970s. What's new is that we're getting better at democratizing and making
the process more effective where its wanted. Leadership vs control problems
still remain.
These are just some present thoughts, Ken, ideas of the middle distance.
You've been very generous in your responses to me and I wanted to reply in
kind if not perhaps in equal quality.
Warm regards,
Jerry
On 7/23/13 5:16 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Jerry,
>
> The issue you raise is intriguing: ła brief and concise description of what is
> being considered D1, 2, 3, 4, etc... And what key aspects of design thinking
> they have in common, since that is what I take to be design thinking, and what
> criteria are being used in making such distinctions.˛
>
> To answer this in a full, accurate way is the work of a serious article. Even
> a relatively long post canąt do it at nearly 2,000 words.
>
> No one has yet published a rich description of the common aspects and
> different issues in design thinking at all four different scales of complexity
> in this conversation artifact design, service and experience design,
> organization design, and systems design.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
--
Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service € University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://pages.uoregon.edu/diethelm/
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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