The changing nature of design arguments

When my students in my graduate design theory course have to do interviews with practicing designers (combined in this year's class, about 100 interviews), one thing keeps surfacing.

In many cases, especially from more experienced designers, they mention the changing nature of design arguments. This is not unknown, but it is interesting to see that it is mentioned as a serious change in their practice. The change of design arguments can be simply characterized as a shift from a 'show and tell' model to a 'show and explain' model.

The show-and-tell model basically means that the designer shows the design itself (idea, prototype, etc) with its functionality, looks, etc. The show-and explain model means that the designer also engages in explaining how they came up with the design, what the process looked like, and what testing and evaluation they have done that shows the quality of the design. This is pushing many designers to be much more careful with their process planning and documentation. And it also forces designers to have a broader skill set when it comes to their process. They have to engage in more research like activities.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, also emerging in these interviews is that some designers feel as if they have to change their design argument model only for the purpose of satisfying their client, not because it helps them in their design practice. Actually, some see this shift as a waste of time and effort and that it takes time away from their 'real' design activities. In some cases, they even see it as a form of deception or pretense. And, since they do not themselves, believe in this form of arguments they do not feel good about it.

Donald A. Schön Bibliography (by Newman & van der Waarde)

Donald A. Schön has become one of the most influential scholars in the world when it comes to the understanding of professional practice and design practice. His work is recognized and highly used in a range of disciplines.

Unfortunately, as with many scholars that reach a certain level of recognition, the ideas that today are related to Schön does not adequately represent the breadth and depth of his scholarly production. Therefore is wonderful to now have a complete bibliography of his scholarly production. Stephen Newman and Karel van der Waarde have done a wonderful job in compiling this document (I know how difficult this must have been since I had tried myself without any real success).

You can download the document here.

A few years ago I wrote a short text on the popularity of Donald Schon, you can find that here.

Great text about the history of design research (by Nigel Cross)

Nigel Cross is one of the most influential scholars in the study of design as a process. He has made seminal contributions to the field and is probably most recognized for his notion of "designerly ways distinct human activity with its own forms of cognition, epistemology, methodology, and practice.
of knowing" which positions designing as a

Cross just published a new article "Developing design as a discipline" where he tells his own story of his life as a researcher. By doing that he also lays out the core of what design research has been doing in this area since the 60s.

I highly recommend this article.

Nigel Cross (2018) Developing design as a discipline, Journal of Engineering Design, 29:12, 691-708, DOI: 10.1080/09544828.2018.1537481

About truth as "getting it right" -- great text by Michela Massini

Now and then you meet a text that really resonates with your own thinking. It is always a wonderful experience.

Today I stumbled on the Aeon article "Getting it right - truth is neither absolute nor timeless. But the pursuit of truth remains at the heart of the scientific endeavour" by philosophy professor Michel Massimi at the University of Edinburgh.

Massimi explores the notion of truth in science in a way that is both profound and straightforward. A wonderful text that is beautifully written, has clarity and excellently argued.

The transfer of rationality

In 1994 I wrote a paper on design and rationality. I have not recently looked at this text but I did today. It is always interesting to see what you worked on 25 years ago. And not surprisingly, I am still
struggling with the same ideas. I am actually at the moment working on a text about improving design practice. Of course, I realize that I am making more or less the same arguments as I did 25 years ago.

I still like the paper though! You can download it here.

Reference: Stolterman, E. (1994). The transfer of rationality - adaptability, acceptability and the transparency of methods. i Baets, W. (eds) Proceedings of the second European conference on information systems. Nijenrode University Press, Breukelen.

Revisit: Explainable AI, interactivity and HCI

Early November I wrote a post on explainable AI, interactivity, and HCI. It is interesting to see how this topic is developing. I see almost every day articles, blogposts, papers that address AI from other perspectives than traditional AI. People (and researchers) are engaged with all kind of legal, social and societal aspects of the use of AI. Of course, some also point to the ultimate question which is if the growth of AI will lead humans to be second-hand citizens and not in charge of our future.

It is a good thing that so many are concerned with what technology can do. At the same time, it seems as if many researchers take on the issue without grounding it in their own expertise. This means that they start by trying to explain AI almost on a technical level, which in many cases becomes too simplistic and sometimes not even correct. I prefer when experts approach this issue based on their expertise. One of the best texts so far in my view is Zerilli at al. "Transparency in algoritmic and human decision-making: is there a double standard?". These researchers come from the legal field and they approach it from their expertise. I wish that HCI researchers will do the same, that is, approach the question of AI and its use from the perspective of interaction and interactivity.

Designing has no given problems, no given processes, and no given solutions

We have made a paper available as a preprint on SocArXiv. It is a paper written by Jordan Beck and me. I think this is a good paper, but we have not been successful so far to get it accepted.

Beck, J., & Bergqvist, E. S. (2018, November 5). Designing has no given problems, no given processes, and no given solutions. Retrieved from osf.io/dz9xr 

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/dz9xr