Introduction

Introduction

The first question that the editors of Design Issues ask of every
manuscript submitted for consideration is “What is the design issue
addressed in this paper?” We want to know what question drives
the inquiry and deserves the attention of a reader. Is it merely a
question growing out of the writer’s personal curiosity, or is it a
question that goes beyond personal curiosity and reflects the forward
moving thought of the design community or of the field of design?
Where is the issue located? What are the signs and evidence that the
issue is significant? And if the community does not yet recognize
the issue as significant, does the author merely assert its importance
or does he or she make a reasonable case that the issue is important
for new understanding? An issue well stated is the beginning of
inquiry—and perhaps, as John Dewey suggests, an issue well stated
is already halfway toward a solution.

Aujourd'hui, cependant, many of the issues in design research
are as complex as the most complex problems of design practice.
They often cross many disciplines of design as well as the larger
body of surrounding academic disciplines that may contribute to
our understanding of design. This is why the table of contents for
Design Issues is often so different from those of other design journals.
Instead of focusing on a narrow band of design problems within
one or another area of specialization, Design Issues seeks articles that
may have significance for anyone who is interested in the current
state of design thinking and design practice. It is true that sometimes
those articles come from within a relatively specialized branch of
conception, but they may also come from questions that cross disciplines,
pointing toward emergent issues that are shaping the broad field of
conception.

This edition of the journal represents the exceptional diversity
of issues that we believe is a signature of Design Issues. We begin with
Johann van der Merwe’s reflections on how we may “un-discipline”
the disciplines of design in order to incorporate insights from other
“disciplines.” In “A Natural Death Is Announced,” he describes
the intellectual rebalancing that is underway at the Cape Peninsula
University of Technology, Afrique du Sud, which was created by the
merger of the Cape Technikon and the Peninsula Technikon. Tel
mergers are moving ahead in many parts of the world, but at the
Cape, the merger led to a further merger of departments that yielded
a Faculty of Informatics and Design. Van der Merwe discusses the
changing research focus of the new unit and the deeper change in
philosophy that underlies its work, pointing toward cybernetics and
systems thinking.

© 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Problèmes de conception: Volume 26, Nombre 3 Été 2010

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In the next article, Bruce Hanington discusses the issue of
human-centered research and its proper place in the education of
designers. He provides a sophisticated discussion of an issue that is
too often reduced to a simplistic polarized opposition of scientific
methods and creative action. Hanington, a highly respected design
educator with special expertise in the uses of a wide variety of
methods and techniques of user research, reviews the many kinds
of user research that can be employed in undergraduate as well
as graduate design programs. His discussion of the balance of
qualitative, ethnographic, and quantitative methods and techniques
is a valuable overview of what is possible in introducing designers
to the uses of research. The conclusion of this article is so timely in
the development of the field that we repeat it here:

It is not necessary for designers to become scientists,
but they ignore the tenets of good science at their peril.
Designers engaged in research need a comprehensive
understanding of research encompassing the range of
qualitative, ethnographic methods, as well as those
of science and the experiment. This understanding is
necessary to conduct good, credible research, to enhance
the reputation of research in the design disciplines, to argue
the merits of design research even in the context of critics
from other disciplines versed in scientific pursuits, and to
persuade others of the usefulness of design methods for
their own use.

While Hanington’s article focuses on design education as a
preparation for professional practice, the next article, appropriately
enough, focuses on the patterns of behavior displayed by designers
at work. In “Shared Conversations Across Design,” by C. M.. Eckert,
UN. F. Puits noir, L. L. Bucciarelli, and C. F. Earl continue to mine the
“Across Design” research project, a joint effort between Cambridge
University and MIT begun in 2002. The current paper reports on
key themes that emerged from the research, where small groups of
professional designers from a diverse array of design professions
were invited to discuss and report on one or another design project.
The effort was not to discover general guiding principles of design
practice but, plutôt, to understand how design manifests itself as
seen from the perspective of those who take part in it. This project
was discussed in “Witnesses to Design: A Phenomenology of
Comparative Design” in Design Issues, Volume 25, Nombre 1 (Hiver
2009). Both the method and the outcomes of this research project
deserve careful consideration by educators and by others who seeks
to provide theory about the nature of design. Encore une fois, this article
offers an insight that we are obliged to repeat here for its resonance
with the observations of many others:

Several of the designers stressed the shortcoming in design
éducation, in that it does not set designers up for practically

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running projects or businesses. One of the architects
stressed that often the difference between a successful
project and a failure lies in customer and client relationship.
She has gathered much useful experience in the projects
she is running, but felt that these skills were largely absent
from design education. Similarly the engineers commented,
that they were not trained to manage and lead people, mais
promoted for technical excellence. This was echoed by a
furniture designer, who commented on the vital importance
of learning how to interact with all people in design teams.
For her it was critical for design students to learn to interact
with the materials they use and the technicians who help
eux, rather than use entirely computer simulation.

Erin Friess finds the guiding issue of her inquiry in the uneasy
relationship between the creative insight of the designer and the need
to justify design decisions with empirical research. In “The Sword
of Data,” she briefly reviews the history of human-centered design
before introducing the idea of rhetorical responsibility in creating
effective and powerful design solutions. Discussing designer Douglas
Bowman’s account of his experience at Google, Friess observes that in
some cases it appears that human-centered design has been replaced
by empirically-centered design, with a loss of communicative power
and a loss of the rhetorical resources of ethos and pathos. This article
offers a sophisticated discussion of the place of rhetorical theory
in understanding design and design practice, advancing a theme
that may be traced back through the pages of Design Issues for
de nombreuses années.

In “White and Fitted: Perpétuer les modernismes,” Kathleen
Connellan discovers the issue of her argument by probing the
connections among “white, modernism and rationalism in
conception,” with an emphasis on power relations in a designed
society. She observes: “‘White and fitted’ presumes a conformity
and an anonymity associated with modernist standardization and
rationalization in design.” Can a person choose not to be “conscripted
dans la norme (blanc et ajusté)?” she asks. This is a thoughtful
discussion that leads the reader through the perspectives of Foucault,
Bourdieu, Daniel Miller, David Batchelor, and other authors,
revealing “the ironies and tensions that are part of democracy and
freedom; something much deeper than the color and form.”

The next article is a departure for Design Issues, introducing
an extended discussion of “functionality” from a philosophical
perspective that is perhaps associated for some readers with
engineering and technology studies. We include it in this edition of
the journal because of its intrinsic interest as well as the opportunity
for readers to explore a different way of thinking about design and
a somewhat different way of building an extended argument about
a design problem. The article, “Theories of Technical Functions,” is

Problèmes de conception: Volume 26, Nombre 3 Été 2010

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1 Anthonie Meijers, éd., Philosophy of
Technology and Engineering Sciences, Vol.
9 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science,
éd. Dov Gabbay, Paul Thagard, & John Woods
(New York: Elsevier, 2009).

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by philosopher Peter Kroes, who served as associate editor of the
eight articles compromising “Philosophy of Engineering Design,” an
important section of the recently published Philosophy of Technology
and Engineering Sciences.1 Functionality is a central theme in design
theory and practice, but the nature of functionality is a complex issue.
Kroes asks: “what does it mean to say that a technical artifact ‘has’
a technical function (or a functional property or feature)?” For the
designer—whether an engineer or an industrial designer or another
type of designer—the issue is pragmatic and practical. But for the
philosopher who reflects on the nature of design, the issue is related
to the notion of teleology—the study of purpose or, in Aristotelian
termes, the final cause in poetics or productive science. In this paper,
the first of two parts to be published in Design Issues, Kroes seeks
to clarify “the general form of epistemic and ontological theories
of technical functions.” In the subsequent part, to be published in
the next issue of the journal, Kroes discusses human intentions and
technical functions.

Articles such as that of Peter Kroes remind us that design has
become a subject of discussion in many other disciplines, each with
their own evolving agenda and community of discourse. Cependant,
design itself has an evolving community of discourse, shaped as much
by research and formal reflection as by professional practice and the
challenges of education. This is the subject of the next article, “Doctoral
Education in Design: Problems and Prospects,” by Victor Margolin.
The issue is “what is doctoral education” and “what is it for” in the
context of design. Margolin reviews the history of doctoral studies in
the field and then discusses what he regards as the central questions
that must be addressed in establishing effective programs. As doctoral
education continues to grow, this discussion is a fresh reminder of the
need to establish firm foundations for our future work.

The next article is “The Idea of Socialist Design,” by Fedja
Vukic. It is an exhibition review of “Iskra: Non-Aligned Design
1946–1990,” presented at the Architecture Museum of Ljubljana,
Slovenia in 2009 et 2010. Exhibitions have long played an important
role in the public perception and understanding of design, et le
Iskra exhibition is no exception. Dans ce cas, it captures a period
of central European development that is less familiar in the United
States or other parts of the world. Iskra was an industrial company
operating within the existing socialist system of Yugoslavia. Vukic’s
analysis is a useful discussion of some of the issues of creating
“good” design in a socialist system.

The final article in this edition of the journal is a review article
by Eduardo Vivanco, “Must They Mean What They Say?” It is an
extended discussion of Aron Vinegar’s I AM A MONUMENT: Sur
Learning from Las Vegas. Though the subject is in part architecture,
this essay casts a wider circle that we believe will be of interest
to designers in all branches of the field. It also demonstrates how
“reading” is a part of the field, whether in design practice or in

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design research. This edition concludes with reviews of interesting
livres. Grace Lees-Maffei reviews Judging a Book by Its Cover: Fans,
Publishers, Designers, and the Marketing of Fiction, edited by Nicole
Matthews and Nickianne Moody. Brett Ommen reviews Design for
Démocratie: Ballot + Election Design, by Marcia Lausen.

Bruce Brown
Richard Buchanan
Dennis Doordan
Victor Margolin

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