Don’s reply to Erik hints at an important issue in the quest to discover more about design. Don’s point that it takes multiple types of design experts (those who claim the domain name design for their own) all working together is an important one. In any complex design project there are more than just experts involved making challenge even greater. There are a large variety of people, in a wide variety of roles who feel they have a vested interest in what is taken into account and what emerges from any particular design process. When collaboration is required or desired among a diverse group of people it is essential that everyone is standing on common ground when it comes to knowing what terms mean and what ’standards’ are in play.
It doesn’t matter if the understanding is universal or general but it is essential that it is particular to the group, time and situation. What happens too often is that individual designers assume that terms such as design or research have a common meanings or should have a common meanings. Individual design projects are approached with little or no self-reflection about beliefs and assumptions held by each individual involved and there is surprise all around when stakeholders, colleagues, citizens et. al. don’t seem to understand or get it. There is a common refrain among academics and practitioners alike that they are tired of the confusion over the term and tired of the endless debates over the meaning of design. This misses an important point.
In design communication and collaboration it is essential to have shared understandings about an ultimate particular situation. It may be practical and interesting to have generalizable understandings but it is essential to have particular understandings about an ultimate particular situation concomitant with universal or general truths that apply.
During the time that the gothic cathedrals were being built there were no standard units of measure. The master builder would lay down a ‘great mark’ from which all construction of a particular cathedral would be measured and proportioned (imagine a design education program that could capacitate new designers with this ability). This provided the common understanding from which a diverse group of different types of craftsmen could work collaboratively. The act of the master builder is a form of reflective ‘self disclosure’—"this is what I believe the measure must be.”
Academics and professionals are too often unreflective. Their extroverted habits of mind built from their beliefs that inquiry needed to be objective leaves the inquirer’s beliefs, values, understandings, assumptions, prejudices etc. undisclosed. Arguments break out over what objective understanding is true rather than what individual understandings are shared and how do common understandings become the common ground for collaboration and communication.
Design inquiry is communication for action—not just description and explanation (i.e. design research). Design inquiry involves judgments of value, desire, belief etc. which cannot be defined universally a priori. Design inquiry discloses or uncovers values, beliefs etc. in the particular context through dialogue—ideally through self reflection and disclosure by the designers and others involved. This is supplemental to their objective observations and rational evaluations of a particular situation.
Inquiry into the nature and application of designing behavior needs to be visited anew for every project unless common or collaborative work in the past has led to shared or common ground among the diverse group involved. However there is the old joke about prisoners who had told each other the same joke so often that to save time they gave each joke a number and would just call out a number when they wanted to tell a joke. A new prisoner saw this and called out a number but no one laughed. When he asked why he was informed that he had “told it wrong”.
It is usually the case that even groups with long histories will introduce new members or new stakeholders, in new contexts, so there is always the need to reflect and disclose at each new new design beginning what is assumed, shared etc. The process of sharing dialogue as a means of disclosure is not the same as coming to a definition that can be universalized once and for all. The process of disclosure also helps to reveal who the designers are—in design character counts.
TheDesignWay.net <http://www.thedesignway.net/>
AccidentalVagrant.blogspot.com <http://accidentalvagrant.blogspot.com/>
AdvancedDesignInstitute.blogspot.com/ <http://advanceddesigninstitute.blogspot.com/>
OrganizationalDesignCompetence.com/ <http://organizationaldesigncompetence.com/>
> On Jul 2, 2015, at 12:57 PM, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This is a fruitful discussion. So let me rejoin it.
>
> (I am cleverly circumventing my rule that any response to a post must be no
> longer than 1/2 the item being responded to. The circumvention? Start a new
> thread (by changing the Subject line). I consider this a legal
> circumvention which has the side product of encouraging updating Subject
> lines when the conversation strays.)
>
> Erik said:
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 6:25 AM, Erik Stolterman <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> If we understand designing or a designerly approach similarly as a broad
>> approach to inquiry and change then we can see why todays simplistic
>> understanding of 'design thinking' will lead to the kind of results that
>> you (Don) comment on in your post. And it will lead to a backlash when
>> people will argue that they tried it' but it does not work. No one would
>> argue that 'I tried the scientific method but it doesn't work' or 'I tried
>> an artistic approach but it did not work' so there must be something wrong
>> with the approach. I think there will be a serious negative development
>> around 'design thinking' in the next few years, hopefully this will make it
>> possible for us to develop a more stable and deeply rooted understanding
>> and philosophy of a 'true' designerly approach.
>>
>>
>
> My earlier complaint was not about "Design Thinking": it had to do with
> the common understanding of the word Design. I was complaining that Apple
> and others have re-emphasized the aesthetic side of design at the expense
> of understandability,usability, and functionality. So people once again are
> thinking that design means making things look beautiful (and more difficult
> to use). This is a bad thing for many reasons. Bad for Apple because it
> used to be the leader in making understandable products. They no longer
> are. Bad for people's understanding of design because there should be
> no conflict between understandability, usability, functionality, and
> aesthetics.
>
> Note that even within the Design discipline (capital D), we have a wide
> variety of specialized disciplines. Moreover, to produce a modern product
> requires a variety of design skills, unlikely to be held by any single
> design discipline. Design is not a homogeneous field. The skills of the
> graphic designer are very different from those of the interaction designer,
> the UX designer, the industrial designer, and so on. Design research is yet
> a separate discipline, Each of those specialized skills is essential, but
> it is always a bad thing when one of these areas dominates: we need a
> balance.
>
> (I consider myself an interaction designer and design researcher, and in my
> work I could not function without the assistance of graphic and industrial
> designers, areas in which I am rather incompetent.)
>
>
> Apple and Google seem to have eliminated interaction designers and design
> researchers from their core decision making. I know they still employ them,
> but they do not seem to have much to say about the product.
>
> This conversation moved to "Design Thinking" through Erik's comment.
> Although i feel he misunderstood (or perhaps overgeneralized my words), his
> comment is still valid and appropriate for discussion.
>
> The problem is that no matter how we name ourselves, we will be
> misunderstood. I found that many of the terms I have been associated with
> have, over time been dramatically transformed in meaning over the years.
> Cognitive Engineering, User Experience, Affordances, Activity-centered
> Design, User-Centered and Human-Centered design (which to me are identical,
> simply replacing the offensive word "user" with "human" (or "people").
>
> The word Design is a major source of problems. I had dinner a year ago
> with a German designer, Dieter Rams, who complained "even hair dressers
> now call themselves designers." The word has lost all meaning. He thought
> we should invent a new term, but I suspect that if we could, that new term
> would soon inherit all the same difficulties. (This was the topic of a
> previous discussion on this mailing list.)
>
> Note that both David Kelly, founder of IDEO, and Patrick Whitney, Dean of
> the Institute of Design (IIT/Chicago) have said they dislike the word
> "design" and would replace it if they could only thin of a substitute. They
> have failed to do so.
>
> Design Thinking has also been a problem. But i stil think it a useful and
> valuable term that does help emphasize that what we do in design goes
> far beyond aesthetics: we are problem finders as well as problem solvers.
> We focus on people and their interaction with technology. We ensure that
> the fundamental issues are being solved and we do it by making, by doing,
> by harassing the knowledge of multiple disciplines.
>
> No other discipline has such an all-ranging focus as does Design. We bring
> together a multitude of disciplines, from business through medicine, art
> through engineering, political sign and architecture, social
> and cognitive science through .... We build and create. We think by
> drawing, building, creating, then reflecting upon our early sketches and
> constructions, refining and improving. This is
> very different from almost ever other discipline (although it is related to
> what scientists actually do in their laboratories, although you would never
> guess this from their publications where they make it sound
> straightforward).
>
> The fact that we have trouble explaining who we are and what we do and the
> fact that many people -- designers, even -- will do design
> badly should not deter us.
>
> All disciplines -- art, humanities, science, engineering --
> are misunderstood by the public. All disciplines have people who do things
> well along with others who are an embarrassment and occasional disgrace to
> the discipline.
>
> That is life. Let us not retreat to the engineering solution to this
> problem: "If only we didn't have people, our stuff would work perfectly."
> We are not engineers: we are designers who must design for people the way
> they are, not the way we wish thyem to be.
>
> That is our unique strength. That is our power.
>
> Don
>
>
> Don
>
>
>
>
>
> Don Norman
> Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
> [log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
>
>
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