Design Theory

This paper aims at introducing a French audience to the Intelligent Design debate. It starts by reviewing recent attacks on any possibility of a rational account of theism in light of the contemporary theory of evolution. A section is devoted to outlining the genesis of the "wedge" strategy, to distinguish it from young earth creationism, and to highlight the questioning of evolution as our meta-narrative bearing on overall conceptions of the scientific endeavor. The arguments propounded by Behe are reviewed in detail, as the example of blood coagulation as a purported irreducibly complex mechanism is contrasted to the question of system boundaries. Counter-arguments by Miller are reviewed, and a few bottom-line questions are directed to invite a further consideration of the type of engineering this could testify to. The concept of complex specified information is then presented, and contrasted to traditional and lingering axiomatic problems in the theory of probabilities. The problem of the recognition of an intrinsic pattern is also brought together with some work in recent philosophy of causation and explanation. The two opposing strategies, naturalistic evolutionism and intelligent design, are seen as caught in each other's rhetoric, and some probing is offered in the direction of a theory that could surpass those stalling factors.

The book presents discussions and debates from three distinct areas of service design research: societal change, value co-creation and development of service design. User participation can change society, and service design can contribute to this change. The service design approach provides tools for engaging the citizen and policy design. Service design plays a role in value co-creation and innovation processes. This role is more strategic than it is merely operative. Service design is establishing itself as a discipline. This debate includes a strong multi-disciplinary approach and the research and development of service design methods. The book includes chapters from top service design authors (Daniela Sangiorgi, Stefan Holmlid, Andy Polaine, Nicola Morelli etc.) and interesting case studies (Arne Van Oosterom and Tim Schuurman from Designthinkers and Erik Widmark and Emma Johansson from Tranformator etc.) from design consultancies and researchers. This book has a blog, http://www.sdwiththeory.com/, where information about the book will be available, and a twitter handle, @SDwithTheory, to receive ideas and feedback about the book.

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

""Short Treatise on Design: Design is the art of bringing enchantment to everyday life through form. But there is nothing magical about that enchantment, nor even artistic: it is the concrete result of a certain number of technical procedures specific to each designer’s task. Designers make projects. And because they make projects, the effect they seek to achieve is not limited to the conception of objects. It also implies an exhaustive vision of the world, extending even to include the dream of its future. Each one of a designer’s creations is an anticipated fulfilment of that dream. All the world has to do is follow... or not?

Podcast (radio broadcast): http://soundcloud.com/stephanevial/court-trait-du-design-sur (fr)""

I set out a possible framework for a designerly theory of knowing, called gramma/topology, a framework that is simultaneously a framing action in real time; it is a means towards an end. However, this model-of-knowing-and-exploring, projected onto the world, becomes a unique construction that may look the same (to an observer), but differs in use from person to person like fingerprints. The main part deals with the theoretical and philosophical inputs that provide the core of what can become gramma/topology, an argumentative theory in search of both epistemological and ontological ways of knowing. After a short summation, and as an example of my own gramma/topological reasoning I discuss the structure of a cybernetic design conversation, including Heidegger’s notion of the ontology of equipment, and end with Aristotle’s defense of arguing to first principles.

"This paper presents reflections from a service design case study and uses it to investigate the emerging roles of a designer. Skills, methodologies and values are drawn through the case study and used to communicate how this contributes to the continuing expansion of the profession today. Seven roles are discussed in this paper: designer as a facilitator, communicator, capability builder, strategist, researcher, entrepreneur and co-creator. The analysis of the activities of the designer in this particular case study has indicated a presence of all of these roles in various degrees. This brings up three key questions for discussion: 
1. How can the design profession communicate the value of this role shift to external
audiences? 
2. How will design education address the requirements of these emerging roles? 
and more relevant to this workshop, 
3. How will businesses utilise these additional skills of a designer?"

The aim of this Chapter is to identify the manner in which thinking about timespace in the context of urban and regional design and planning may reflect both the physical transformation processes that are central to the material object of that domain as well as the temporospatial characteristics of activity and mobility behaviour of people.

Design – in art – and in relation to the challenges to notions of ‘form’ and ‘function’ posed by technology requires a certain amount of risk, speculation, self-reflection and critique to evolve. In relation to traditions of critique in art and an established and emerging foundations in design practice, contemporary design provides a platform for imagining and trying out possible visions of the future everyday. If we acknowledge a use of design in art venues to be a means for opening up basic notions of design to a discourse of reflection and critique, perhaps we may recognize the role of designers to enable society to debate and dream about the future.

In which ways the notion of identity interacts within the design field? How can it provide a better understanding of controversial issues in modern Brazilian design? To deal critically with this history implies the identification of facts that interacted during its institutionalization from the fifties to the seventies. These are questions concerned to individual identities, collective identities and even institutional identities. This is the main concern of this article.

With the new challenges presented by climate and energy issues, design must reexamine its role in shaping and changing values – values within the sustainability discourse, implicit in the design practices that impact production and embedded in the products that shape practices of consumption. Recognizing that design has a profound power to influence consumer and societal values, we need to renew this role today. We might rethink how products influence beliefs and behaviors, and how the design of systems and interactions has the power to shape people's perceptions, experiences and values over time. This article reflects on a series of research projects developed at the Interactive Institute and suggests implications for rethinking the objects – and objectives – of design today.

""Abstract
Hybrid visual languages can meet the needs of North/South/East/West design education, without compromising the inherent strengths of any. As we make ‘the global turn’ into the 21st century, the awareness of how interdependent we are through our shared technological, economic, political and ecological interactions is obvious. Or as Marwan Kraidy, cultural media professor points out, we have come to the place of “Hybridization, or the cultural logic of globalization.”c1 He cautions us to use the term ‘hybridity’ with utmost specificity and contextualization as its overuse has rendered the concept a meaningless cliché. He also warns because of the exhaustive post-colonial linkages between hybridity and power, it is vital to look beyond historically applied tensions of domination and resistance.2 Thus Kraidy argues more contextualized interpretations and applications be researched to avoid ambiguous views of transcultural interactions.
""

"ABSTRACT: Nowadays Aesthetics is not exclusively confined to the fine arts. Aesthetics is a way of perceiving the world, as it was originally understood by the Greeks (Calabrese, 1999). Thus, it can be argued that everything in life has its aesthetic side since aesthetics has to do with the set of preferences and aversions that intervene in our immediate relations with reality (Acha, 1990). This way of conceiving aesthetics has brought new and interesting developments to our understanding of the aesthetic experience of art, design and craft. Indeed, Empirical Aesthetics (that based on behavioural sciences such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc.) has acquired a similar status to the philosophical approach of Speculative Aesthetics. Differences about the type of activities, objects and things on which every society places its aesthetic consciousness are now taken into account more than ever (Maquet, 1999).Our emotional experiences have been found to be dependent on our relationship with the environment in which they take place (DiSalvo, Hanington and Forlizzi, 2004). Modal categories such as beautiful, ugly, tragic, funny, sublime, trivial, typical, and novel have been incorporated to the study of aesthetic experiences (Berlyne, 1974; Teigen, 1987; Crozier, 1994; Acha, 1999). And the link between cognition and emotional experiences, substantiated by neuroscientists (LeDoux, 1994), has not only re-affirmed the existence of an intellectual and a communicative dimension on top of the perceptual and emotional ones of our aesthetic experiences (Csikszentmihlayi and Robinson, 1990), but it has also given birth to a visceral, behavioural and reflective characterization of such experiences (Norman, 2004). In the light of these contributions, the author of this paper formulates theoretical similarities and distinctions between the aesthetic experiences of art, design and craft.

KEY WORDS: aesthetic experiences, similarities and differences, art, design, craft.

RESUMEN: Hoy en día la estética no está exclusivamente confinada a las Bellas Artes. La estética es una forma de percibir el mundo, tal como fué originalmente entendida por los griegos (Calabrese, 1999). De manera que puede decirse que cada cosa en la vida tiene su lado estético dado que la estética tiene que ver con el conjunto de preferencias y aversiones que intervienen en nuestras relaciones inmediatas con la realidad (Acha, 1990). Esta manera de concebir la estética ha traído consigo nuevos e interesantes avances para nuestra comprensión de las experiencias estéticas del arte, el diseño y la artesanía. De hecho, la Estética Empírica (o aquella basada en ciencias de la conducta tales como la psicología, la antropología y la sociología) ha adquirido un status similar a la aproximación filosófica de la Estética Especulativa. Las diferencias sobre los tipos de actividades, objetos y cosas en torno a las cuales cada sociedad erige su consciencia estética son, hoy mas que nunca, tomadas en cuenta (Maquet, 1999). Se ha determinado que nuestras experiencias emocionales dependen de la manera como nos relacionamos con el tipo de entorno donde cobran vida (DiSalvo, Hanington y Forlizzi, 2004). Categorías modales tales como bello, feo, trágico, divertido, sublime, trivial, típico y novedoso han sido incorporadas al estudio de las experiencias estéticas (Berlyne, 1974; Teigen, 1987; Crozier, 1994; Acha, 1999). Y el vínculo entre la cognición y las experiencias emocionales, sustentado por los neurocientíficos (LeDoux, 1994), no sólo ha reafirmado la existencia de una dimensión intelectual y otra comunicativa además de las dimensiones perceptivas y emocionales de nuestras experiencias estéticas (Csikszentmihlayi y Robinson, 1990), sino que también han dado pie para la caracterización de tales experiencias como viscerales, conductuales y reflexivas (Norman, 2004). A la luz de estas contribuciones, el autor de este trabajo formula similitudes y distinciones teóricas entre las experiencias estéticas del arte, el diseño y la artesanía.

PALABRAS CLAVES: experiencias estéticas, similitudes y diferencias, art, diseño, artesanía."

In this text, the starting point, towards an interrogation of the contemporary communication design’s mediating action, is Vilém Flusser’s work. In a society in which the dematerialized information, transmitted through information technologies, plays a main role and design becomes ubiquitous, is progressively harder to grasp its medi-ation. The issues raised by Flusser that associate design with technique and communication, as such, allow unfolding a set of reflections on the subject of this article.