Dear Terry,
There is too much semantic slippage here to argue. The first problem is the meaning of the word universal. In my view, it makes little sense to discuss “reasonable universality” when so many people from all fields use the word design in different ways. This is more than a matter of historical scholarly obsession. If you take the time to see the many ways in which people use the word design, you’ll find wide usage among all kinds of people.
While it is certainly possible that people respond to the instruction “create a design for a cup” in similar ways. This doesn’t mean they agree on the meaning of the word design. It means that they understand a simple instruction in the context of your visit. But there is no way to know what that understanding is without a careful description of the context. That context includes the background and experience of the people to whom you are giving the instruction, the social setting, the professional setting, the conversation leading to the instruction, body language, unspoken visual cues, and so on.
And none of this guarantees that the use of the word design in this way fulfills the criteria you gave in your earlier post, stating that it: “insists on the inclusion in the design of the manufacturing process (e.g. the details of exactly how something is to be printed, or how something will be photographed, or for fashion design, which machines and settings are going to be used for manufacture).”
Having worked at a company that actually manufactures cups, I cannot see how anyone other than an expert could provide complete, detailed manufacturing instructions in response to the simple statement “create a design for a cup.” For that matter, only experts in each given field can provide all those instructions. The word design cannot be as clear and simple as you believe.
You’d have to offer evidence for the assertion that there exists “widespread agreement on the meaning of ‘a design’ ... across design fields and by designers and non-designers alike.”
In my view, I was raising issues that have something to do with how people use and understand the word design.
It is best for me to end here. My earlier post addressed my concerns. I thought that these were valid issues, both scientific and scholarly. Perhaps you don’t, but dismissing these issues as matters for the “historical scholarly obsessive realm” leaves little room for consideration.
Yours,
Ken
--
Terry Love wrote:
—snip—
In contrast, the way I suggested *does work* and does so with the benefit of simplicity and reasonable universality outside that historical scholarly obsessive realm.
In practical terms, if I ask someone in any the countries that I have visited to create a design for something (a saw, a cup, a car, a service, or whatever) they know *exactly* what 'a design' means.
—snip—
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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