Looking at Design: Keynote by Harold Nelson:

http://www.knowledge-through-design.uni-kiel.de/

Coming soon!

The Design Way

Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World

Second Edition, MIT Press (2012)

Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman

Humans did not discover fire--they designed it. Design is not defined by software programs, blueprints, or font choice. When we create new things--technologies, organizations, processes, systems, environments, ways of thinking--we engage in design. With this expansive view of design as their premise, in The Design Way, Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman make the case for design as its own culture of inquiry and action. They offer not a recipe for design practice or theorizing but a formulation of design culture’s fundamental core of ideas. These ideas--which form “the design way”--are applicable to an infinite variety of design domains, from such traditional fields as architecture and graphic design to such nontraditional design areas as organizational, educational, interaction and healthcare design.

     Nelson and Stolterman present design culture in terms of foundations (first principles), fundamentals (core concepts), and metaphysics, and then discuss these issues from both learner’s and practitioner’s perspectives. The text of this second edition is accompanied by new detailed images, “schemas” that visualize, conceptualize, and structure the authors’ understanding of design inquiry. This text itself has been revised and expanded throughout, in part in response to reader feedback.

Harold G. Nelson was 2009–2010 Distinguished Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University and is currently Senior Instructor in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School and President of Advanced Design Institute. Erik Stolterman is Professor of Informatics and Dept. Chair in the School of Informatics and computing at Indiana University Bloomington

Happy New Year!

I came across an interesting article by C. West Churchman that was published the year I arrived at Berkeley to begin my graduate studies. It is interesting to review the article and rediscover the ideas that were so captivating for me on arrival at UC. It must have been hard for someone like him to work with students like myself who were so new to this kind of conversation and so naive to the consequences of taking his scholarship seriously. I experienced this first hand while doing my field work for my Ph.D. at the Lawrence Berkley Lab. He was the Principle Investigator on the Dept. of Energy's grant that was funding the research for my dissertation. His Systems Design approach (as discussed in the article mentioned above) led him to be removed from the grant and I was cautioned, if I wanted to continue my career in research, to not follow his lead. Of course if I had been a little more savvy I would have realized this was the issue (i.e. the power of 'science' re public good) that should have been the focus of my dissertation rather than the case study of geothermal development in Northern California that I carried out.

His ideas introduced in this article are still timely and fresh in many ways as are all those developed in his other writings. His ideas are still nascent in most formal academic settings which is unfortunate. Although there are many academics and professionals who have found his ideas to be exciting and provocative there are few of us who have found ways to innovate them into the world in the way that Apple brought the technologic ideas of PARC into the consumer world of 'must have' products.

Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of one of the greatest designers to have lived and worked in recent memory. He changed our material world for the better and set standards for quality and innovation that will not soon be matched if ever. He is greatly missed. My condolences to his family and friends. RIP Steve.

The Berkeley Bubble

In the natural world, there are two ways to become an accidental vagrant. The first is to break from a normal migration route and strike off in an entirely new direction. The second is to be blown off course by a storm into strange new territory. In the world of human affairs the same is true. I found myself to be an accidental vagrant after deciding to head in the direction of graduate school—Berkeley in my case—rather than continue on my track as a practicing architect. While at Berkeley I was blown of the course I had set for myself, which was to study with the architect Christopher Alexander, by a squall I encountered in the form of a seminar held every Tuesday on campus and hosted by C. West Churchman, the Director of the Center for Research in Management Science in the Hass School of Business.

At this seminar I experienced the academic version of a perfect storm. It was a combination of great ideas and great thinkers coming together because of their common interest in systems and, indirectly, design thinking. This gathering of thought leaders, including the students who attended the seminar, I have come to call The Berkeley Bubble. When West retired from Berkeley, the binding force for the seminar was broken and the boundary conditions dissolved but the echoes are still heard today. The story of The Berkeley Bubble is one that needs to be shared. There is benefit to be had in making the ideas and idealism from that time better known to a wider and more diverse audience.

This is an open invitation to friends, classmates, colleagues and anyone else to share their seminar experiences and its effects on their lives with the rest of us on this blog. I would invite everyone to share the links they forged with other people or other schools of thought because of the influence of the seminar. What were the emergent ideas that came as a result of the seminars influences and influencers? What careers or life adventures came as a result of an association with the seminar?

For those unfamiliar with the seminar, attendance was open to anyone, student, staff or faculty member, on or off campus and from anywhere in the world. Influential thinkers, academics and professionals, took part in the seminar over its life span. Showing up at the seminar you might find a Nobel Laureate in attendance, a top ranked governmental official or a leading academic from another university, or an interesting person from anywhere in the world. The seminar attracted students who would themselves become successful and influential in their own time. The students from across campus formed the core of an intellectual community over several years of attendance. Seminar attendees introduced the ideas of others—not in attendance—into the ongoing dialogues creating an ever widening entanglement of people, institutions and interests.

I will start the dialogue by saying a little about my own experience. I attended the seminar regularly even after graduation. After completing my M. Arch. at Berkeley, I was accepted into the Ad Hoc Ph.D. program that was created for graduate students whose interests did not fit into any clear disciplinary or professional area. My focus was social systems design and was one of those that didn’t fit into established programs. I was allowed to pick my courses and to choose my faculty. Most of my faculty came from the seminar attendee list, such as Horst Rittel, or were colleagues of those in attendance. It was a dangerous but exciting path for me to choose “that has made all the difference”. My Ph.D. committee was drawn from attendees to the seminar and included:

C. West Churchman: philosopher

Leonard Duhl: psychiatrist

Michael Heyman: attorney and UCB Chancellor

Arnold Schultz: ecosystemologist

Joseph Esherick: architect and Chair of the School of Architecture

Each one deserves an extensive introduction of their own. To begin I would recommend the short introduction to West Churchman by Werner Ulrich at http://projects.isss.org/C_West_Churchman  

My challenge was to connect the ideas from such a diverse group into a coherent thesis. A major part of my learning was the result of dealing with that task alone. The secondary and tertiary connections to people, schools of thought and seminal events that grew out of my connections with the seminar are immense. I will talk about these links more in the future as others begin sharing their own experiences and remembrances.

Maybe this collective dialogue will take the form of an edited publication at some point?

Stanford presentation: Designing Stuff; Lame Gods in the Service of Prosthetic Gods

(April 16, 2010) Harold G. Nelson, Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses the importance of understanding the nature of designing (agency), designers (lame gods), and designs (prosthetic gods). Stanford University: www.stanford.edu Stanford School of Engineering: soe.stanford.edu Stanford Engineering Everywhere: see.stanford.edu Stanford University Channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com

http://www.videosurf.com/video/designing-stuff-lame-gods-in-the-service-of-prosthetic-gods-1215192352