Regarding Design as a Constituting Practice Matters (original) (raw)

Implications for an Understanding of Design Practice

2013

Industrial design practice is characterised by the use of design representations as embodiments of design intentions. From the ubiquitous sketch through to high fidelity prototypes, the designer employs a variety of representations to externalise and develop solutions to often illdefined design problems. Reflecting their importance to design activity, efforts have been made to identify, define and classify the attributes of these various representations. This study synthesises these previous efforts in a qualitative analysis of 50 industrial design case-studies identified through literature review. Images of design representations and their associated captions were segmented using thematic criterion, resulting in 419 coded design representations. Results show that the attributes of design representations often defy clear identification and description. New approaches aimed at the identification, description and classification of design representation employed during concept and deve...

Design as Meaning Making: From Making Things to the Design of Thinking

Design Issues, 2003

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Altered Images: the relations between design representation and design practice

Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 2005

As information systems move out of the office into the wider world and are merged with mobile appliances, buildings and even clothing, the representations traditionally used in anyone discipline may not be adequate for understanding these new domains. Design representations are 'ways of seeing and not seeing '. Despite the central role representations play in design, the information systems design community has little understanding of the relation, ideal or actual, between design practice and design representation. This paper reports on an extensive design case study that aims at increasing. understanding of the nature and affordances of representations in the design process and argues for the need for information systems as a discipline to open up discussion of the design representations that may be required to f!fJectively design systems that mix traditional IS with disciplines such as industrial design, architecture anClfashion design.

Design and design projects from the perspective of semiotic epistemology

Filosofi(e)Semiotiche, Vol. 10, N. 2, 2023

This paper1 will examine the role of semiotics in teaching design and guiding design projects. Specifically, we will consider the contribution of semiotics as an important discipline for all the aspects of analysis in design and project organization. The focus will be on reception of meaning (analysis of tangible and intangible products and practices) on one hand and, on the other, the production of meaning (conception). In this regard, Michel de Certeau’s work on tactics and strategies is inspiring when it comes to understanding the need for a designer to maintain a dual posture throughout design projects. In conclusion, we will consider design culture in social design, a culture that is also characterized and nourished by the contribution of semiotics when it comes to identifying the specificities and values that define this culture.

Redesigning design; an invitation to a responsible future

1995

This essay proposes new contours for design as a profession in a world whose industrial products have become more and more language-like and incommensurate discourses compete with one another for hegemony-the design discourse being merely one of many. It takes design to be constituted (that is, defined with)in processes of languaging. It calls on us to recognize and act in the awareness of how our discursive practices identify us as the experts we are, create the objects of our concerns, and provide us with a vocabulary to communicate or coordinate our actions relative to each other. 1 The motivation for this essay stems from the far too common experience that whenever designers do work with their counterparts from the so-called 'harder' disciplines, professionals who can argue with statistics, with experimental findings, with calculations or from positions of administrative authority, they most often lose out. Examples are abound. 2 I conclude from them that, first, designers often are preoccupied with products when what matters is how their ideas occur in talk, in clear presentations, in hard evidence, and in compelling arguments. It is communication that makes a difference and gets results. Second, design is foremost conceptual and creative of future conditions. Dwelling on existing facts often inhibits and is generally less important than the ability to bring a multiplicity of people to recognize the benefits of collaborating in the realization of new ideas. Designers are bound to fail when they do not act on the premise that their conceptualizations must make sense to those that matter. Third, the success of famous designers is based primarily on carefully nourished publicity, personal connections, or longtime working relationships with clients. The visual qualities and functionalities in terms of which 1 The insight that we humans, whether as ordinary people, as professionals or as scientists of one kind or another, are living in language is the starting point of several philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Richard Rorty. I can not review their ground and must go on here. 2 The version of this essay which was presented to the conference included five examples, among them Robert Blaich's account of how Philips' well known Roller Radio almost didn't come to be. See Robert Blaich (1990), Forms of Design, pp. d1-d14 in Seppo Väkevä (Ed.

Investigating Design Representation: Implications for Design Practice

Proceedings of iasdr 2013, p1964-1975

Industrial design practice is characterised by the use of design representations as embodiments of design intentions. From the ubiquitous sketch through to high fidelity prototypes, the designer employs a variety of representations to externalise and develop solutions to often illdefined design problems. Reflecting their importance to design activity, efforts have been made to identify, define and classify the attributes of these various representations. This study synthesises these previous efforts in a qualitative analysis of 50 industrial design case-studies identified through literature review. Images of design representations and their associated captions were segmented using thematic criterion, resulting in 419 coded design representations. Results show that the attributes of design representations often defy clear identification and description. New approaches aimed at the identification, description and classification of design representation employed during concept and developmental design are required. These methods must be sensitive to the often ambiguous, richly idiosyncratic and unstructured nature of conceptual design representation. The paper concludes by arguing for approaches to analysis, description and classification that focus upon purpose of use as a strategy to define and explain design representation and the critical role it plays in designerly ways of thinking and action.

Design as Meaning and Form Making: An Introduction

2017

This chapter presents the scope and ambition of the research: to produce a model of design that accounts for the practices of designers, artists, and researchers in engineering. The goal is to reveal what connects these practices while respecting their respective contributions to the challenge of invention. The main question is what does it take to produce an original work of science, art, or design? According to the author, the answer lies in the humanities, in particular the use of semiotics and media studies that help to understand and produce the autonomous poetic space of design.

Doing Before Knowing - Practice and Theoretical Understanding in Design Processes

The relationship between theory and practice has a been a defining one in the way we shape our understanding of the world. The precedence or even the predominance of one over the other has been hotly debated since ancient times. In this essay we will explore the relationship between practice and theory in the context of knowledge production and more specifically the history and role of design during both the Industrial and Digital Revolutions

Design and creation: outline of a philosophy of modelling

Wikicreation.fr, 2013

This article examines the relationship between creation and design. After defining the concept of a poiesis of design, the article considers the process of creation in design from the perspective of ‘work in progress’ and shows that it is based on an infinite loop of co-determination between thinking skills and modelling skills. Redefined from the cultural theory of Bruce Archer, modelling is presented as the fundamental and characteristic creative process of design. Far from being limited to a technique of representation, it appears as the primary means of the project to ‘pro-ject’ the future, through which the act of design is fundamentally defined: a practice of creation oriented towards the future. What is created by design can then be called an 'idealect’ or a concept of an ideal.