Gmail - Re: Are politicians designers?

2/6/17, 7(06 AM

lukas vargas <lukas.vargasb@gmail.com>

Re: Are politicians designers?

2 messages

Krippendorff, Klaus <klaus.krippendorff@asc.upenn.edu> Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 3:15 AM

Reply-To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <PHD-
DESIGN@jiscmail.ac.uk>
To: PHD-DESIGN@jiscmail.ac.uk

dear ken

you quoted me correctly "if you ask politicians if they are designers, their answer is NO." i would this to be true also of
architects, feminists, businessmen, computer programmer, etc. each for their own reasons

but then you question the validity or usefulness of self-designations, and are quoting nixon saying "the president is not
a crook." (note that this a 3rd person statement). you argue " If all responsible designations must be self-designations,
it would be difficult to discuss the world around us." i never wrote of ALL self-designations and i am not suggesting
that professional identities are entirely individualist constructions.

for example, if someone has studied say engineering, graduates with an engineering degree, is hired as an engineer
and says "i am an engineer, not a designer" that person refers not just to him and herself but a whole history of
affirmation by individuals and institutions in which he or she was and still is a contributing participant.

it is a mark of intellectual imperialism when designers claim able to decide whether someone really is (or is not) a
designer despite their own affirmed identity. from an ethnomethodological perspective, i come to a conclusion opposite
to yours. i seriously the world would be a horrible place if we deny each other their self-identifications and impose our
categories on others, for example by saying "politicians are designers" perhaps followed by qualifications, or denying
self-identifications to others by asserting that "politicians are not designers."

imposing one's own categories on others without listening to and respecting how they see themselves is the source of
all prejudices -- ethic, gender, and professional.

herbert simon did not say that craftsmen, engineers, managers, etc, are designers, he pointed out that they all act to
improve something. i don't want to get too deeply into simon's conception but feel the need to add that his science of
the artificial is fundamentally limited to problem solving, improving existing conditions, improving the status quo. he
was not interested in creating innovations, artifacts and practices without precedence -- something that i try to
understand and have written about.

i am suggesting that we, in discussing other professions on this list, should respect how they define themselves and
try to learn from what they do well and what makes them fail when handling new situations. simon sought to
generalize problem solving wherever they occurred not to categorize professions.

i am reading several responses on this thread as evidence that the identity of designers is being challenged by the
radical changes in the world we live in, including the emergence of numerous competing professions. if we have
something to contribute to them, we should invite them into our conversations. I guess, most of them have developed
institutionalized identities of their own. this leaves us the option to study them in order to improve our own design
discourse.

klaus

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Gmail - Re: Are politicians designers? 2/6/17, 7(06 AM

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:PHD-
DESIGN@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2017 10:50 AM
To: PHD-DESIGN@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: Are politicians designers?

Hi, Klaus,

You wrote,

—snip—

if you ask a politician whether he or she is a designer, the answer is a clear NO if you ask an engineer whether he or
she is a designer, the answer is NO as well even if you ask an architect whether he or she is a designer, the answer is
most likely NO

i read that designers design products, politicians don't terry wrote that designers write specifications, politicians don't
ken said once a politician is elected he becomes a designer, i wouldn't call a politician a designer unless he or she
agrees to this designation, which i doubt any politician will.

—snip—

I’ve got to agree with you in one respect, yet I’ve also got to disagree.

If all responsible designations must be self-designations, it would be difficult to discuss the world around us. I recall
the well-known politician Richard Nixon announcing, “The president is not a crook.” Many of us would see key parts of
the Nixon career in a different light, but the fact remains that he was neither impeached nor convicted. Of course, we
don’t accept self-designation as the only measure of some cases.

In a more reasonable light, I’d say that there are many people who do not self-designate as designers, yet who
nevertheless design. That’s the core of Herbert Simon’s definition of the activity of design: “Everyone designs who
devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

There are several more issues. One is the question of those who self-designate as design professionals, people who
are paid to undertake design as professional designers. Another is the question of people who do not self-designate
as designers, yet are nevertheless paid as professional actors to “[devise] courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones.”

I agree with several points of view, including — but not limited to — my own. I have been interested for many reasons
in comments by Mitch Sipus, Liz Goodman, and Ali Ilhan. Now you’ve raised an idea that I have not considered.

Is it is possible to recognize and designate someone as a member of any profession when they do not declare
themselves to be such? Does their own self-designation matter if they do what self-designating professionals do when
someone pays them to do so?

Simon’s definition includes almost all practicing professions and most professional practices. That virtue may also be
a flaw.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | ᦡᦇ She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and
Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-
the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

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Gmail - Re: Are politicians designers? 2/6/17, 7(06 AM

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne,
Australia

Email ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I

http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn

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Terence Love <t.love@love.com.au> Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 6:31 AM

Reply-To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <PHD-
DESIGN@jiscmail.ac.uk>
To: PHD-DESIGN@jiscmail.ac.uk

Dear all,

There is a need to be careful with words.

Much of what is happening in the discussion is like the 'cat has four legs, dog has four legs so a dog must be a cat (or
not)'.

Many professional activities have an aspect whereby designs get created. In that part of their activity the professional
undertaking it is designing and they are a designer. That doesn't however mean that the whole of their professional
activity is as a designer.

This can be seen in engineering design and the engineering profession. There is good clarity about different roles in
the engineering profession: sometimes a part of an engineering professional's role is as an engineering project
manager; sometimes as a mathematical modeller; sometimes it is negotiating with stakeholders, etc and sometimes it
is creating designs as an engineering designer. Because engineers are aware of the variety of different roles and
activity. they keep the 'designer' label for one specific part of engineering professional activity.

Other fields in which design activity occurs also have many other roles besides design activity but do not have the
same clarity of separation. An equivalent would be if there were 'graphics professionals' and one aspect of their role is
designing, i.e. creating graphic designs.

For politicians, it is also easy to see that a part of their overall role is the design of some form of political strategy or
policy concepts or plans. For this part they are designers, but that doesn't mean to say that it is necessary to insist on
an equivalence relation "poiticians==designers"

Best wishes,
Terry
[Quoted text hidden]

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