1. ‘Design’ Research as Semio-ethic Analysis
1.1 Theorising ‘Design’: Central and Peripheral Cases
Let us start with fundamentals. Designers design. But what is ‘design’? Herbert Simon’s classic The Sciences of the Artificial (1996) points out that design, which in its broadest interpretation means the shaping of states of affairs or artifacts into preferred ones, is the core of all professional activity. Methodologically however, The Sciences of the Artificial (Simon, 1996) had sought to develop a theory of design through detailing not any professional’s epistemology, but only those who reason carefully—i.e., those who according to Simon are good designers. Here one selects for oneself only that which is worth studying, from amongst the things one can study. Essentially this means selectively identifying under a conceptual sign (in this case, ‘design’) what is significant in the theoretical field, and focusing on those significant things (Chua, forthcoming 2014).
The point therefore is to arrive at the “focal meaning” or the “central case”, which captures those meanings that are significant in that field (Finnis, 1980, chapter 1). Yet the ‘significant in that field’ or focal meaning should be discerned by those who are practically reflective (critical, considered, mature…). Because: judgments and evaluations about what are significant in that field are in turn shaped by what one judges, rightly or wrongly, to be significant in itself (also see Finnis, 1980: 15-18). Such focal accounts of ‘design’ hence pre-supposes an inclusive, perspectival access to the moral viewpoint, which is in turn discerned by a studied grasp of what is truly valuable. This means accessing insights available from the work of moral philosophers in the first instance, who may not at all be designers, and where some of the descriptions to such a viewpoint have been developed (Chua, forthcoming 2014).
Consider: design theorist Clive Dilnot’s (2008) quest to uncover ‘design’ as a criticality – ‘not just as an occasional moment, but as that which defines the very state of being of a practice’ – in contrast with design that has become the “handmaid of consumption and the cheer-leader for inequality.” (p. 182) Dilnot’s approach to unpacking ‘design’ is precisely the one we recommend: notice here in Dilnot the selective, evaluative choices regarding which kind of ‘design’ is more significant and worth writing about, amongst a plurality of possible accounts. After all, as he himself admits, design is in fact typically positioned in such a way that its critical potential is repressed:
“…the dominant stance that design should efface itself as critical knowledge, in favour of translating the tasks assigned to it into operational or instrumental procedures, already eschews, from the beginning, a critical perspective. The critical is no less difficult for research. The ‘self-oblivious’ instrumentality that still governs the research ethic (and which design research has largely taken over without question) tends to balk at such concerns – operational finesse sits uncertainly with critical viewpoints; certainty is not vouchsafed for in the speculations of critical thought or practice (which aim, of course, at a different kind of truth)” (p. 3)
Yet Dilnot’s choice notion of design is precisely of one that is a criticality, however infrequently it occurs in the real world of design, as he suggests. Dilnot’s own approach to design research is hence also inclusivist (Chua, forthcoming 2014), just as he fully adopts the ethicist’s moral viewpoint, rather than that of the typical designer who, as he says, eschews the critical perspective. From the standpoint of one who is normatively concerned, he wishes us to take note of and grasp that account of design that is ethically critical of social inequality, rather than those which contribute to market structures leading to inequality – in his words: “those permitted by the market”. To this end, Dilnot (2008) himself writes approvingly of Herbert Simon’s (1996) “famous definition of design…the ‘devising of courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’ ”, hints at its critical possibilities, and draws our attention to the latter: “….[Yet n]o motivation for setting in train the ‘devising of courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’ happens without an initial apperception that what-is is in some manner deficient vis-a-vis what could be…[A] critical apperception [opens the game]. (Dilnot, 2008: 178-179; also see Chua 2009a)”