Eng, Markus 8330796 Arch 587, Computing Design Theory Professor Ellen Do
Designing and Designers
When you ogle over a designer car or a designer suit, the objects style and allure blinds you with glaring beauty. You may even appreciate its aesthetic value based on the designer! How does the designer do it? In separate essays, Nigel Cross, Bryan Lawson and Horst W. J. Rittel focus on this question. Each of them takes a different angle at what they believe or discover to be the design process. The titles of each of their essays reveal their bias in assessing the design process. In The Reasoning of Designers, Rittel projects the designers process in terms of reason. Cross comprehends the design process in cognitive terms in his essay Research in Design Thinking. Lastly, Lawson understands the design process through empathy in Design in Mind. Rittel sets the tone of his piece with the speculation that widespread dissatisfaction1 triggered the pursuit to study the design process for a Design Conference. He disparages the designer claiming Everybody designs sometimes; nobody designs always.2 He makes the discordant generalization that thinking, strategizing and planning are synonymous with designing. He blurs downtown development schemes, circuit layout design, tax law, market strategy and the shopping list for next Sundays meal with design! Although Cross does not define such a broad range for the designer, he omits offering a key definition for the designer. Unlike Rittel, he acknowledges that designers possess a cognitive skill, and he infers that creativity is the foundation. Among the three, Lawson grants the designer the most credit by quoting the 20th century German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who allegedly compared the difficulty of philosophy to be easy compared to the rigor of architecture.3 Lawson contrasts the designer with the scientist. The scientist performs a quantitative, descriptive role, whereas, the designer plays a qualitative, prescriptive role. Perhaps, Lawson would consider that the scientist acts as a realist in problem solving compared to the designer as an idealist. Cross shifts the emphasis away from the designer, by abstracting the design process in terms of theory. He constructs the design problem into a series of ranking parameters, which form a so called solution space, like a phase space diagram in physics Problem constraints become discrete points in solution space, which may reshape the space by creating new contingencies or synergies (negative or positive relationships). A solution space arises with potentially new constraints. He calls this design activity to be commutative, oscillating between problem and solution.4 Rittel views the designer in terms of the ability to reason. Unlike
Horst W. J. Rittel. The Reasoning of Designers. University of California, Berkeley. Universitt Stuttgart. p. 1. Ibid. p. 1 3 Bryan Lawson. Design in Mind. Butterworth-Heineman Ltd. 1994. 4 Nigel Cross. Research in Design Thinking. Proceedings of a workshop meeting held at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. The Netherlands. May 29-31, 1991.
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Markus Eng, 8330796 Arch 587, Computing Design Theory Professor Ellen Do
Designing and Designers
Cross, he finds that designers reasoning is not as straightforward as in other fields.5 He bases this on the inherent difficulty of separating problem definition, synthesis, and evaluation. He implies that the difficulty is due to the designer, not to the nature of the design problem. Designers think more or less coherently; the figure, they guess, they have sudden ideas out of the blue, they imagine, speculate, dream, let their fantasy wheel freely, scrutinize, reckon, they syllogize [sic].6 Rittel contradicts Crosss claim that designers solve problems by identifying the parameters, and by moving toward a solution in discrete steps. At first, Rittel appears to be saying that the designers activity is complex, by eluding clear delineation of definition, synthesis and evaluation. However, his paper loses its harmony, when his condescension towards designers dominates the essay. Rittel sneers that the analysis reveals the awesome epistemic in freedom designing: there are no logical or epistemological constraints or rules which would prescribe which of the meaningful steps to take next.7 Out of context, the quote is reasonable. But, in the end of his paper he reminds us about the common caricatures of designer types as MASTERMIND, TECHNOCRAT, BUREACRAT, VISIONARY, and so on. Moreover, he then comforts us that we are lucky that designers do not shape the world their way. According to Rittel, designers make arbitrary decisions based on whim, not on the logical application of knowledge and information. Information is stuff (perhaps useful, depending on context), and knowledge is the organizing of stuff. Rittel would not credit the designer with either. For Cross, the designer juggles information and knowledge, and potentially enhances both through the design process. The designer's knowledge shapes the solution space. Lawson pushes this one step further. He agrees with Rittel that designing can defy formal definition, and refers to them as wicked problems (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Cross quotes the furniture designer Geoffrey Harcourt, concerning the slipperiness between problem and solution in design.8 He adds that this kind of design activity is knowledge rich.9 In other words, design requires knowledge about subjects beyond the problem description. The solution rests outside of the problem. Understanding the problem is not enough. The solution space occupies a different knowledge domain than the problem space. For Cross, the problem space transforms into the solution space. For Lawson, it lies beyond.
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Horst W. J. Rittel. p. 2. Ibid. p. 2. 7 Ibid. p. 5. 8 Nigel Cross. p. 5. 9 Bryan Lawson. p. 2.
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Markus Eng, 8330796 Arch 587, Computing Design Theory Professor Ellen Do
Designing and Designers
What lies beyond the scrim of reason is intuition. Rittel dressed intuition up in a faux fur coat, calling it cognitive style.10 Similarly, he may not equate epistemic freedom with intuition, but he refers to it as left up to the designers judgment.11 Cross lips the phrase, that expert designers emphasize the importance of intuition and creativity. However, he cannot believe what he cannot measure surely, intuition and creativity are the Emperors clothes! He acquiesces to a solution conjecture. It is added information (a guess, hypothesis, bias, preference, etc.), which aids in resolving the problem.12 In a separate essay, How Designers Think, Lawson explains, that designers in the past relied m...