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Showing posts from 2012

Design Opportunities and New Responsibilites

As a follow up to my last blog on the evolution of design, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Design Firms go Beyond Gadgets as Portfolios Expand , focuses on the opportunities that are arising with traditional design firm's advancing frontiers. However these new opportunities should also signal the need more generally for some serious reflection on the difference between designing 'stuff' or 'things' and designing 'social systems' with the understanding that every design is either a part of a system or a system itself. This understanding brings new responsibilities and accountabilities into the preparation for and practice of design. In the 60's there was a keen interest in applying the very successful 'systems thinking' approaches (a set of approaches developed beginning in the Second World War for dealing with complex and large scale technical systems) that had worked so well in technical contexts to health, education and business

Design's expansion into the 'Invisible'

Recently an excellent article by Tom Fisher, the Dean of the School of Design at the U. Minnesota, titled Design's Invisible Century , provided an exceptional frame for understanding the evolving nature of design. The article makes a contrast with science's 'invisible' century, the 20th Century, when scientist thought they had 'seen' everything and suddenly the sciences of the 'unseen' realms of physics, chemistry, and psychology et. al. exploded into 'view' resulting in a scientific renaissance. The case is made in the article that design is now facing the same sort of renaissance in the 21st Century, in the realms of the 'invisible', as did science in the last century. Most formalized design fields are defined by their domains of 'visibility' but design is expanding into more 'invisible' domains. An example is design's expansion into other professions such as management. A seminal conference was hosted at Case Wes

Nelson Nierenberg Lecture 2009

Nierenberg Distinguished Professor of Design Lecture 2009 Carnegie Mellon University

Design, Wicked Problems & Throwness

Horst Rittel is one of the seminal residents in my 'Berkeley Bubble'. Recently a friend and colleague sent me an article about ‘double-wickedproblems’ . I have become ever more aware of the increasing number of references to ‘wicked problems’ in all forms of media that seem to have missed Rittel’s deeper insights . This brought up the concern I have about the use and miss-use of the term ‘wicked problem’.  The term ‘wicked problem’, first introduced by Rittel in West Churchman’s seminars at Berkeley, was in reference to his conceptualization of the impossible challenge of dealing with significant social issues using traditional, rational, ‘problem solving’ methods. In most cases what are miss-diangnosed as ‘wicked problems’ are actually complex or complicated problems that can be simplified or broken into smaller 'tame' problems allowing for a straight forward 'problem solving' approach to be taken. This approach is believed by many to be capable

Systems Thinking and Design Thinking Seminar

I recently returned from a very successful seminar hosted by the Systems Oriented Design program in the School of Architecture and Design (AHO), Oslo, Norway. The seminar drew together the authors of  chapters to be published in a proposed book edited by Birger Sevaldson (focused on the relationship between systems and design) plus faculty and graduates students at AHO. The hope was that this seminar would be the beginning of an ongoing dialogue among scholars, practitioners and students from around the world on the relationship between systems thinking and design thinking.

at Barnes & Noble

systemics - the logic of design

I will be presenting a talk: Systemics - The Logic of Design, at an invited gathering of design scholars and practitioners hosted by the Systems Oriented Design program at AHO (architecture and design) University in Oslo Norway the 1st week of October. I will make the case that rather than looking at a conjunction between 'systems thinking' and 'design thinking' we should look at design and systemics as inseparable from one another: i.e. systemics as the logic of design.

Expert vs. Generalist & The Third Way

A colleague in my linkedin connections   pointed me to an interesting HBR article on the growing importance of the ‘generalist’ vs. the ‘expert’ to business and other organizations. I have experienced first hand the ongoing debate between specialization and generalization since my early introduction to systems thinking. During my graduate studies I was introduced to ‘systemics’ and the challenges of designing social systems. The academic side of the challenge was to avoid the stigma of becoming labeled a dilettante while becoming an‘expert’ in how things were related and connected. I was warned from the beginning of my studies that there would be no ‘old boy’ network in place for me to fit into because of my systemic or non-specialized background. Even with all the talk about the importance of ‘T’ people in organizations, when it comes time to hire consultants or employees the choices favor domain or content experts. This ingrained distrust of anyone who is a generalist—i.e. no
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.      Nel
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 'scien