Tracing ideologies in design texts: An overview

0 downloads 0 Views 227KB Size Report
cally, they influence design choices (for both designers and users), and set the ... A disciplinary architecture consists generally of: (I) statements about (II) ... denotative meaning (descriptive) and connotative (prescriptive) meaning of ... To the extent that a problem has these characteristics, it is usually called ill structured. Be-.
Tracing ideologies in design texts: An overview Martina Maria Keitsch, Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Abstract One invitation in the call for working papers for the NORDCODE seminar in Kolding is to look at the topic of ideology in design. Within this theme, the following contribution investigates ideologies in design texts. These texts often appear as argumentative and reasonable not at least because they are supported by good examples from practice. Nevertheless, design texts include political, social and ecological opinions and judgments and these are rarely exposed and discussed. The paper gives an overview of some of these ‘hidden’ ideologies by tracing and analyzing definitions and metaphors in classic product design, social design and eco-design texts. The texts indicate tendencies and ways of thinking within these design fields rather than representing them. The outcome of the analysis should increase consciousness while reading design texts and facilitate choices while writing them. Didactically, making students aware of the normative implications in design literature might strengthen their analytical abilities and argumentation skills. Content The paper consists of four sections. Section one introduces a disciplinary architecture for design and shortly clarifies the main terms used in the paper. Section two examines texts from Simon (classic product design), Papanek (social design) and Manzini (eco-design) related to the role which they ascribe to design and designers through definitions (i.e. explicit attribution) and metaphors (implicit attribution). Section three shows general tendencies in the texts and discusses advantages and pitfalls. Section four indicates how insights from tracing ideologies in design texts can be used for in curricula and proposes areas and activities for further study. 1.

Structure and clarification of terms

Besides examples and descriptions from design practice, definitions and metaphors contribute to structure the design disciplines, and, within these disciplines, different design fields. Ontologically, definitions and metaphors are conceptual elements which expose assumptions in texts. Epistemologically, their understanding advance building theories and methods. Practically, they influence design choices (for both designers and users), and set the limits for how

1

and where design is acknowledged. A disciplinary architecture consists generally of: (I) statements about (II) something that is (III) represented, interpreted or manipulated by something (IV) in the light of something.1 (I) Texts, articles, curricula, journals etc. about (II) the design of products, services and processes are employing (III) tests, experiments, calculations based on (IV) theories, assumptions, and values.

I

II

Context of statements (oral, written)

Context of phenomena Context of phenomena (objects, e.g. products, processes, waste)

Products, service, process

Context methods Contextof of methods (calculations, instruments etc., e.g. MFA, LCA) Tests, experiment, calculation

III

Context of basics (theories, axioms etc.)

IV

Basic assumptions (human, nature, human-nature, role of economy and technology Assumptions and values e.g. nature as model)

The disciplinary architecture indicates a rough analytic framework and in reality the contents from the layers merge. However, layer IV typically includes assumptions and values that serve as “regulative ideas” in a Kantian sense2. Regulative ideas play a dominating role for arranging our way of thinking, organising our imagination of phenomena, and governing our decisionmaking. It is this set of assumptions and values expressed in form of definitions and metaphors this article is looking for. Definitions and metaphors are particularly interesting. Usually, the first are explicit statements that express or support an assumption and/or value in a text (layer I). The second are implicit expressions, which can counteract the same assumption/value, when used unconsciously. Ambivalences between explicit use of definitions and implicit use of metaphors in design texts have been touched upon elsewhere3. This paper, however, will exemplify how definitions and metaphors of design and designers are used in the three fields to manifest assumptions and values. Some terms: Design texts are understood here as written material, not in Derrida’s all-encompassing sense: “There is no outside-the-text (“Il n'y a pas de hors-texte”).4 A definition is an identification or

2

description of the essential nature or qualities of something. ‘Metaphor’ means a comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects, where the first is described as seemingly equal to the second in some ways. Metaphors emerge through an imagination, which connects a denotative meaning (descriptive) and connotative (prescriptive) meaning of terms (e.g. head of the family).

2.

Design texts: An overview

Classic product design texts are represented here by Herbert Simon, who worked with human problem solving based on a cognitive psychologist fundament. Accordingly, Simon defines design as a cognitive process of solving ill-(not healthy)-structured problems5: “The current research target is to gain an understanding of problem-solving tasks when the goals themselves are complex and sometimes ill defined, and when the very nature of the problem is successively transformed in the course of exploration. To the extent that a problem has these characteristics, it is usually called ill structured. Because ambiguous goals and shifting problem formulations are typical characteristics of problems of design, the work of architects offers a good example of what is involved in solving ill-structured problems. An architect begins with some very general specifications of what is wanted by a client. The initial goals are modified and substantially elaborated as the architect proceeds with the task. Initial design ideas, recorded in drawings and diagrams, themselves suggest new criteria, new possibilities, and new requirements. Throughout the whole process of design, the emerging conception provides continual feedback that reminds the architect of additional considerations that need to be taken into account.” 6

In general: “Everyone designs who devises a course of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones”7 and: “ The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.”8 Besides the true believe in human purposive rationality, these definitions reveal some interesting pragmatist perspectives on design and designers. First it is claimed that design is a matterof-fact activity and second that it is focused on the future. Consequently, designers are future planers who want to achieve a particular outcome. This outcome can be accomplished if designers gain control of the process how things work. However, designers should not aim at the stars. Simon presents himself as pragmatist thinker by introducing the term ‘satisficing solutions’, explaining that finding the optimal solution could require too many resources or the optimal solution might not even exist:”The time required for a search through a haystack for a needle sharp enough to sew with depends on the density of distribution of sharp needles but not on the total size of the stack.”9 Because of time-money constrains, design processes are always concerned with “resource allocation”10.

2

Despite his criticism of making too much of a science out of design, Simon often uses metaphors from natural sciences to describe the cognitive, problem-solving process of design activities: “The peculiar properties of the artefact lie on the thin interface between the natural laws within and the natural laws without.” In curricula Simon believes that schools can mediate a … “body of intellectually though, analytic, partly formalizable, partly empirical, teachable doctrine (etymological tautology, M.K.)11 about the (design, M.K.) process”12. The importance of a critical stance towards commercial business imperatives and marketing prescriptions has long been promoted in design texts. One of the most important advocates for this view is Victor Papanek, who argues for the social and ecological responsibility of the designer: “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few… by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed…In this age of mass production when everything must be planned and designed, design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself). This demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer.’13

For Papanek, Design must be meaningful. One question the designer has to ask in this context is: “Am I on the side of social good, or will the object that I design, be an addition to the catalogue of unnecessary fetish objects?"14 In Papanek’s opinion a lot of designers are preoccupied with aesthetics, while it is more important to focus on producing products with ‘real’ benefits for people, and by doing so contribute to the societal and moral needs of society. “As a politically disinterested but morally motivated animal, the designer should not be a ... pimp for the excesses of big business interests”15 and “To create lipstick for honest whores is one thing, but to create deodorant for her pimp is another.”16 Papanek ascribes designers the role as some kind of saviors of humanity. He claims that in order to understand the moral, political and social obligations of such a task, design education should not only ground on learning skills, nourishing talents, understanding the concepts and theories that inform the field, but also build on philosophical fundaments in a way that makes values and ethics intrinsic to design methods. The entanglement of descriptive and normative elements in Papanek’s writing is (unfortunately) a common feature of many “ethical” motivated design texts, where authors seem to believe that individual enthusiasm and moral ambitions are convincing enough to make an argument and do not bother to clarify their terms and systematize their statements.

3

Papanek’s metaphors often refer to the living being and the lifeworld. The programmatic title: “Design for the real world” (1985) presupposes e.g. a sort of genuine reality which, in turn, implies that there is a world, which is not real (…and which we should not design for).17 The title: “The green imperative: ecology and ethics in design and architecture” (1999) suggests that the ecological environment is a particular area that forces the designer to take a moral standing point. Surprisingly enough, Papanek uses sexual metaphors for negative connotations of the consumption society such as, well, not the ‘honest whore’, but ‘pimp’ and ‘fetish’. On the other hand, considering the protestant fear of the natural in form of sexuality, these metaphors seem to have a strong and quasi-religious effect on disciples: “He leads us away from 'fetish objects for a wasteful society”.18 The concept of design for sustainability first emerged in the 1960s when authors such as Papanek, Bonsiepe, Schumacher and Manzini began to criticize modern and unsustainable product development and suggest alternatives. Manzini tries e.g. to combine a natural science and engineering oriented and a social science and political oriented approach. His article ‘Design, ethics and sustainability, Guidelines for a transition phase’ gives a definition on design from the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) "Design is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life-cycles” (ICSID 2005). A creative activity that is also the reflective one of choosing between different possibilities. “19

In the same article he continues on the role of designers: “Conceiving and proposing products, services and lifestyles, designers play an important role and consequently have an equally important responsibility in generating social expectations in terms of wellbeing... Of course designers have no means of imposing, for good or bad, their point of view on others. But they do have the tools to operate on the quality of things, and their acceptability, and therefore on the attraction of the scenarios of wellbeing they help to generate.”20

Further, Manzini presents practical guidelines in form of two fundamental principles for designers (Low material-energy intensity and High regenerative potential), which are very much in line with the eco-technical part of sustainable development (as is the life cycle concept21). However, he connects these principles with personal and social wellbeing: “The concept of wellbeing is the most basic set of visions and ideas that legitimate socially and ethically the same existence of the production and consumption system.” 22 Building scenarios for sustainable wellbeing is (again) a social task for designers. “Goal: we have to conceive scenarios of wellbeing in which the overall quality of the context of life has to be considered, in which the physical and social common goods are regenerated and where contemplative time has its place.”23

4

Manzini’s metaphors often refer to eco-aesthetic systems thinking: network, connectivity, system's creativity, autopoesis etc.24: “…these phenomena (creative communities, M.K.), small and weak as they seem, represent the seed of a plant that if properly cultivated, could grow and prosper. Obviously, we cannot know if this will really happen and that the seeds will find the ground and proper nutriments for growth, but we do know that their future also depends on us.”25 “To think of objects not as instruments for our use, but as entities that are effectively linked and that need care - to think of objects as plants in our garden…. Think of objects that are beautiful and useful as trees in your own garden, objects that endure and have lives of their own, objects that perform services and require care… I am thinking of criteria of quality that leads to a system of objects that have the variety, complexity, life and blend of beauty and utility of a garden but, at the same time, are a product of the real world, a world extensively and intensively artificial.”26

3.

General tendencies in the texts

Classic product design texts see the design process as phases or segments related to activities and outcomes. Starting with some kind of problem identification, the majority of texts, as exemplified through Simon, aims to develop ideas or concepts and then chose one or two possibilities for realization considering different trade-off options. On the minus side, such rationalist approaches can be criticized for being too positivistic, giving too little room for creativity, and for not considering idiosyncrasies in design with their generic, cook bookish principles. Furthermore, complex problems, involving different actors and disciplines are not likely to be solved by a problem-solution focus as e.g. Schön points out. For Schön the framing of problems often depends on metaphors underlying the stories for problem setting and problem solving. In the article ’Generative metaphor’27 he uses an example of seeing a troubled inner-city neighborhood as urban ‘blight’ (plant infection by germs) and, hence, taking steps rooted in the idea of disease. Thereby Schön illustrates that a conflict without ends cannot be solved by the use of techniques solely derived from rationalist approaches. On the plus side, purpose-rational oriented concepts can provide guidelines for novice designers to decompose problems and to train and improve their decision-making abilities in a relatively safe methodological environment. Additionally, in some contexts ‘natural science’ arguments, metaphors and methods sound more convincing than ‘creative’ reasoning, which increases the status of credibility to their use. Regarding social and ethical aspects towards design, a critical stance towards commercial (and perhaps mostly marketing) interests prevails today within the design community. Especially in humanitarian design, responsibilities to the environment and society are taken methodologically into consideration in product development processes. The focus is thus rather realistic than ideological. For example, the Design against Crime project28 which has the goals to improve de-

5

sign's effectiveness for creating a safer environment and promoting social inclusion focuses on activities rather than believes (this does not mean that one cannot trace assumptions and values here, but that they are less flagged). Manzini’s two principles are the epitome of good design for sustainability solutions – making convenient material and energy saving products. Other positive tendencies that Manzini’s work explicates are the design focus on new paradigms such as service systems and a strong user involvement in local and everyday-life solutions. The methodological problem with the latter is, however, that user involvement on a egalitarian basis is often time and resource consuming and choices seldom can be justified in a scientific way. 4.

Conclusion

According Barthes29 every author is influenced by ideological ideas, that is beliefs and representations that sustain and legitimate current power relationships. Ideology promotes assumptions, values and interests of dominant people or groups (within a discipline). The discussed design texts (as any others) reveal central rational, moral and socio-political ideologies about design and the designers’ role. In addition to obvious statements, metaphors provide a specific form of indoctrination, which can be more powerful than direct arguments, but which is sometimes also counterintuitive to the values that should be expressed. Comprehensive text analyses can contribute to learn more about the intricate relationship between design language and the language of design. Such analyses could be included in design curricula with the goal to learn to understand and build explanations, arguments and metaphors. For design texts and the development of the design disciplines this is as important as an increased consideration of case studies and users responses.

6

References 1

Keitsch, M./Isenmann.R. (2003), Industrial Ecology: a philosophically focused appraisal. Business Strategy and

the Environment Conference, 15-16 September, Stamford Hall, University of Leicester, UK 2003, p.72-84, ISBN 1 872677487. 2

Kant, I. (2000 [1787 B 699]). Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1 und 2) [Critique of pure reason]. Werkausgabe in 12

Bänden. Band III und Band IV, Weischedel, W. (Ed.). Frankfurt am Main (Germany): 14th ed. 3

Keitsch, M. (2008), Metaphors in design research, 7th NORDCODE Seminar & Workshop, Lund University,

Sweden. 4

Quoted from Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory; first edition, Man-

chester; Manchester University Press; 1995), p. 70. 5

Design Problem-Solving Process Models are not discussed here. See e.g. Roozenburg, N. F. M. and Eekels, J.

(1995) Product design: fundamentals and method, Chichester New York, Wiley. 6

Simon, H.A. (et.al) (1986) Decision Making and Problem Solving, reprinted with permission of Research Briefings,

National Academy of Sciences, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, http://dieoff.org/page163.htm 7

Simon, H.A. (1996) The science of the artificial, 3rd edition MIT, MA p. 111.

8

Ibid, p.4.

9

Ibid, p.120.

10 11

Ibid, p.124 Doctrine: 1380, from O.Fr. doctrine , from L. doctrina: “teaching, body of teachings, learning”

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=doctrine&searchmode=none 12

Ibid, p.113

13

Papanek, V, (1991), Design for the real world: Human ecology and social change. 2 ed. London: Thames and

Hudson, p. ix. 14

Ibid,

15

Ibid, p 327.

16

Ibid REF.

17

This naïve perception does not even think of “heterotopias” as possibility for choices. See: Michel Foucault.

Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias: http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html. 18

Announcement from the Publisher Thames and Hudson for the Second Edition of Papanek’s book: Design for

the Real World. http://www.thamesandhudson.com/en/1/9780500273586.mxs. 19

http://www.dis.polimi.it/manzini-papers/06.08.28-Design-ethics-sustainability.doc, p.1.

20

Ibid, p.2.

21

DFE – Design for environment, a technological approach to sustainable development, has a one goal to optimize

material and energy use throughout the entire life cycle of a product i.e. extraction-consumption recycling phase. 22

Scenarios of sustainable well-beinghttp://changedesign.org/Resources/Manzini/Manuscripts/ManziniScenarios.pdf,

p.1. 23

Ibid. p.8.

24

Interview with Manzini, Space and pace of flows, in: Doors of perception,

http://flow.doorsofperception.com/content/manzini_trans.html 7

25

http://doors8delhi.doorsofperception.com/presentationspdf/manzini.html

26

Manzini, E. (1992) Prometheus of the Everyday, Design Issues Vol. 9, No. 1. pp. 5-20.

27

Schön, D.A. (1979), Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-solving in social policy, in: Ortony, A.

(Ed.): Metaphor and Thought, pp. 284-324, Cambridge University Press, New York. 28

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/dac/project.html

29

Exemplified e.g. in: Mythologies, (1972), Hill and Wang, New York, pp.74-77

8