Dear Klaus, David and Ken
I am quite used to having a vast majority of HIGHLY QUALIFIED policy makers here in India disagreeing with me on my position about both "evidence" as well as "testing" as a means of proving a designs validity or acceptance by a potential market. I have therefore been training my students to use tactics to get past the early stages of the design challenge that does not get any support from either government or from our industry due to lack of vision that deign could be different. We are dominated here by the science technology and management school that asks for specifications before we have even defined what the problem or design opportunity entails. This is why there is so little funding in design research here in India while a huge amount of funding from government funds goes into 'testing' and "scientific research" with a claim that these will help "solve" the wicked problems that face here across so many sectors of our economy..
The word "markets" is not mine but what Gui Bonsieppe had used to describe the context in which a design innovation can be found acceptable as opposed to scientific innovation and theory through peer review and technical innovation through laboratory tests and field replication under various conditions.
In my 1998 paper titled Levels of Design....... I have outlined four levels that were listed as 1.Tactical Level - bread and butter jobs for professional designers where design sensibilities are applied to bring a desired effect. 2. Elaborative Level - markets and companies need this to differentiate their offerings from that of their competition and this can also be named Market driven design. 3. Innovative Level - where new technological and social breakthroughs are seen with associated legal and ethical protection by society in the form of patents and copyrights etc and 4. Strategic Level - where the design offering is transformational and changes the entire paradigm which could not be predicted by available facts or ideas, true breakthroughs and these are few and far between and built up on available resources but organised to give a whole new meaning perhaps. This aper is available for download from my Academia.edu web archive should you wish to see the original along with the visual model that was used to describe the same.
Design is an early stage activity of all human innovation and it deals with the creation of the future in all levels from micro to macro scales. This calls for judgement which is based on a leap of faith and not on prior evidence and cannot be tested unless it is first manifested in the form of models, prototypes as well as use ready policies and artefacts of our culture. At this stage there is NO evidence, however, the designer and his stakeholders have a great responsibility to respond with ethical, empathic, and sensitive responses at all stages. Once the designs are manifested in some tangible form it can be subjected to multivarient tests and that is rightly so, but not before the tangibilising of the offering. Paradoxical but a reality, unfortunately.
I like Klaus's use of stakeholder and language in the process of decision making and we do need to recognise at what level we at offering our design. In mature industries a lot of data exists but at the periphery sone maverick is planning and building the demise of that industry by using design thoughts that do not follow their rules, even extending to the illegal and unethical space.
Have I clarified or complicated matters further?
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my iPad at NID campus on a holiday
19 May 2014 at 1.20 pm IST
Prof M P Ranjan
Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
Author of blog : http://www.designforindia.com
Archive of papers : http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP
Sent from my iPad
> On 19-May-2014, at 12:47 pm, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Klaus and David,
>
> Klaus Krippendorff wrote, "all i was saying: while testing is important for designers to convince people who could make a design happen it can rarely ever have the last word."
>
> David Sless wrote, "In which case we are in furious agreement."
>
> I thought the header — "we need both" above — made it clear that I did not write in opposition Ranjan, but rather to say that there are ways to learn what markets do not disclose.
>
> Sometimes designers create or invent products for which there is no market demand whatsoever — such famous examples as the Sony Walkman and the personal computer are cases in point. Other times, markets sort things reasonably well. It is worth noting that from time to time, designers and others seek answers to questions that neither stakeholders nor markets care about before the answers emerge.
>
> No one process, no one institution (f.ex., markets, governments, the manufacturing sector, etc.), and no one group of people ever gets the last word. So rather than saying "we need both," I could have done better to say that we need several ways forward, depending on the context.
>
> So I say "yes" to Ranjan, "yes" to David, "yes" to Klaus.
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
>
> Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
>
>
>
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