The Evil of Design

 

In design theory or design thinking, we do not often talk about the evil of design. However, we all know that design, with or without intent, can lead to outcomes that are undesirable or even destructive to the world around us. In our book “The Design Way – intentional change in an unpredictable world” we dedicate one chapter to the notion of the evil of design. Below are a couple excerpts.

“Good design’s most interesting paradox is that it is both magnificent

and evil. This is not the same pairing of apparent opposites as the more

common duality of good and evil. We are not talking about Evil, with a

capital E, designating malevolent forces dedicated to the destruction of

everything that is good in the world, or counter to the positive presence

of God as in many religious traditions. It is true that design has been considered

evil in this way. Some designs have been attributed to the work of

the devil or the influence of evil spirits. For instance, a European bishop

banned the use of rifled barrels on guns, because the resulting superior

accuracy over the old, smooth-bore muskets could only be due to the

intervention of the devil.” (Page 184)

“Our first category is natural evil, which is always an integral part of the

process of change, including the types of changes wrought by design. This

is a form of evil that is an unavoidable part of all life. In any creative act,

something new is brought into the world at the expense of the old—which

is then destroyed. There may be good and necessary reasons for the change

brought on by design, but that does not deny the real and painful experience

of grief and emptiness, brought by the loss of that which has been replaced.

      By definition, any design is an act going beyond established boundaries—

in other words, “thinking outside the box.” This is also one of the oldest 

definitions of evil. In most cases, everyday designing isn’t considered

boundary crossing or breaking because those boundaries that such

designs do cross or break are too weak to be thought of as strong norms

in the same sense as a taboo, for example. Moreover, these boundaries

usually are not even visible as boundaries for behavior.

Necessity—natural evil

• Going beyond boundaries

• Natural order of life—survival at any cost

• Lost opportunities

• Lost alternatives

• Point of view

• Natural force

Chance—accidental evil

• Power without understanding

• Cause without connection

• Misfortune and accidents

• Breakdown of natural order

Intension—willful evil

• Destroying life and life-giving essence

• Power without charity

• Agency without community

• Destroy other’s selfhood

• Using others as a means only

• Separation from unity

Figure 11.2

Categories of evil in design

Those designs and designers that are seen as causing changes affecting

the normal routine of life, however, often are treated with a certain amount

of irritation, if not outright hostility. This is because they have crossed a

boundary maintaining the defined limits of normal or typical everyday

activity. This form of design evil can be perilous to the designer, because

even if the change is for the benefit of those affected, the designer is still

cast as an enemy of people’s peace of mind and their routine existence.

    New designs always bring shadows with them. There are always unintended

consequences associated with new designs, many of which can be

quite negative. This is related to another, more obvious natural evil—the

loss of opportunities. When a design is brought into the world and made

real, its very presence excludes other opportunities. The substantial investment

of money, energy, material, and time in a new design directly prohibits

other attempts to make alternative designs and realities because of

lack of resources. This also holds true for more abstract investments, such

as pride and status. This is because identity and self-image become invested

in a commitment to the new reality emerging as a consequence of the new

design’s meaningful presence. This form of evil is closely related to the

“survival-at-any-cost” strategy of evolution. Even though it appears this

strategy is the essence of nature, in our human vocabulary it carries the

suspicion of being an evil that seriously needs to be redeemed.

     New designs also bring with them specific points of view that define

them as evil because of our human frame of reference. The material, corporeal

world forms the substance of design, yet this realm is considered

evil and base in many spiritual traditions. Humans are encouraged to avoid

focusing on this aspect of life, yet it is the very material from which a

designer assembles his or her design palette.

    Associated with this perspective of evil is the old and enduring notion

that evil is a natural and eminent force in the affairs of people: one must

continually balance and compensate for the effect of this unrelenting evil

energy that’s always at work in the natural order of things.

     Our second category is accidental evil. This type of design evil can be

thought of as avoidable. Some examples are: power without understanding,

agency without interrelationship (i.e., acting without personal connection

to consequences), and the misfortune of being in the wrong place

at the wrong time as a matter of mischance, bad luck, or tragedy. This form

of evil happens out of ignorance, carelessness, or inattention and is not

the outcome of an intention to do harm. For example, the design of toys

that are actually dangerous for children is the consequence of inattention

to those being served. Accidental evil can be modified, or mitigated, by

becoming more fully informed and aware when engaging in design.

      Good design judgments are dependent on having the right design

knowledge, but that’s not all. Design knowledge cannot be separated from

the “knower.” Therefore, in design, character counts. This is similar to the

way that good character counts in making wise decisions, in the absence

of a predetermined outcome. Good design is dependent on good designers

as much as on the best information or know-how.

     Finally, there is the category of willful evil. In a design context, this

includes power without charity and agency without community—in other

words, acting on people’s behalf without their contractual consent to do

so. It also includes dominance over others such as collective dominance

over the individual, individual dominance over the collective, and individual

dominance over another individual. The Kantian form of willful evil

involves the use of people as a means only rather than an end. Finally, it

includes the destruction of life, especially human life and life-giving essence.

    These are just a few examples of intentional evil that can become a part

of design. The history of human affairs is filled with designs that were evil

by intention, such as those of Albert Speer, the German architect, who

among other things created organizational designs based on slave labor for

the Nazis during World War II. A more recent example is the design of

Web-based technology that intrudes on unsuspecting users of the World

Wide Web. This design also shields the identity of all those involved in

the creation and use of child pornography websites, for example. Powerful

design theories and approaches can be used in the creation of things,

concrete or abstract, that history will hold as evil in the most literal sense,

such as the design of nuclear weapons, which were considered defensible

in their time.

     Becoming good at design, or helping others to become good at design,

does not assure that good design will be the outcome. The theories and

practices of design are still subject to human willfulness. As human beings

we are not bound to proscriptions of character that guarantee our good

intentions as well as magnificent designs. That challenge is well beyond

the scope of this book, but it is an essential consideration for designers

and design stakeholders.” (Page 186-188)

Our book "The Design Way - intentional change in an unpredictable world" in Chinese

 My co-author Harold Nelson and I heard for a while that there is a Chinese version of our book "The Design Way - intentional change in an unpredictable world" (MIT Press, 2012). Just the other day, one of my students, who is in China, helped us and sent two copies of the book to me. It is so exciting to see our work in Chinese. The book looks good with great graphics, but to what extent the text is close to the original, I cannot judge :-)

New book in our book series

I am happy to announce that we have published a new book in our MIT Press book series "Design Thinking/Design Theory" that I edit together with Ken Friedman. The new book is "How Artifacts Afford: the power and politics of everyday things" by Jenny L. Davis.

Here is a link to all books in the series
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/design-thinking-design-theory

How System Designers Think about Design and Methods: Some Reflections Based on an Interview Study

In 1992 I wrote an article that was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. It was based on an interview study I did for my PhD thesis. I have not read this paper since it was published, almost 30 years ago! Hard to understand.

Anyway, today I read it, and I liked it. It is interesting to see how I did work on the same ideas I work on today. But, more importantly, is that I recognize how formative that interview study was for my research at the time and even today. I still agree with the analysis and the contributions of the research. Actually, I think it is still highly relevant. Other researchers have written about the same topic and in many cases argued for similar conclusions, but it is still not an understanding of design that is prevalent.

I would like to re-write some parts of the paper, but it is a paper and study that I am still proud of.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239066287_How_System_Designers_Think_About_Design_and_Methods_Some_Reflections_Based_on_an_Interview_Study

Stolterman, E. (1992). How system designers think about design and methods. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Vol 4.

When COVID makes philosophy concrete

In these uncertain times, it is interesting to see how the philosophy of technology by Alfred Borgmann suddenly becomes real and concrete. Borgmann's philosophy is about 'things' and 'practices' that can lead to focal experiences, that is, experiences that are real, grounded, connected to time, people, and places.

Borgmann developed what is called the 'device paradigm' philosophy with the core notions of focal things and focal practices, commodification, etc. He warned us that when we commodify our everyday experiences through the use of technology, the experiences are not the same, they lose essential qualities. However, the commodification of practices is so convenient, it leads to a comfortable life where everything is constantly available to us without any concerns about how it is done and with no effort on our part. For instance, our homes are heated or cooled without us even knowing how it works. We only turn the thermostat. He discusses this in contrast with the fireplace that requires knowledge about wood, how to light a fire and the obvious presence the fire has in the house. It connects us tot he place, to time and to others.

Our world with smartphones and their apps is another more modern example. Most apps are built on an idea that aligns almost perfectly with Borgmann's theory. The idea is that an app will make us independent of time, people, and place. We can use them at any time, without needing other people and we can be anywhere. The experience is commodified. Press the button and you get it. How it works, who is actually doing it, or where it is done is irrelevant to us. We are fully disconnected. And we are not engaged in any focal practices. According to Borgmann, what makes an experience a focal practice is when it is connected with time, people, and place. It may not be so convenient or practical (as obvious with the example of the fireplace), but it connects us with practices, people, history, places and it limits us when it comes to what decisions and prioritizations we can do.

Most people are in their everyday lives happy to trade connections (focal) with convenience (commodities). But in these pandemic times, we can see how Borgmann's philosophy is emerging as a thought pattern among a lot of people. People are getting tired of Zoom meetings, not because they do not function necessarily, often they work quite well, but there is something missing. Real meetings require so much more, we have to travel to a specific place, we have to book a room, we have to dress accordingly, we have to engage in small talk before and after the meeting, we might have to make sure there is coffee available, etc. People are reflecting on what it is that is missing in this world where everything is commodified. We cannot go to restaurants, instead, we order prepared food to our homes. We do not have to do anything. But it is not the same. Something is missing. Maybe Borgmann's philosophy describes and explains what is going on.



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Borgmann, A. (2009). Focal things and practices. Readings in the Philosophy of Technology, 115-35.

A model of how to become a designer

Any type of learning goes through stages or levels of knowledge and abilities. So does design learning. To become a designer is, as any process of becoming a professional expert, a complex and rich process that involves everything from knowing facts to having a sense of who you are as a professional and human.

In our book, "The Design Way", we present this as a hierarchy model of design-learning outcomes. Starting with becoming able to express routine expertise, through adaptive expertise, design expertise to end with value expertise. This journey takes effort and time, learning and practice. The model (see figure below) portrays this journey. The model can be used as a way to measure where you are in your process of becoming a designer and as a "tool" to help to decide how to further develop your competence and expertise.

Below the figure, I have added an excerpt from the book about the model.

"A hierarchy is based on the understanding that the things in a lower level are given significance, meaning, and value by next the higher level. For example, for design capacity, facts and skills are valuable only in the context of the confidence to take action or to do things. The competence to learn is only valuable in designing if there is the courage to be creative and innovative, to take risks with the full understanding of responsibility and accountability which is the next higher level in the hierarchy—that of connection.

The hierarchy of learning outcomes is necessary and crucial to understand since it makes it clear that some outcomes are not possible to achieve if others at a lower level are not already achieved. It also shows that at the end of the day, to become a designer is a process that deepens over time and becomes more personal as you move up the hierarchy." (page 234)

Where do you start if you want your organization to become more designerly?

There are a lot of discussions about design thinking today. And everyone wants to be better at design. Every company wants to be more designerly. This is all good. But where do you start if you want to change people or companies to be more designerly?

In our book "The Design Way" we introduce what we label as "design learning domains". We show it in a simple schema (see Fig 14.12 below). We explain the idea like this

"Design learning can be addressed in four domains: (1) design character, (2) design thinking, (3) design knowing, and (4) design action or praxis (see figure 14.12). These domains can be expressed as sets. The outcome of design learning or inquiry can be seen as a process of managing competency sets that are interrelated among the quadrants formed by the crossing axis of familiar dichotomies such as concrete reality and abstract thinking, and the individual contrasted to social collectives. These sets—mindsets, knowledge sets, skill sets, and tool sets—must be established and filled, in the process of becoming a designer (see figure 14.13)."

What we see today is a lot of different approaches aimed at improving or enhancing design thinking to create more designerly organizations. Most of these approaches do not address all four sets. The argument we make is that to establish a deep understanding of design that can lead to competent design practice, all four quadrants have to be addressed and "filled".

So, the next question then becomes where do you start the process of building design expertise, all quadrants filled? Do you start by teaching people certain tools, or certain skills, or certain knowledge or do you first engage with their mindset? Among contemporary and serious design educations we can easily find all kinds of approaches, some focused first on skills, others on knowledge or on mindset. Most of them over time addressing all quadrants.

Companies that are trying to transform themselves into being more designerly are unfortunately not as ambitious. Commonly they focus on either the mindset or the skill set. This means that they might invite speakers to preach the benefits of a designerly approach with the purpose to change the mindset of the people or they engage in concrete workshops where some simple tools and skills are practiced. Neither of these will lead to any lasting or serious changes in everyday practice.

To be clear, there is no 'right' way of approaching the design competency sets. Each attempt, each organization, is unique and has to be addressed as such. Each attempt to enhance design has to be adapted and designed to fit the specific situation. And nothing will be achieved if not all quadrants are engaged with.

Is your company designerly enough?

Today a lot of organizations are excited by the notion of design and the ways a designerly approach can enhance their business. Some companies even label themselves as "design companies" or state that they want to be seen as designerly companies. This is all well, but what does it mean and how do you know if and when you actually are designerly enough?

In many areas we have seen different forms of maturity models. A maturity model is supposed to help people "measure" and establish how mature they are in relation to some aspects. Examples are plenty, such as capability maturity models for software, project planning maturity models, risk maturity models, etc.

One of the fundamental ideas that underlie maturity models (even though not always stated) is that any progress in an area has to be built on a solid foundation. Without a solid foundation, any introduction of new tools, methods, approaches or procedures will probably over time fail.

So, does your organization have a solid foundation that can support the development of a designerly culture and improved design thinking and action? And do you have the knowledge and tools to find that out?

There are ways to assess an organization when it comes to how designerly they are and the level of their design maturity. Unfortunately, I see a lot of organizations that try to build a design culture without caring about the foundation. Instead, they start to implement (simplistic) tools and methods locally without the appropriate support and without any intentional effort in developing a strong and solid foundation that can support such initiatives. Not surprisingly, many of these initiatives fail and lead to a negative experience, and to a negative view of what a design approach can do.

So, organizations should (1) engage in assessing how designerly they are and (2) develop and use a design maturity model to better understand where they are and what needs to be done to successfully transform into a design-oriented organization.

Design Thinking and Disciplined Thinking

We all think.

Most of us realize that there are different ways of thinking. Most of us also believe and understand that different ways of thinking lead to different outcomes. So, the choice of how to think about something has serious consequences.

Howard Gardner explores forms of thinking in his book "The Disciplined Mind". Gardner is famous for his notion of multiple forms of intelligence. The idea is that people are intelligent in different ways. Ways that more or less are suitable for specific problems and situations. He argues that people need to nurture all forms of intelligence to be able to function well in the world, and his theories are of course highly influential and debated when it comes to education.

In this book, Gardner explores the notion of "disciplined thinking". He writes "over the years, cultures have evolved systematic ways of thinking about these issues" ("issues" referring to questions about the "true, the beautiful, and the good"). He continues "At any given moment, the disciplines represent the most well-honed efforts of human beings to approach questions and concerns of importance in a systematic and reliable way" (p 144). He shows that over time different disciplined ways of thinking may find themselves in conflict, or in competition, or going through a radical change. For instance, the scientific way of thinking has grown over centuries and has evolved into an extraordinarily powerful and efficient way of thinking if the purpose is to establish solid knowledge. However, scientific thinking is aimed at revealing what exists and how it works (the "true") and is less efficient when it comes to finding out what is "beautiful" or "good". So, each disciplined way of thinking has its strengths and weaknesses.

We have all experienced the extraordinary emergence of design thinking as a "new" form of thinking. People in academia and industry have accepted design thinking as a powerful way of approaching the world and to achieve change. Design thinking as a broad approach (and not as a simplistic process) seems to be able to provide humans with a way of approaching the world that other ways of thinking can't. However, if we want design thinking to develop we have to let go of the idea that design thinking is a well defined step-wise process, or a set of tools and techniques, and something that can be learned in an afternoon workshop.

Instead, we have to understand design thinking as a broad disciplined way of thinking, similar to what Gardner describes in his book as a "disciplined approach". Design thinking is not about using post-it notes or being user-oriented, or working in creative teams. It is a broad form of thinking that is disciplined in ways that other approaches are not. If we do not accept this, design thinking will only become a temporary fad and will after a few years disappear and be forgotten.

The misconception about "simple" designs

One of the misconceptions about design is that some designs are simpler and easier than others. The misconception is based on the idea that some designs in themselves are obvious in the sense that they may have few parts, simple and few functions, simple and obvious form,  etc. which would mean that the overall possible design space is highly reduced and the number of difficult judgments and decisions needed are also reduced.

This misconception is serious since it can lead to the idea that simple designs do not need so much designerly attention, effort, resources, and time. Contrary to this misconception, every particular design is infinitely complex. At the level of the ultimate particular, there is an infinite number of variables that need to be decided.

(Opposite to that, if we move towards the universal, the complexity is reduced as the level of abstraction increases, see diagram below)

I think it is liberating for a designer to acknowledge that every design, no matter how "simple", is equally complex and requires an equal amount of attention and effort. Of course, we may have designs that are almost copies or variations of existing designs, then the complexity in design decisions can be radically reduced, but at the same time, that makes the process less of a design process.

So, designers should be careful with stating what is simple, difficult, easy, complex, etc. Stating that a design is simple and then be blamed for a bad design outcome is not a good situation to be in. The default should be that all designs (unless copies or simple variations) are always infinitely complex and hence require full designerly attention and effort.

From the book "The Design Way" by Nelson & Stolterman

Design Judgment

In relation to my post about how designers learn I want to add a bit more about judgment and in particular design judgment. I don't think it is possible to overstate the importance of design judgment. Every design situation presents a richness and complexity that is not possible to fully grasp and handle in any comprehensive way. Designers are always dealing with overwhelming amounts of information while not knowing enough. The way to cope with this complexity is to use design judgment.

In our book "The Design Way" (ref below), we devoted a whole chapter to the notion of judgment. This is a section from the beginning of that chapter.

"Judgment is not a form of decision making as commonly understood. It is not dependent on rules of logic found within rational systems of inquiry. Judgment is not founded on strict rules of reasoning. It is more likely to be dependent on the accumulation of the experience of consequences from choices made in complex situations. However, judgment is not irrational, because it follows its own form of intuitive logic. Learning to make judgments is not a matter of learning to follow the steps of a technique, or to follow directions dictated by a method or algorithm, or to impose the a priori constraints of a theory. Wittgenstein stated: “What one acquires here is not a technique; one learns correct judgments. There are also rules, but they do not form a system, and only experienced people can apply them right. Unlike calculating-rules” (Wittgenstein 1963).

Judgment is, by definition, an elusive animal. It is the expression of the work of the subconscious mind, and as distinct from rational decision making as it is from intuition. Judgment has practical, pragmatic value and academic legitimacy, without having to be codified and generalized, as science demands on behalf of its cousin, reason. We believe the capacity to judge can be learned and then applied in design circumstances, without destroying its essence and value. This is unlike the case of intuition, where too much intellectual attention is often feared by artists who feel that reason, at its best, is the opposite of intuition, and at its worst, a mortal enemy. The ability to make good judgments is as essential in design as it is in business, law, medicine, politics, art, or any other profession. For a skill that is necessary to so many endeavors, it is surprising that judgment is so little understood and so seldom a part of one’s formal education." (p 139-140)

One aspect of judgment is that it can be understood as dealing with a particular form of knowledge. We also write about this in the following way.

"Judgment can best be understood when it’s considered within the context of knowledge, knowing, and the knower. To put it simply, judgment is knowing based on knowledge that is inseparable from the knower. By this we mean that judgment is based on a type of knowledge that is generated in the particularity or uniqueness of a situation; knowledge that is inseparable from the knower and is only revealed through the actions— cognitive or physical actions—of the knower. This is in contrast to decisions that are made, based on the type of knowledge that is of value primarily because it is separable from the knower.

Judgment knowledge cannot be stored in libraries or in databases. Colleagues in controlled experiments can’t replicate it. It can neither be memorized nor accumulated in any quantity so as to build a field of routine expertise. Judgment knowledge has instrumental value only for a particular situation and loses its direct and immediate relevance in the next setting except as experience.

Therefore, it becomes clear that separable knowledge deals in that which is universal, or generalizable—while the inseparable knowing of judgment deals with particulars and ultimate particulars. This implies that designers can learn to make better judgments, but cannot learn—a priori—the specific kind of knowledge necessary for particular judgments at the moment they occur—namely, adaptive and design expertise." (p 140-141)

Much more can be said about judgement. Designers are every day experiencing design judgment, sometimes as a powerful 'tool' that helps them do their job but sometimes as a way of working that is not understood and recognized by others as valid and respected. Design judgment needs more attention.

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Nelson, H. & Stolterman, E. (2012). The Design Way-- Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. 2nd Edition, The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.

How designers learn

Donald Schon writes in his last book ("Frame Reflection" see ref below) about the process with which designers learn from experience and about how knowledge aimed at supporting designers are produced.

He makes the case that one commonly accepted way of developing knowledge is to develop what he calls "covering laws", that is, externally valid propositions, "propositions that are probably true of all the instances to which they are applicable in principle." However, he states that one problem with this kind of knowledge when it comes to design is that it tends to "fail in practice because other things are never entirely equal in all relevant aspects". Design situations are always unique. He also states that "covering laws" that do seem to prove relatively useful commonly turn out to be trivial and not improving practical wisdom.

On the other hand "situation-specific, case-based studies of practice,...., tend to be dismissed by critics of normal social science persuasion because they do not produce externally valid generalizations." So, what is left? what kind of knowledge production actually works for the support of designers?

Schon's answer is that designers "do learn from their own past experience and from their vicarious experience of other people's practice". And that they do, in fact, generalize from these experiences. But their experiences are not "covering laws". Instead, their mode of generalization is what Schon calls "reflective transfer". With this concept, he means the "process by which patterns detected in one situation are carried over as projective models to other situations where they are used to generate new causal inferences and are subjected to new, situation-specific tests of internal validity".

This is a wonderful sentence. It is a sentence that explains why designers have to do design to learn and that the deepest form of learning requires practical experience. But it also means that in order to be able to carry over patterns as projective models, you need to be able to abstract thinking, to in some sense 'theorize" your experiences, which is why you also need tools that help you do this. Doing and thinking together.


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Donald A. Schon & Martin Rein, 1994, Frame Reflection - towards the resolution of intractable policy controversies. Basic Books

Escaping people, place and time

One of my favorite philosophers, Albert Borgmann, has developed a theory commonly called the Device Paradigm (reference below). The theory states that people are inclined to develop new technology that changes the way we do things from being focal practices to being commodities. A focal practice is an activity where you are aware of what is going on, have some understanding of how things work, and you are in control of the activity, and you are intentionally engaged in the experience. When technology is introduced, some practices become invisible and automatic. Technology creates a disconnect between means and ends. As a "user" you are commonly only aware of the end (the outcome). For instance, systems that keep our homes and workplaces warm or cool are commodified. We only experience the end result, the outcome, that is, the changing temperature (which we sometimes can control) but we do not have any idea about how and where the heat is produced or spread. The traditional focal practice of having a fireplace where you have to engage in preparing the wood, lightning the fire, keep it burning, etc. to create warmth is long gone.

So, the device paradigm leads to the realization that technology commodifies our environments and our activities. The result is technologies that "liberate" us from people, place, and time. Almost every app today is an example of this. If you ask the question, what is the benefit of a particular app, the answer is probably that it makes it possible to achieve something (an outcome) without having to deal with people or to be in a specific place at a particular time. In most cases, this sounds wonderful. We can do amazing things with the technology that could only be accomplished with a lot of work, transportation, and time management in the "old" days.

What Borgmann argues is that the Device Paradigm leads to loss of grounding. To be engaged in focal practices means to be in a particular place, engage in the process of achieving something in a focused way. To be in a particular place, at a particular time, with particular people, leads to an experience that grounds us. It connects us with people and places, and with time. If we do not have that, we are floating through or above the world. Not connected to anything. With focal practices comes a need for learning. There are frictions and failures. There is the satisfaction of achievements when being able to do it.

Borgmann is not arguing that technology necessarily leads to the device paradigm consequences. Instead, he argues that it is a matter of design. So what technological designs do we have today that do not show signs of the device paradigm but truly lead to focal practices?
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Albert Borgmann, 1984, "Technology and the character of contemporary life - a philosophical inquiry". The University of Chicago Press.