Erik and List,
Thanks for the provocative question. I find I only had two schools of
thought this afternoon about designing, but here they are while I go looking
around for another:
Another Way of Modeling of Designing
In my way of thinking there are, at least at first, two distinct ontological
divisions of thought about designing.
The first identifies designing as an association of intentional social
processes that are focused on the making and creating of human artifacts and
culture. This is an ontology that emphasizes human making, uniting making
with believing, valuing and meaning.
The second sees designing as an underdeveloped, inchoate science, ³a science
of the artificial,² and seeks to scientize and define ³the design process.²
This strategic ontology emphasizes the aspects of designing that depend on
and can be more easily expressed as factual human knowing. For me,
algorithmic value and judgment-deficient applications of ³the design
process,² most often miss the cultural depth and significance of designing.
This too popular version of design thinking is more of a cartoon that
factors out significant aspects of the purposes, possibilities, wonder,
openness and the meaning of becoming in designing.
In the former, there is no ³the design process,² but rather a concentration
on the means of creating synthesized material expressions of the ideals,
beliefs and values of a people situated in a time and place. Design
thinking here is about how such highly qualitative social transformations
can be made more understandable, visible and consciously manageable. It
sees thinking and making as a continuous evolutionary and culturally
environmental whole. In the Dewyian sense, ³we don¹t act because we have
ideas and beliefs; we have ideas because we must act, and we act to achieve
ends.² Design thinking means never having to say psychophysical,
psychosocial or sociotechnical.
But as our late modern residue adjures, it is important to be aware when we
create categories. The former is vast in its catalog of kinds of artifacts
that range from the traditional products of guild and craft to the those of
today¹s industrialized technological societies, highly dependent on
scientific knowledge, organization and management. From this it seems
clear that the first identity becomes more and more dependent on the second
as social complexity increases.
Situations of social complexity increasingly require the insights and
understanding of our social sciences. Design thinking here needs, depends
on and benefits from the findings of anthropology, psychology, cognitive
scienceŠ and evolutionary biology. They enable us to consider why it is -
for example - that a plan for ³Coming of Age in Samoa,² will not be the same
as a plan for ³Coming of Age in New Providence² or why Health Care for All
in the U.S. remains politically difficult.
I think conceiving of designing as two having two interdependent identities
places a clearer focus on the priority and complexity of cultural purpose
and possibility in designing. Additionally, it calls needed attention to
the unsettled relationship between ends and means in our scientifically
advanced, late modern culture.
Jerry
--
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/
€ https://oregon.academia.edu/JerryDiethelm
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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