Introducción
Like any discipline, design has its conventions. Certain tools, tech-
niques and methods have become common in design practice or
even typical of design as a whole. Many have argued that design is
characterized by particular ways of thinking and making. En efecto,
if we follow Diana Agrest’s argument—of nearly a half-century
ago—concerning “design versus non-design,” distinctive cultural
codes ingrained in practice are what differentiate design from
other disciplines. Disciplinary conventions provide good starting
points for inquiry—common grounds worthy of close examination
through which more nuanced and new perspectives may emerge as
well as opportunities to further deepen, challenge, or change those
very disciplinary conventions.
The contents of this issue probe into familiar design tools and
standard design methods. Authors examine rulers and dividers,
user-centered methods, and the service blueprint. Their motivation
is not technical; authors do not dwell on defining nor applying
estos. En cambio, tools and methods are a basis for inquiring into the
nature of designing and cultures from which design emerges. Para
ejemplo, authors explore how a given tool or technology affects the
cognitive processes of designers and users, and how design meth-
ods relate to particular socio-political circumstances. Close exami-
nation reveals how differences matter—for example, different tools
produce different cognitive effects, and different social structures
are embedded in methods. De este modo, the articles have implications not
only for design theory but also for practice in which the assump-
tions and choices of designers do matter.
Examining two common design tools—rulers and dividers—
Philip Luscombe undertakes a profound discussion of “technolo-
gie.” Drawing upon theories of mind and cognition, he articulates
the role of such tools within processes of thought and action. Prag-
matically, a tool extends our capacity to carry out a given practical
meta. Tools also provide feedback throughout a design process. De este modo
intertwined with our ways of exploring and of working things out,
tools also shape our ways of knowing. Differences between even
doi:10.1162/DESI_e_00481
© 2018 Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts
Problemas de diseño: Volumen 34, Número 2 Primavera 2018
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our most basic tools, he argues, are not only a practical but an epis-
temic matter. Luscombe further points at computer-aided design
(CAD) software, which performs some functions of rulers and di-
viders but uses very different logics. An implication is that differ-
ent tools affect not only the design produced but also the design
proceso, design knowledge and, en efecto, the designer.
Maria Göransdotter and Johan Redström examine how
notions of “use” and “user” came into Swedish Modern design.
They provide a detailed account of the Home Research Institute
in the 1940s, which addressed conditions and practices of house-
work through ethnographic and time studies, as well as design-
oriented methods, such as prototyping and testing of domestic
tools and products. This precursor to user-centered design, ellos
argue, stems from a particular set of socio-political ideals. As a key
institution and instrument of Swedish welfare state reform, el
home brought women to the fore as founders of the institute and as
housewives possessing unique knowledge and design expertise.
Göransdotter and Redström articulate how justice, representación,
and power thus underpin the tradition of Swedish user-centered
diseño. An implication of their critical historiography is that differ-
ent socio-political ideals can be implicit in even our most common
design methods.
Miso Kim poses a fundamental question for service design:
“What is service?” Instead of typical responses stemming from
marketing and business, Kim looks to history. Tracing the Latin
meaning of “servitium,” she starts with Greco-Roman conceptions.
Premised on a particular economic system of labor in the ancient
world, she argues that service can be articulated in terms of dif-
ferent social groups, including slaves as objectified property who
perform basic services, free laborers paid for skilled services, y
citizens voluntarily providing public service. Kim further con-
siders Western Medieval Christianity and a conception of service
ultimately to God and, during the subsequent Protestant Re-
formación, a shift to a liberal system of service transaction among
working individuals. She uses four conceptions as different lenses
to reflect upon an archetypical tool in service design—the ser-
vice blueprint.
Rulers and dividers, user-centered design methods, y
service blueprints—things so commonplace in design practice,
they tend to be taken for granted. The first three articles in this issue
expand our understanding of these by drawing out the larger
design issues and articulating the meaningful differences and
choices relevant to practice. The next two articles further reconsider
what should be central to design theory and education.
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Problemas de diseño: Volumen 34, Número 2 Primavera 2018
Maliheh Ghajargar and Mikael Wiberg discuss reflection
as a fundamental question for interaction design. They argue that
interactivity, one of four outlined characteristics of smart artifacts,
expands the possibilities for design to steer users’ sensory and cog-
nitive processes and, al final, their behaviors. Como consecuencia, se-
lecting interactive technologies opens the opportunity and perhaps
even a responsibility to more profoundly address “reflection” as a
design issue. Ghajargar and Wiberg revisit HCI discourse and ar-
ticulate reflection within “conversations with the materials at hand”
(Donald Schön). They argue that the materials of interaction design
can mediate and stimulate users’ reflections upon their own behav-
iors, which they may modify in a more sustainable or healthy way.
As the nature of interactivity is changing through artificial intelli-
gence (AI), the implication is that reflection becomes an even more
urgent issue.
The choice to redirect design for social purposes, as in so-
cial design, has profound consequences according to Matthew W.
Easterday, Elizabeth M. Gerber, and Daniel G. Rees Lewis. Altering
the subject matter of design education requires corresponding and
profound reconsideration of design education. The authors point
out that social design entails that students gain particular com-
petencies, such as an ability to work with social complexity within
and across multiple systems, sectors, and sites. They argue for
developing a formal theory of social design education and recon-
sideration of educational environments, curricula, and teaching
materiales. Outlining a range of initiatives in the United States, el
authors discuss limitations of both established and emerging
approaches, the potentials of project-based learning, online plat-
forms and community hubs, y ultimamente, they argue for a
network-based model. Through their experiences of educational
development across the national organization Design for America,
they outline a series of approaches and techniques better suited to
social design education.
This issue also contains three reviews: Federico Campagna’s
book review of Game Design by Gundolf S. Freyermuth, Adán
Kallish’s book review of Make it New by Barry Katz, and Dimitry
Tetin’s exhibition review of Milton Glaser: Modulated Patterns, curated
by Blazo Kovacevic.
Cumulatively the articles in this issue challenge us to recon-
sider what is central to design. One further piece continues this
challenge in the form of a rallying call—the Montréal Design
Declaration recently presented at the 2017 World Design Summit.
The declaration is authored by fourteen international design and
non-design organizations that assert a shared understanding of the
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Problemas de diseño: Volumen 34, Número 2 Primavera 2018
fundamental role of design in shaping the world around us. The call
is for a World Design Agenda capable of fully engaging with other
global challenge agendas including the United Nations 2030 Sus-
tainable Development Goals, New Urban Agenda, Paris Climate Ac-
cord, and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promo-
tion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Design Issues has a
tradition of publishing design declarations and manifestos, cual
are important forms of expression in design, suited both to taking
a stand and uniting across differences.
Bruce Brown
Richard Buchanan
Carl DiSalvo
Dennis Doordan
Kipum Lee
Víctor Margolín
Ramia Mazé
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Problemas de diseño: Volumen 34, Número 2 Primavera 2018
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