Design Philosophy Papers, 2003

Journal of Design Processes, 2017

Design Philosophy Papers, 2006

1995

This essay proposes new contours for design as a profession in a world whose industrial products have become more and more language-like and incommensurate discourses compete with one another for hegemony-the design discourse being merely one of many. It takes design to be constituted (that is, defined with)in processes of languaging. It calls on us to recognize and act in the awareness of how our discursive practices identify us as the experts we are, create the objects of our concerns, and provide us with a vocabulary to communicate or coordinate our actions relative to each other. 1 The motivation for this essay stems from the far too common experience that whenever designers do work with their counterparts from the so-called 'harder' disciplines, professionals who can argue with statistics, with experimental findings, with calculations or from positions of administrative authority, they most often lose out. Examples are abound. 2 I conclude from them that, first, designers often are preoccupied with products when what matters is how their ideas occur in talk, in clear presentations, in hard evidence, and in compelling arguments. It is communication that makes a difference and gets results. Second, design is foremost conceptual and creative of future conditions. Dwelling on existing facts often inhibits and is generally less important than the ability to bring a multiplicity of people to recognize the benefits of collaborating in the realization of new ideas. Designers are bound to fail when they do not act on the premise that their conceptualizations must make sense to those that matter. Third, the success of famous designers is based primarily on carefully nourished publicity, personal connections, or longtime working relationships with clients. The visual qualities and functionalities in terms of which 1 The insight that we humans, whether as ordinary people, as professionals or as scientists of one kind or another, are living in language is the starting point of several philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty. I can not review their ground and must go on here. 2 The version of this essay which was presented to the conference included five examples, among them Robert Blaich's account of how Philips' well known Roller Radio almost didn't come to be. See Robert Blaich (1990), Forms of Design, pp. d1-d14 in Seppo Väkevä (Ed.

2007

This extended abstract describes the grounding for an interdisciplinary discussion regarding the contemporary meaning of "Design", "Designer", and "Designed" and the role it will play in the future of CHI and CHI-related disciplines.

She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 2015

The first issue of a new journal is a moment for celebration and a time for reflection. With this first issue, we launch Shè Jì: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. Our launch will occupy two special issues. Our opening editorial offers an opportunity for celebration-in the next issue, we will reflect on what a journal ought to be and do at this moment in human history. Following this short celebration, we will turn the pages of Shè Jì over to thinkers whose work has helped to define the design field today, building bridges to innovation, value creation, the productive economy, and the world we build together. These articles exemplify the scope and quality of the journal we hope to build. Twenty years ago, the design field had only a handful of scholarly and scientific journals. Visible Language was the first in the field, forty years old in 2017. Design Studies came next in 1979, and Design Issues followed in 1984. 1 Today, there are over two hundred design journals. 2 Of these, around forty are widely acknowledged as significant. 3 Of these, a worldwide survey of experts identified fourteen journals with positions of global eminence. Some journals cover such specialist fields as engineering design, ergonomics, and design history. Others are general design journals. Nevertheless, a gap remains, an interdisciplinary gap where professional fields and research disciplines should meet. In this interdisciplinary gap, we will examine the intersection of design, economics, and innovation in various combinations, from various perspectives, and using the methods and methodological frameworks of the many disciplines that contribute to the necessarily interdisciplinary design field. These kinds of articles do appear in the other journals, and in the journals of other fields. Our remit is to provide a forum in which contributors regularly examine these issues. Our interdisciplinary nature has a second focus, as well. So far, few of the research journals in design have managed to find a regular audience among professional designers-or among the leaders in business, industry, and government that use design. And few of the professional design magazines have managed to find a regular readership among scholars and scientists who work with design. This is a problem for a field in which the many kinds of people who work with design every day can learn more and do better by speaking and thinking together. Journals in other fields have managed to bridge the gap. Harvard Business Review is an example: leaders in business and industry as well as management scholars and economists read HBR. Another example is The Economist, a weekly newspaper that scholars and scientists read along with managers, industrialists, financiers, politicians, and civil servants.

Research Technology Management

The potential of design practice to dramatically increase the success of breakthrough innovation in corporations has been demonstrated by a few leading companies. The tools of design, however, are not yet common practice in most organizations. The set of interviews that follows, with professors from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, offers an overview of three important practices: ethnomethodology, prototyping, and communicating the new. Taken together, they provide a useful primer to design approaches.

2017

Chapter Seven concludes this book by reflecting on the “in-discipline” of design. Designers claim that their practices are transversal, multidisciplinary, and holistic. However, design is not a Leonardesque fantasy of mastering all the known disciplines, but rather the dynamic activity that launches concepts, facts, methods, between disciplines so that they can come up with new concepts and artifacts, or situations. Through design/practice, disciplines under-determine each other, leaving space for a radical unknown to emerge. The process of under-determination is considered here as the foundation of design epistemology.