Hi Ken,
Thanks for your clarification and questions.
There are many difficulties in exploring and planning using in the realm of high-level views over the dynamic picture of design activity in the world as it evolves.
Part of this problem is in language as Klaus and others might point out. Most of the language and concepts relating to design activity are aimed at lower more practical realms of human behaviour and cognition of individual designers, small groups, and the properties of design outputs.
One way of seeing things is this traditional emphasis in the design discourse on the small-scale has hijacked many terms and concepts to that end, making it harder to see and discuss the larger-scale because the terminology has become interpreted as if only refers to the smaller-scale (designers and designs). Focusing only on trees makes it hard to see the forests, mountains and oceans
When focusing on the larger-scale, there are other problems that get in the way. One is the assumption that dynamic behaviours in realms of activity can only be shaped by formal organisational institutions. Concomitant with this is the assumption authority and management of change is solely vested with formally defined organisations that have agreed arrangements for authority and interaction supported by power of law. With these assumptions, it makes sense to ask as you did, whether particular design institutions exist to be able to dictate the pathways of development of design fields.
I suggest there is a bigger view that is both more accurate and more useful and that enables us to go beyond the limitations of what is possible through and by formal organisations.
The development of design activity over time can be seen in terms of a bigger picture that includes all and everything that influences how design activity is undertaken.
This bigger picture includes much more of human activity in the world than the formally-defined institutions of design (design organisations, design businesses, design education programs, design research groups, government design policy institutes, design standards institutes etc.). It also includes many activities not directly associated with design that influence future directions in design. For example, lowering of energy costs can result in more money being available for design activity. Whilst much of this kind of picture is at the *level* of operation of organisations such as IASDR or ASME, it doesn’t assume that it is these organisations that *must* do the work. Instead it draws attention to how improvements can be made outside such formal organisations.
Different kinds of concepts and theories are needed to explore this big picture of the dynamic factors inside and outside the design arena that influence the future of design activity. The concepts and tools specialised for
Some time ago, I coined the term 'design infrastructure' to help address this issue of language for research and meta-analysis when taking a larger national and international view of design activity. Even this big concept of 'design infrastructure' is insufficient, however, when taking a larger scale view of design activity that includes the abstract conceptualisation of the dynamics of human relationships, organisational structures and other factors that shape how design activity emerges and is developed in the world, with its outputs(designs) and outcomes (consequences in the world of those designs).
As you commented, it is difficult to manage discussion using the existing language of design. It needs very precise and careful use of language to avoid the drift into interpreting concepts as being small-scale. You were right, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in my last post.
One way of addressing the language problem of the larger scale picture of design is though the language of ecology. The simplest big picture of design activity, perhaps, is to see the overall situation involving design activity as a large eco-system of different forms of dynamically changing organisations (some formal and some not) in which some of the activity of the different eco-system elements influences how design activity occurs.
A PART of this eco-system is the world's design businesses, design schools, design research groups, design policy and standard making institutions, design research and business organisations such as DRS, ASME, ICOGRADA, IED, design journals and conferences, and any organisation of any sort with design in its name.
A perhaps larger part consists of all the other factors (with their own forms of organisation) that act to influence how design activity occurs and dynamically develops over time, in a variety of ways in different contexts.
Taking the above together leads to three questions:
Q1. How do we best represent this large complex picture of the factors acting and influencing the dynamic development of design activity?
Q2. How can we influence this large complex picture of the factors acting and influencing the dynamic development of design activity? In particular, how do we appropriately influence the majority of factors that are beyond the scope of the formal design organisations?
Q3. How do we predict the consequences of interventions in this large complex picture of the factors acting and influencing the dynamic development of design activity so that what we do results in better rather than worse outcomes?
From this questions and this big picture viewpoint it seems obvious that individuals in any position can act in many ways to provide influences to improve future development of design activity (phd-design is an example). I suggest necessarily such influences mostly occur outside the existing formal organisations related to design practices, education and research.
It is in this latter context that theories and tools such as Beer's VSM become useful.
You asked how I envisaged Beer's VSM to be used in “international strategic planning about design practices, research and education”.
Whereas you assume this can only be done through the formal organisations such as IASDR, universities and design organisations, I see otherwise.
Anyone, anywhere and anytime can map any realm of design activity onto Beer's VSM, identify the pathologies and act to influence improved development of design in that realm by acting to reduce those pathologies.
I described in the earlier posts how mapping various realms of design activity showed a general pattern of weakness in design organisations in systems elements 2, 3, 3*, 4 and 5 of Beer's VSM.
There are many actions and activities one can undertake as a result of identifying such issues. For example, taking leadership to act to raise the issues and promote integration of technical and non-technical design would be acting to improve the viability of design by improving Beer's system element 3.
Developing new strategies to provide information from the different technical and non-technical streams of design practices to provide information to the business managers of design organisations would assist with developing and strengthening systems element 3*.
Working to gather information from outside of design realms and analyse its potential for improving how design activity might be undertaken or improving design outcomes would provide new information to guide strategy-making and business development. That is, it would strengthen system element 4 in Beer's VSM.
Ditto for other activities to strengthen system elements 2, 3, 3*, 4 and 5 in Beer's VSM.
Beer's VSM provides a very clear visual representation for designers of what is needed for highly complex situations to be viable, including the combination of formal and informal organisational structures that deliver designs.
I suggest Beer's VSM is a tool that can be used by almost anyone to identify ways of improving design outcomes and the viability of their design-related organisation, and acting to improve the viability of that organisation.
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love
PhD (UWA), B.A. (Hons) Engin, PGCE. FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Honorary Fellow
Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School
Lancaster University
Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Friday, 6 February 2015 11:58 AM
To: PhD-Design
Subject: Beer's Viable Systems Model
Dear Terry,
Thanks for your post. This is a corrected post — I hope that I have removed all typographic errors and infelicities. This new thread is not about “automated image rhetoric and user characteristics assessment.” It deserves a new header, I am replying under the header of your new topic. The topic is Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model (VSM).
Carlos did not suggest that VSM lacks use or value. Rather, his post asked what exactly you propose. How can we make Beer’s VSM useful in the design field? (It may be an editor’s eye, but proper nouns refer to a specific individual or organisation. Proper nouns that do not refer to a specific individual or organisation confuse me. I understand that you propose Beer’s VSM as useful for the design field. I do not understand what you mean by saying that VSM is useful for “Design” with an upper-case [D], a proper noun. This seems to be something new and different from the verb design, and from the common noun design as you have written about it in the past.
There is some confusion on how this is to work “at the level of IASDR and international strategic planning about design practices, research and education.” IASDR is the International Association of Societies of Design Research. It is an organisation for membership organisations in the field of design research. The member societies are the Chinese Institute of Design, Design Research Society, the Design Society, the Japanese Society for the Science of Design, and the Korean Society for Design Science. IASDR is a mechanism for shared communication between and among the five member societies. IASDR holds a conference every two years in the off year to the biennial conferences of the other societies.
How precisely should Stafford Beer’s Variable Systems Model work for a society comprised of membership organisations that has no direct function in strategic planning? Who is to do “international strategic planning about design practices, research and education” using Beer’s VSM? How are they to use and apply it?
I might be wrong, but I think that this is what Carlos’s questions ask by implication.
While I am aware of Stafford Beer’s work in management and such books as The Brain of the Firm, Beer’s proposal seem to work for organisations, social systems, nations, or entities that have some organised basis of interaction for their constituent parts and units. I can see that individual organisations might be able to apply Beer if they have on-going functions. IASDR’s one main functions is a single conference every two years, and each conference is organised by a different host organisation. I do not understand how you propose to use Beer to solve the problems of an entire field.
For those who wish to see Beer speak or read Beer’s work for themselves, a commemorative site provides useful links to other sites and links to Beer’s books on Amazon.
http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/beer_menu.html
Perhaps you — or some other list member — can explain the issues you raise in a discussion-list post rather than a comprehensive article. I’d welcome the explanation for which Carlos implicitly asks.
How are we to use Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model to solve the problems of the design field? It would help to have a few clear definitions along with way.
What is Stafford Beer’s Viable Systems Model as you see it? I have a sense of what Beer meant by VSM in The Brain of the Firm, but he applies his model to coherent, bounded organisations. I can’t see how to apply VSM to a system that has no managerial function or governing system. Perhaps you can define Beer’s VSM in a way that explains how to apply it to the design field as a field.
What do you mean by the proper noun [D]esign as distinct from the design field?
Which agencies or organisations are responsibility for “international strategic planning about design practices, research and education”?
How do you propose that these organisations apply Beer’s VSM?
Or, to put it another way, what do you (Terry Love) see as the “specific cultural and organisational failings or organisational illnesses” of the design field? How can we use Beer’s VSM to change this situation?
Stafford Beer was a genuinely interesting thinker. Nevertheless, his work does not seem to apply to the design field. It is hard to see how to apply VSM to the eco-system of an international profession with hundreds of thousands of practitioners for which no one organisation has responsibility or even licensing capacity.
There design field has no unified forum for research or for education, either. There are at least 20,000 organisations, universities, colleges, design schools, publishers, member societies, museums, archives, and the like in over 100 nations that deal with some combination of design education, design education and design research, or design research. Hardly any of these communicate in any significant way with more than a few others.
How is one to use Beer’s Viable Systems Model in this situation?
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
I was suggesting something different - that Beer's work gives a different kind of insight into how to improve Design. This is at the level of IASDR and international strategic planning about design practices, research and education, rather than concerns of individual designers, but it has potential implications through the professional design network
Beer's work indicates there are specific cultural and organisational failings or organisational illnesses that emerge over time for eco-systems such as Design if they do not appropriately contain all the elements of the Beerian Viable Systems Model. The VSM is considered a well established approach in organisational systems field, with Beer himself having a substantial reputation in that area
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Anthony_Stafford_Beer.html
Beer's VSM seems useful in developing the Design field as a whole as it offers a sort of checklist of what might be missing, how to check whether the missing bits cause the problems, and what to do to fix the situation.
—snip--
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