The cultural origins of human cognition

政治自由主义 = Political liberalism

A prevalent and pervasive view of designing is that it can be modeled using variables and decisions made about what values should be taken by these variables. The activity of designing is carried out with the expectation that the designed artifact will operate in the natural world and the social world. These worlds impose constraints on the variables and their values; so, design could be described as a goal-oriented, constrained, decision- making activity. However, design distinguish- es itself from other similarly described activities not only by its domain but also by additional necessary features. Designing involves exploration, exploring what variables might be appropriate. The process of explo- ration involves both goal variables and deci- sion variables. In addition, designing involves learning: Part of the exploration activity is learning about emerging features as a design proceeds. Finally, design activity occurs within two contexts: the context within which the designer operates and the context produced by the developing design itself. The designer’s perception of what the context is affects the implication of the context on the design. The context shifts as the designer’s perceptions change. Design activity can be now characterized as a goal-oriented, con- strained, decision-making, exploration, and learning activity that operates within a con- text that depends on the designer’s percep- tion of the context.

Design Prototypes: A Knowledge Representation Schema for Design

Convention: a philosophical study

The Concept Of Law

Research on the relationship between design and the creation of knowledge is a relatively recent phenomenon. In architecture, for instance, it was not so long ago that designers tended to view knowledge with disdain, as a hindrance to unfettered creativity or an encapsulation of “freeze-dried prejudices.”1 Recently, however, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) devoted the December 2004 issue of its AIA Journal entirely to the theme of knowledge, which strongly suggests that times are changing. Increasingly, the act of designing is considered to be or involve some kind of knowledge production.2 This directly follows from the type of knowledge designing relies on, which is practicebased and tacit,3 (i.e., embedded within the very act of designing).4 On the other hand, it is possible—at least in a rough and ready way—to appreciate the distinction between the aim, or intention, of producing knowledge and other aims,5 such as designing an object or a building. To state it a bit more bluntly, a client typically hires an architect to design a building, not to produce knowledge. Why then is it so difficult to set clear boundaries between design and scholarly research? Questions about the relationship between both are far from new. According to Nigel Cross, they reappear about every forty years,6 and have been written about by many authors before. Already in 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber pointed out the difference between the kind of problems designers and planners deal with and those that scientists handle.7 More recently, Johannes Eekels and Norbert Roozenburg made a methodological comparison of the structures of design and research in engineering, and concluded that both are strongly interwoven and mutually dependent, yet fundamentally different.8 Although it seems time to move on from making all sorts of comparisons between design and research, this paper tries to shed more light on the issue from a conceptual and psychological point of view. To this end, it calls in the philosophy of mind—rather than the philosophy of science, as is usually the case9 —and more precisely the notion of intentionality. Instead of considering design as a mix of knowledge creation and application, the process is decomposed into distinct yet interacting mental acts, in which designers establish relationships with (objects in) the world. A detailed analysis of this relationship forms the basis for a nuanced, yet fundamental, comparison with

Design in mind

How does inclusive design relate to good design? Designing as a deliberative enterprise

Intentions and Intentionality

Inclusive design approaches like universal design prescribe addressing the needs of the widest possible audience in order to consider human differences. Taking differences seriously, however, may i...

Fair by design. Addressing the paradox of inclusive design approaches

Ideology is commonly defined along functional, epistemic, and genetic dimensions. This article advances a reasonably unified account that specifies how they connect and locates the mechanisms at wo...

Matteo Bianchin

Papers

Design in mind

How does inclusive design relate to good design? Designing as a deliberative enterprise

Intentions and Intentionality

Fair by design. Addressing the paradox of inclusive design approaches

Explaining Ideology: Mechanisms and Metaphysics: