Design As Co-Evolution of Problem, Solution, and Audience Per L
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2014 | Volume III, Issue 4 | Pages 3.1-3.13 Design as co-evolution of problem, solution, and audience Per L. Halstrøm1 & Per Galle2, 1Copenhagen School of Design & Technology; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design. 2The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Design. ABSTRACT parcel to the person in question, needs to know The meaning of ‘design’ can be captured in a general only the name and the address. (2) If the person way by a good definition, but even the best definition has been reported missing, for example, the police cannot provide an understanding sufficiently deep will collect information from acquaintances and to guide the professional designer or the student of relatives in order to issue a description that, as far design in the intricate deliberations of doing design as possible, applies to this and only to this person, thereby enabling anyone to recognize him or her. (3) in practice. Therefore we explore design beyond the If you are to make friends with the person, however, level of definitions, reviewing canonical theories about it goes without saying that you should know the design as a professional enterprise. We find that the name and address of, and be able to recognize, well-established theoretical notion of ‘co-evolution’ of that person; but the crucial thing is to know by problem and solution in design has its merits in regard acquaintance and experience what he or she is like. to understanding design deliberations; but also that When it comes to knowing kinds of human action, existing theories leave the practitioner at a loss for such as design, there are three analogous levels at guidance in some respects. To remedy this situation, which we can know it: we propose the notion of ‘triple co-evolution’ that also involves the ‘audience’ of a designed artefact. At the ‘name & address’ level (1), the subject of Furthermore, we conjecture that the study of so-called this paper is design, as practiced by professional ‘constitutive rhetoric’ offers valuable conceptual designers and taught at academic institutions, such resources for conceiving of design in terms of such as universities and schools of design. triple co-evolution. For example, many design products may be thought of as offering an audience a ‘subject At the level of ‘description for recognition’ (2), we should what we mean by the name position’ that hint at whom they should become. In define ‘design’. A good definition is basically a precise support of the case we make for thinking in terms of description of something in terms of characteristic constitutive rhetoric in design, we present a small features (much like the police description of a sample of design cases, arguably showing signs of missing person), which enables us to recognize triple co-evolution and understandable in terms of whatever was described, when we encounter it. A ‘audience constitution’. definition suitable for our current purposes should enable us to recognize the kind of action we call Keywords: audience constitution, constitutive rhetoric, design definition, ‘design’. Many definitions of ‘design’ have been design theory, wicked problems. offered in the theoretical literature; some of them rather too detailed and technical to discuss here (e.g., Bamford, 1990, p. 234; Houkes & Vermaas, INTRODUCTION 2010, ch. 2), others much shorter and easier to Getting to know design – the overall subject of this memorize. An often-cited definition of the latter paper – is comparable to getting to know a person. kind is Herbert Simon’s: ‘Everyone designs who As we all know, there are at least three levels of devises courses of action aiming at changing knowing a person, ranging from the superficial to existing situations into preferred ones’ (Simon, the intimate: (1) The postman, who is to deliver a 1996 [1969], p. 111). While it certainly captures 3.1 something characteristic of design – the element To back up empirically our claim that design, too, of planning, which is also present in the complex may constitute an audience, we present a small definitions just cited – Simon’s definition, if taken sample of cases in section 3. These will illustrate at face value, is much too inclusive. For example, if a diversity of situations, some of which involve half asleep you lie in bed and contemplate rolling audience constitution. over to your left side, because lying on the back no longer feels good, that would be an instance Finally, in section 4, we sum up the outcome of our of ‘design’ so defined! More aptly, ‘design’ can analyses, and outline perspectives for further work. be defined as (the act of) ‘creatively proposing an idea, so as to enable yourself or others to make an artefact according to the idea’ (Galle, 2011, p. 2. THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO THE 93). Again planning is a central component of the INTRICACIES OF DESIGN concept. In much the same spirit, but even more While a carefully worded definition may be useful as succinctly, we might define ‘design’ as the art of a point of departure for understanding the concept conceiving and planning artefacts. The italicized of design, it hardly ever does justice to the complex phrase stems from Buchanan (1995, p. 26, emphasis nature of actual design processes. But theorists added), except that he used ‘products’ instead of have managed nevertheless to conceptualize ‘artefacts’. But ‘products’ again is too inclusive and highlight the intricacies of design, and some a term, if taken to mean anything resulting from theories may be instrumental to the practicing a process of production; e.g. sawdust and noise designer in coping with such intricacies. would be among the ‘products’ of the production of wooden furniture. However, the use of ‘artefact’ 2.1. From ‘wicked problems’ to ‘a rhetorical art of in the latter two definitions seems appropriate for communication and persuasion’ the purpose, if we take ‘artefact’ to mean ‘an object In our discussion of definitions, we emphasized that has been intentionally made or produced for planning as essential to design; and indeed Rittel a certain purpose’ (Hilpinen, 2011 [1999]). Note and Webber long ago saw design problems as that artefacts need not be restricted to material members of a family of difficultplanning problems. objects, but may (fully in accordance with Hilpinen’s For this family they coined the expression ‘wicked theory) include intangible entities as well, such as problems’ (Rittel, 1972; Rittel & Webber, 1984 services, interfaces, organizations, and software [1973]). By now the term is well established in the (as advocated by Buchanan, 1998, 2001, 2004; vocabulary of design theory. As opposed to what Krippendorff, 2007). Rittel & Webber called ‘tame’ problems, the ‘wicked’ problems are characterized by not being amenable So far, we have merely delimited our overall to systematic methods; nor do ‘wicked’ problems subject: getting to know design. What we aim at have any clearly defined set of satisfactory specifically, however, is to convey more detailed solutions, so the decision to stop working on such (and perhaps less commonplace) insights about the a problem may be somewhat arbitrary. This open- nature of design, at the level of ‘acquaintance and endedness, among other daunting characteristics, is experience’ (3) – though without pretending thereby what allegedly makes them ‘wicked’. to offer a degree of familiarity with the subject analogous to what, in the human case, makes In a similar vein, and to much acclaim and long- up a deep friendship. For the reader to achieve standing recognition, Schön (1983) drew attention to that, considerable first-hand experience will be the remarkable ability of professionals to negotiate indispensable. the intricacies of design and similar open-ended problems, by simple devices of ‘experience, trial In section 2 we briefly review some well-known and error, intuition and muddling through’ (p 43). general theories about design, and argue that In stark contrast, that is, to the systematic and viewing design as a rhetorical activity of persuasion, computational methods very much in vogue among as Buchanan has proposed, is a fruitful approach design theorists at the time. to understanding its nature. However, we shall go beyond the notion of design as persuasion, and draw Apart from narrowly technical cases (such as, say, attention to what we believe is an important analogy design of integrated circuits, or the optimization between design and what is known as constitutive of load-bearing structures), non-trivial design rhetoric. problems have remained rather immune to computerization and systematic solution. This, it would appear, is due to their ‘wicked’ tendency Artifact | 2014 | Volume III, Issue 4 | Pages 3.1-3.13 3.2 (vividly described already by Rittel & Webber) to may hold greater potential for practical support – become fully comprehensible only to the extent and fruitful theory development for such support. one has already solved them! In other words, For it points the designer towards explicit rational design problems and design solutions stand in a deliberation, rather than (to put it perhaps too chicken-and-egg relation of mutual dependency, bluntly) merely telling him or her to ‘muddle through’ and therefore in practice tend to evolve in parallel. and not to take problems at face value. Numerous studies of such co-evolution of problem and solution have been reported in the literature Expressing rational deliberation convincingly is not (e.g. by Archer, 1979; Cross, 2006, p. 80; Dorst & to forsake the use of one’s intuition in the creative Cross, 2001; Harfield, 2007; Schön, 1983, p. 100). But process. On the contrary, finding and giving good how can theorists explain the fact that designers reasons for one’s decisions may stimulate creativity, manage to overcome the inherent open-endedness and help bringing it to fruition. Furthermore, in the of ‘wicked’ design problems by co-evolution? designer’s relation to clients, customers, and other stakeholders, competence in rational deliberation Harfield, for instance (considering co-evolution is valuable.