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Abstract
This article is about the design of design education. After a series of reflec-
tions on the design space of design education in relation to complexity, un-
certainty, and change, the article is divided into two main parts. First comes
a brief history of how design seems to be evolving in response to complexity,
and how this has led to a shifting balance between what we consider to be
certain, and what is inherently uncertain when designing. Second, there is
a discussion of what this evolution and shifting balance implies for design
edu cation. The article does not offer a general account or articulation of
what design or design education is or should be like, but a series of con-
ceptual tools, diagrams, and figures enabling us to frame and define design
programs for education and research. Ultimately, this article is a reflection on
what it means to think about design as an act of making things possible, and
therefore as the opposite of taking things for granted.
Certain Uncertainties and the
Design of Design Education
Johan Redström
Keywords
Design education
Design history
Design philosophy
Research through design
Received
October 23, 2019
Accepted
February 1, 2020
84 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
Introduction
In this article I will present some of the conceptual tools I have come up with
to try and deal with issues of scope, complexity, uncertainty, and change in
design and design education. The notions, diagrams, and ideas I would like
to discuss here in one way or another all address how design evolves over
time and where that leaves us now. The purpose of these reections is not to
describe what design or design education is or should be, but to better under-
stand the design space we are working with as we create programs for educa-
tion and research. Perhaps this article can be visualized as an attempt to take
an imaginary walk in this space, looking at its structure, and considering
what is visible from different positions and perspectives. It is a discussion of
what it means to think about design as the act of making things possible.
There are certain things we can say about what designing is. But much
about design is also uncertain. Part of what denes design practice is how
we balance certainty and uncertainty—while we may have the ambition to
look at a design issue or situation with as open eyes as possible, explicitly
seeking new perspectives and knowledge as we approach it, we at the same
time also put our trust in pre-established structures, processes, and methods
to support us making it through.
Similar things can be said about what it is like to educate designers.
On the one hand, we identify which tools, skills, methods, processes, and
so on we believe a student needs to know to competently enter the design
profession. On the other, there are also many things we do not know about
the future of designing, such as what it will take to thrive in the design
profession even as it changes and evolves. There is a difcult trade-off here
between honing the skills of contemporary practice and taking the risk of de-
veloping competence in areas that may or may not become more important
later on. How an institution handles this trade-off between certain and
uncertain aspects of design and designing will be one of the dening charac-
teristics of its design education. Whether we like or not, it is quite clear that
one cannot simply assume things about design: to design is the opposite of
taking things for granted.
The importance of not taking things for granted has, however, increased
signicantly in recent years. If we imagine that there is a balance between
certain and uncertain things in design, between established foundations on
one side and the need to revise or replace them in light of contextual and
other changes on the other, the issue of sustainability is quickly shifting
weight towards the need-for-change side—much of what we have come to
take for granted in design cannot be sustained. Futures have never been
certain, and are thus notoriously difcult to predict, and yet there is un-
precedented scientic agreement about the certainty of what lies ahead
should we not change. To understand what this implies for design and how
we educate designers is critical, as failing to do so very likely will result in
education even further reinforcing ways of living, doing, and thinking that
we now know cannot be sustained. This is a signicant shift in the balance
between certain and uncertain aspects of design education. In other words,
we cannot ignore the issue of how to make design less certain of itself.
In the following paragraphs I will argue that not taking “things” for
granted is not a new idea coming about as a response to the seriousness of
85 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
our current situation, but rather something that—if we look closely—has
been central to how design has been developing since its very beginning.
The rst part of the article is a historical overview of how design has re-
sponded to increasing complexity and uncertainty, and why a key reason
design seems to be constantly expanding can be found in a constant and crit-
ical questioning of what making is and could be. Based on this, the second
part of the article turns to issues in the design of design education related to
the changes that have taken place over time and the challenges these might
bring to our current efforts. Finally, I will outline the distinction between
design as something given and as something constantly in the making, and
argue that both research and theory will be awarded new roles. “Designing”
is thus not something one is instructed how to do, but something one learns
how to create.
Coping with Complexity
The process of design emerging out of crafts was well under way for a
long time when industrial design was born. In his seminal book on design
methods, John Chris Jones outlines a history of designing that was moving
from traditional crafts, to design-by-drawing, and then towards new
methods beyond drawing, as it lacks the perceptual span necessary for
dealing with contemporary problems.1 In many ways, his is a narrative de-
scribing what is required of design to cope with ever-increasing complexity.
In comparison to how traditional craft approached improvement via gradual
renement over time, design-by-drawing offered a greater perceptual span
both in terms of managing size (the scale drawing) and production (as it sup-
ports both overview and detail: work can be divided, planning and building
coordinated, and so on). But Jones goes on to discuss why modern design
problems are even more complicated than traditional ones, requiring new
methods with even greater perceptual span, coming to the conclusion that
“The search space in which we have to look for feasible new systems, com-
posed of radically new products and components, is too big for rational search
and too unfamiliar to be penetrated and simplied by the judgments of those
whose education and experience has been limited to the existing design and
planning professions. Clearly, we need ‘multi-professional’ designers and
planners whose intuitive leaps are informed by knowledge and experience of
change at all levels from community action to component design. Equally, we
need new methods that provide sufcient perceptual span at each of these
levels.”2
Looking back at design and design education, however, I think Jones’s
argument can be rephrased as follows: it is not so much that modern design
problems are more complex than previous ones, but rather that coping with
complexity is a fundamental driver of change in design—the perceived
radical increase in complexity is not only because of external change such as
societal and technological development, but most importantly also due to an
increasing ambition and ability within design to both appreciate and address
such complexity. In other words, had design problems changed so much and
become so much more complex over time, there would be no need or space
John Chrs Jones, Design Methods, nd
ed (New Yor Vn Nostrnd Renhold,
), –
Ibd,
86 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
left for craft—but there is, and a substantial part of the design world still
deals with matters of form and material. Beyond responding to needs and
other external pressures, there was a signicant element of choice in design
wanting to engage and explore alternatives beyond its previous scope.
Before looking for possible internal motivations for engaging with ever
increasing levels of complexity, however, we need to unpack the notion of
complexity itself, and what Jones calls its search space. If we think of design
as emerging out of traditional crafts, and take making rather than planning
as its creative foundation, then the making of everyday things before de-
signing focused on creating things with just a few functions. Most of the time
something would be made with few materials, by a small group (or even just
one craftsperson) and almost always intended for a particular customer and
a well-known, specic context for use. The creative practices that formed in
and around such circumstances could therefore afford to rely extensively on
previous experience. Improvement through gradual renement over time
was not necessarily (and certainly not only) because of limitations to the
perceptual span of the methods used, but because it was effective—when a
context is stable enough, previous experience can serve as a useful founda-
tion for future action.
Consider the craft of tailoring: its materials are mostly familiar, as are its
tools and techniques. Many of the garments a tailor makes would be based
on templates that have been rened over the years. And further, there are
ways of nding out what is not known: measurements can be taken, prefer-
ences in t noted, age and life habits accounted for (to determine how much
margin to include in the waist). In an early example of design research, “The
International Encyclopedia of Scientic Tailor Principles for All Kinds and
Styles of Garment-Making” from 1885, D.C. Christner states the following
towards the end of a section on tailor nishings:
“We have given the above, because they represent standard-methods; the
principles of which, will ever remain the same; and which, cannot be effected
by fashion—as they can be adjusted to every conceivable style.”3
The situation designing emerged from is not just one of relatively low (per-
ceived) complexity, it is also one where the process of making relied on
existing knowledge to a signicant degree, and where the new knowledge
obtained during the process was primarily used to make adjustments. It is
however important to remember that this is not the same as to say that an
outcome is somehow determined by this, or that there is no room for experi-
mentation or innovation. On the contrary, there is considerable freedom. For
instance, a weaver might be using tools, techniques, and materials that have
been used for centuries, even millennia, and yet engage in a process where
the outcome is anything but completely determined.
What is discussed above as the known vs. unknown aspects of the design
situation concern what we can say and know about the design space as such
at the outset, not what we decide to do with that knowledge. Anni Albers,
once a student at the Bauhaus and later head of the weaving department at
Black Mountain College, provides a beautiful example of how this issue can
be addressed in design education:4
D C Chrstner, The International Ency-
clopedia of Scientific Tailor Principles for
All Kinds and Styles of Garment-Making
(Phldelph [S M Lrzelere, prnter],
), , vlble t https//rchve
or/detls/nterntonlencchr
“Orl Hstor Intervew wth Ann Albers,
Jul ,” Archves of Amercn
Art, Smthsonn Insttuton, onlne,
ccessed Februr , , https//
wwwsedu/collectons/ntervews/
orl-hstor-ntervew-nn-lbers-
87 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
“SEVIM FESCI: What is your method of teaching? How do you…?
ANNI ALBERS: Well, maybe it’s an exaggerated term to call it ‘method’ at
all. But I tried to put my students at the point of zero. I tried to have them
imagine, let’s say, that they are in a desert in Peru, no clothing, no nothing, no
pottery even at that time (it has been now proven that, archaeologically, tex-
tiles have come before pottery), and to imagine themselves at the beach with
nothing. And what do you do? There are these sh at the Humboldt Current,
marvelous sh swimming by, the best in the world in fact, because of the cold
current there. And it’s hot and windy. So what do you do? You wear the skin
of some kind of animal maybe to protect yourself from too much sun or maybe
the wind occasionally. And you want a roof over something and so on. And
how do you gradually come to realize what a textile can be? And we start at
that point. And I let them use anything, grasses, and I don’t know what. And
let them also imagine what they were using at that point. Did they take the
skin of sh and cut it into strips possibly to make longitudinal elements out of
which they could knot something together to catch the sh? And get carrying
materials in that way.
SEVIM FESCI: Quite a bit of imagination there.
ANNI ALBERS: Exactly. Absolutely inventing something. And gradually then
we invented looms out of sticks and so on. And the Peruvian back strap loom.
And once they understand these basic elements—that the Peruvian back strap
loom has embedded in it everything that a high power machine loom today
has. And they understand it in a completely different sense than walking
into a factory and seeing these things operate because they know what is
necessary and what kind of inventions have occurred in the course of history.
Well, this is a very rough way of doing it. So it goes back to imagination and
invention.”
Looking back at the time when design emerged, at least three different
dimensions of complexity were coming into view: which things are being
made (the results and outcomes); what the design process is like, (indi-
vidual, collaborative, or participatory work); and for whom and for what the
design is destined (the use situation) (Figure 1).
Design seems to be constantly expanding its scope and reach. Traditional
crafts did not evolve in this way. What makes designing so different? There
are several potential explanations to consider. One option is in line with the
characteristics of industrial capitalism—to quote Clive Dilnot
“…as a professional activity design does not occur, does not happen, only or
even largely through its own volition. Rather, design—modern design, profes-
sional design—is called into being by industrialization and is so in order to do
a specic job.”5
Industrial design came about for many reasons, but one cannot escape the
fact that had there not been industry, with its drives, needs, and an inherent
orientation towards growth, there would not have been industrial design.
A second potential explanation might be found by searching for colonialist
traits and tendencies. Though rarely explicitly colonial in its intention, some-
thing still happens when the notion of “making something for someone”
is transformed by the capacity to make things not for a few people, but for
hundreds or thousands of people elsewhere in the world—a transformation
even further accelerated by using or exploiting people’s needs and desires in
Clve Dlnot, “The Mtter of Desn,”
Design Philosophy Papers , no ()
, DOI https//door//
88 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
various ways. Strictly speaking, design might not be in the business of telling
people how to live their lives, or what to appreciate and value, but the actual
outcome is sometimes remarkably close to such ambitions.
Contemporary challenges, such as sustainability (in the wider sense),
will require us to contend with many historical factors. However, there is
also hope to be found in reecting on this process of constant expansion, and
as we look for other perspectives on what fundamental reasons for change
there might be. And so let us take another look.
Making Design
Design emerged out of a fundamental rupture in making: a deep split that
occurred as people began to use machines to make, or rather to produce
things. In traditional crafts, there is a unity to the work, and making also
entails the producing of the actual thing. As machines took over, and the
unity of making and production was lost, much of what was previously taken
for granted with respect to the ethics and aesthetics of making could not be
sustained. But, this also meant that making was now free from production:
the ultimate purpose of making was no longer tied to producing that thing
in the end, but could become something else. Indeed, this could be seen as
either loss or liberation (or indeed both)—making had to become something
else. And the new idea about making that was planted, nourished, and culti-
vated in places such as the Bauhaus was that making could be about nding
things out.
At rst, to not take things for granted but instead nd things out meant
precisely that: to actually nd the things that would be suitable and worthy
of mass replication. Consider the following excerpts from Walter Gropius’s
“Principles for Bauhaus Production: Dessau” in 1926:6
“This research into the nature of objects leads to the conclusion that by res-
olute consideration of modern production methods, constructions, and
Fure
Three spects of complext n desn
the complext of the thns we m to
crete (the outcome) the complext of the
desn process, ncludn the desn stu-
ton, methods, etc (the process) nd the
complext of the ntended use stuton,
ncludn how fr t reches beond the
desners’ own context (the use) © b
John Redstrm
Wlter Gropus, “Prncples of Buhus
Producton Dessu,” n Programs and
Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architec-
ture, ed Ulrch Conrd ( Cmbrde,
MA MIT Press, ), –
89 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
materials, forms will evolve that are often unusual and surprising, since they
deviate from the conventional (consider, for example, the changes in the
design of heating and lighting xtures).
“It is only through constant contact with newly evolving techniques, with
the discovery of new materials, and with new ways of putting things together,
that the creative individual can learn to bring the design of objects into a
living relationship with tradition and from that point to develop a new atti-
tude toward design….
“The Bauhaus workshops are essentially laboratories in which prototypes
of products suitable for mass production and typical of our time are carefully
developed and constantly improved.
“In these laboratories the Bauhaus wants to train a new kind of collabo-
rator for industry and the crafts, who has an equal command of both tech-
nology and form….
“The Bauhaus represents the opinion that the contrast between industry
and the crafts is much less marked by the difference in the tools they use than
by the division of labor in industry and the unity of the work in the crafts. But
the two are constantly getting closer to each other. The crafts of the past have
changed, and future crafts will be merged in a new productive unity in which
they will carry out the experimental work for industrial production. Specula-
tive experiments in laboratory workshops will yield models and prototypes for
productive implementation in factories.”
We can clearly see a shift in focus from nal product to prototype, and how
that shift supported a reorientation of the making process from production
towards speculative experimentation. It implied that questions of actual
production could be bracketed and, at least to some extent, dealt with in
principle. Further, it meant that this emerging practice we now call design
was no longer limited by the scale and reach of its own making-production,
as traditional crafts were, but able to gradually distance itself from the limi-
tations of any particular kind of making. By leaving the question of actual
production open, design could begin to explore making in a much more
experimental sense, speculating about change at different scales, and even
begin to approach systemic issues. The ingenuity of this reorientation is that
design could still be conceived as a matter of making things, and many of the
processes could still be very close to prevalent practices in the arts and crafts
(in some respects, the distance between Walter Gropius and William Morris
is not that great). Nevertheless, this shift towards prototyping opened up for
transcending most, if not all, practical and not least conceptual limitations
associated with any particular act of making.
At its core, that transcendence initiated a transformation of making by
means of a reorientation from production to knowledge creation—in other
words, a transformation from making things to making things possible. And
it is precisely here that I think we nd hope: design does not rest on an
idea that we already know how to do things, but rather on doubt, unstable
ground, and a profound willingness to question what making things is all
about. In many ways, early industrial design was still largely an applied art.
The processes used were still very much grounded in individual artistic prac-
tice—but there is a fundamental shift taking place as the unity of the work
was lost and the very purpose of making redened.
90 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
From Why, and How, to Who
This shift in the purpose of making—the idea that we primarily make to
make things possible—rst came to expression as a shift in focus from nal
thing to prototype, and thus from nal outcome to which designs must be
explored to get there. Indeed, as design evolved and began to explore new
territories in the design space—which includes engaging in more complex
issues—the limitations inherent in an individual artistic process became
increasingly salient. And then, at some point, designing was ready to funda-
mentally question and investigate another aspect of making that had previ-
ously been taken for granted: how we go about designing.
As an illustration of this critical shift, let us consider another highly in-
uential school in the context of European design education, Hochschule für
Gestaltung Ulm (HfG Ulm). In the late 1950s the HfG Ulm began to trans-
form design from a primarily individual practice to a collaborative effort. In
the second issue of the Ulm Bulletin, published in 1958, there is a piece by
Tomás Maldonado entitled “New Developments in Industry and the Training
of the Designer.”7 Part of it reads
“Today, not only has the true importance of design training been recognized,
but the dissemination as well as the discussion of the theme has been fully
fostered…. This … would lead one to imagine that the schools of industrial
design have already reached their maturity in every country, and all in the
same way; in other words, that the question is one of institutions whose goals
and methods are nally established.”8
“However … these very same [institutions] … show on the other hand a symp-
tomatic state of disorientation regarding what industrial design is and ought
to be….”9
“In each of these periods, the producer-consumer relationship differs, for in
each one the product functions in a different way. As a result, the design
cannot always have the same function or the same signicance. In the rst
of the periods I have just recalled, the designer was the constructor, the
inventor, the planner. Henry Ford himself was a great designer of this period.
In the second period, the designer was the artist; it matters little whether his
aesthetic was popular or purist. In the third period, he will be the coordinator.
His responsibility will be to coordinate, in close collaboration with a large
number of specialists, the most varied requirements of product fabrication
and usage; his will be the nal responsibility of maximum productivity in
fabrication, and for maximum material and cultural consumer-satisfaction.”10
If the prototype is a typical example of what came out of design’s reorienta-
tion with respect to why we make, then inherent in for instance this critique
by Maldonado was a new idea about design methods and processes. There
is much to be said about design methods, but what is most important here is
that discerning methods and methodology became a way of thinking about
the design process itself as something separate from the designer, as some-
thing we can design—and therefore as something that can be designed in
many different ways. In retrospect, and because of the rhetoric at the time,
it is tempting to think of this as a matter of making design certain—or more
precisely, to do what one can to increase the chances of design resulting in
Toms Mldondo, “New Developments
n Industr nd the Trnn of the
Desner,” ULM Bulletin 2 (Ulm HfG Ulm,
), –
Ibd,
Ibd,
Ibd,
91 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
a certain result. But more fundamentally, this was about questioning how
we make, nding ways to make design processes visible and open for review
and revision. In other words, it was about opening up yet another aspect of
making to alternatives.
An illustration can be taken from the design methods movement in the
UK in the 1960s. Consider the following remark by John Chris Jones from
Design Methods:11
“The rst question to be answered is ‘What do the new methods have in
common?’ The most obvious answer has already been given: it is that all the
methods are attempts to make public the hitherto private thinking of de-
signers; to externalize the design process…. Clearly, the underlying aim is to
make designing more manageable, particularly at the systems level. A major
advantage of bringing design thinking into the open is that other people,
such as users, can see what is going on and contribute to it information and
insights that are outside the designer’s knowledge and experience.”
That the intention was not to make design more predictable or more certain
is quite evident from Jones’s later remarks on what he felt became an area of
study that misunderstood its basic premise:12
“Where is the essence of the subject?
For me the word in the index with the most sub-entries to it
Is ‘Instability of Design Problems’
Which has about ten entries
The whole problem becomes more unstable as you widen it
As you take more and more of life to be part of the problem you
don’t get a more stable problem you get a less stable problem.
And this I think is not what the rationalists like.
I think that people who approach this subject because it seems
rational are those who like certainty in life.
If you wish for certainty you might as well leave this subject alone
Because design is to do with uncertainty
As far as I can see
But a lot of people who do wish for certainty do dabble in it
And I fear they’re wrecking the subject”
Indeed, the most important result of opening up the question of how we
design was not that it made design more predictable, but rather the oppo-
site: it made the design process something we do not take for granted, but
something we actively design.
If we follow designing into the space of possibilities revealed when we re-
place an individual process with an externalized process we actively design,
we will soon run into the issue of who should then be part of such forms of
collaboration.13 Ideas about participation came into design for a number of
different reasons, ranging from the needs of industry to coordinate across
expertise in larger projects, to political ambitions of making democratic
principles present in development processes leading to signicant changes in
the workplace (the latter becoming a central starting point for participatory
design in Scandinavia).14
Jones, Design Methods,
John Chrstopher Jones, “How M
Thouhts bout Desn Methods hve
Chned Durn the Yers,” n Develop-
ments in Design Methodology, ed Nel
Cross (New Yor John Wle nd Sons,
),
It s probbl no concdence tht whle
the frst conference ssocted wth
the emern Desn Reserch Socet
ws held round the theme of desn
methods (), the one tht revved the
effort to estblsh the socet decde
lter () ws bout desn prtc-
pton For more on ths, see https//
wwwdesnreserchsocetor/cpes/
hstor
For exmple, see Fnn ensn nd Jon
Greenbum, “Herte Hvn S,”
n Routledge International Handbook
of Participatory Design, ed Jesper
Smonsen nd Ton Robertson (New
Yor Routlede, ), – nd Pelle
Ehn, Work-Oriented Design of Computer
Artifacts (Stocholm Arbetslvscentrum,
)
92 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
Again, there is an inherent, critical orientation in this transformation of
making, something asking us to be less certain about what making must be
like. Jones again:
“Designer. Inventor. Architect. Genius. Leonardo da Vinci. Our new tradition,
in the West, has been to believe that creativeness is a matter for gifted indi-
viduals and that an ‘ordinary person,’ or a group, cannot do anything new. I
think this is a myth, but a difcult one to disprove. Looking back now, at this
book, and at what has become of design methods, I think that this is the crux
of the matter: the new methods permit collaborative designing whereas the
old methods do not. They change the nature of designing, or can if one lets
them.”15
Given this very brief outline of how design has been evolving, I would argue
that a central reason the scope of design has been expanding is a result of
how the interest in coping with complexity has led to critical and constant
questioning of what making things can be like. This emerging design space is
illustrated in Figure 2.
We can see the traces of each of these once radical transformations in
how we work today. We see them in the ever expanding repertoire of proto-
typing, and how we still constantly come up with new ways of manifesting
ideas, concepts, and use situations depending on what objectives, contexts,
materials, and technologies we engage with. We can see it in how we contin-
uously change and invent new design methods and processes as we under-
stand more about the expanding design space and how to work with it. And
we can see it in the many different ways to include people in a design pro-
cess, ranging from design teams, eld studies, and participatory processes,
and in how the boundaries between ‘designing’ and ‘using’ undergo constant
change, not to say gradual dissolution. One could say that the transforma-
tion of making from actually making things to making things possible built
an inherent instability into design that ensures designing will never be quite
what it used to be.
Fure
The desn spce hs expnded over tme
s result of explorn new spects of nd
possbltes for ddressn complext
© b John Redstrm
Jones, Design Methods, xxx
93 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
I believe it is crucial to keep in mind that the reason design has access to
an expanding design space is not only be found in what new technologies
and new design problems (and so on) we have engaged in, but also in our
constant and critical questioning of making, and a commitment to not take
designing for granted. These transformations of designing came out of a
need to change rather than make things more stable. It is certainly conve-
nient to think of the design process as having a xed structure, of design
methods as a pick and mix toolbox, but that is to radically reduce design’s
potential when it comes to dealing with complexity. Further, we risk dis-
regarding the context in which these transformations emerged, somehow
ending up with a perspective where ways of prototyping and methods or
formats for participation and so on seem to exist in a void, as if they are
timeless and neutral tools to be used at the pleasure of the designer.16 On
the contrary, design has always evolved in relation to its context. As with
any form of life, what is sustainable in one context might turn out to be an
invasive species in another.
Designing Design Education
With these historical trajectories in mind, let us turn to the question of
design education. As mentioned briey at the outset, there is no such thing
as a general education in design. To ask a question like “What competencies
and skills should a designer have?” is not that different from asking “What
shape, material and color should a chair have?” The answer in both cases
would have to be that it depends on who it’s for, what it will be used for,
where it will be made, and so on and so forth. To answer such questions,
we need to engage in design—we need to actively start choosing between
which options we have, based on what we aim for. And we need to negotiate
a number of conicting needs in order to come up with a meaningful whole
that is something more than the sum of its parts. Precisely how do we con-
ceptualize an educational program as a meaningful whole? Here follows
three gures exploring how to conceptualize design education based on
what was found in the stories told in the previous section.
Positions/Trajectories
Imagine we were to plot out the elements of a design curriculum onto the
three-dimensional illustration of complexity introduced earlier (see Figure
2). The design processes and methods taught and the forms of prototyping
involved could be correlated to points on or near the three axes, and the
nal contours of the form that emerges would give us an understanding, or
image, of how the program curriculum is “shaped,” including how it relates
to use, potential users, other stakeholders, and so on (Figure 3).
Now, there are at least two ways of constructing a curriculum after
plotting a program onto a map like this. The rst way is to decide where
in this conceptual space of coping with complexity we want to situate the
program’s center of gravity—for instance, we could base this decision on
what kind of outcome we aim for (as in product design, service design), or
what kind of material we aim to concentrate on (as in textile design), or
Mr Grnsdotter nd John Redstrm,
“Desn Methods nd Crtcl Hsto-
rorph An Exmple from Swedsh
User-Centered Desn,” Design Issues ,
no () –, DOI https//do
or//DESI__
94 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
what forms of collaboration to start from (as in codesign). All of these are
perfectly valid and quite common ways of framing an educational program.
Because such programs are based upon a stable core, it also makes sense to
name them accordingly (as in “product design” or “codesign”). Historically,
this seems to be the most common way to construct a curriculum: assume a
position in this space (and maintain it).
The other way is to think of an educational program as a trajectory in
this space. To the best of my knowledge, there are few programs explicitly
conceived as trajectories rather than as having a center of gravity (Figure 4).
Looking closely, however, there are often tendencies towards introducing
increasing complexity over time within some curricula, and if there is a
possibility for elective direction within the program, these can be seen as a
kind of trajectories that will allow the students to move into different parts
of this space. Further, many design students seem to have an (intuitive)
understanding of this and create something of a trajectory for themselves by
choosing different (kinds of) programs, often at different schools, to com-
plete their undergraduate and post-graduate studies.
I believe that curricula based on trajectories rather than positions
will become more common as design evolves, not only because the ways
Fure
A model of the currculum n whch the
center nd contours le somewhere wthn
the xes of ts desn focus (use, process,
outcome) © b John Redstrm
Fure
A currculum conceved s trector the
resultn shpe s smlr to stuted lne,
but wth no specl center of rvt ©
b John Redstrm
95 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
individual choice is becoming more prominent in higher education, but
because this could be a way of responding to emerging needs in design. To
offer a curriculum based on the idea of a trajectory rather than a position
implies that the educational structure would embody a constant transfor-
mation of making. This can be used to counteract tendencies to stabilize the
notion that “this is design and this is how you do it,” and instead build the
notion that design is actually inherently unstable into a program’s move-
ment through courses and projects.
Certainties/Uncertainties
If we collapse the three-dimensional illustration of complexity used earlier
in this text (see Figures 1 and 2) into just one dimension, and then plot any
(perceived) increase in complexity over time, we might get something like
the diagram in Figure 5.
Now, let us add two more lines to the graph based on the history of
designing described earlier in this article. I have argued that there has been
a constant opening up of new aspects of designing, and that less and less
is taken for granted as starting points when designing. We can draw this
as two lines, one representing the decreasing proportion of how much we
take for granted and another one representing the increasing proportion
of aspects of designing that we actively create and elaborate. The resulting
visualization (Figure 6) illustrates that we take less and less for granted, and
that more and more aspects of making are opened up as we move through
transformations of why we make, how we make, and with whom. In reality,
the lines are a mess and not at all this smooth and continuous, but for our
present discussion this simplication serves the purpose of showing how the
balance between what is already given at the outset and what we actively
go about changing, revising, nding out, and so on as part of designing has
shifted.
Fure
How (perceved) complext n desn seems
to hve ncresed over tme © b John
Redstrm
96 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
Now, when we consider how design has developed in the past, there
are indications we have come to a point where complexity is again moving
beyond what contemporary ways of designing can cope with. There is a
need to address yet another fundamental aspect of making: the central task
for us now is how to open up the question of what we make. This is a most
difcult question, as it tends to hide in plain sight. It is so easy to think this
is exactly where we started, and that it is the question the entire design
process revolves around: what is it that we’re making, what should be the
outcome? True, deciding what to make is perhaps the most central question
we ask. But when we look at how we ask that question, how we set ourselves
up to answer it, to a signicant degree we take our conceptual space—the
categories we work with and within; the concepts we use to describe, com-
municate, and even understand what we’re doing, etcetera—for granted.
And every time we take a concept for granted, we will reproduce the im-
plications it has for how we conceive of an issue, what possibilities we see,
how we frame what constitutes a preferable outcome, and so on. We come
to assume we know what form is,17 what constitutes a material,18 what (or
who) a user is,19 what a thing actually is,20 what value means, and so on
and so forth. Not to mention how we almost desperately try to t new things
within already established categories—“This is not just any phone, it’s a
mobile phone; it’s not just a mobile phone, it’s a smart phone”—even though
we realize that this brand new thing brings radical change to the ways we
use and relate to the technology it offers.
Critical inquiries into concepts of design have been part of research and
critical practice since the beginnings of designing, and designing would not
have evolved as it has without them. Still, it appears that much of this work
happens outside the context of everyday practice—at least in comparison
to the extent to which different methods, prototyping and forms of collab-
oration are being explored as part of almost any design process. Indeed,
design practices that engage extensively with the more conceptual realm we
Fure
How desn hs ddressed ncresn com-
plext b tn less nd less bout desn
for rnted © b John Redstrm
See John Redstrm, Making Design
Theory (Cmbrde, MA MIT Press, ),
See John Redstrm, “On Technolo s
Mterl n Desn,” Design Philosophy
Papers , no () –, DOI
https//door//
X
See John Redstrm, “REDefntons of
Use,” Design Studies , no ()
–, DOI https//door//
destud Redstrm, Making
Design Theory,
See John Redstrm nd Hether Wltse,
Changing Things: The Future of Objects
in a Digital World (London Bloomsbur,
),
97 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
typically call out as something slightly different, for instance as critical prac-
tice, speculative or conceptual design, or as design research. What we have
made an integral part of designing with respect to why we make, how we
make, and who is doing the making, we have never quite done with respect
to the conceptual spaces we work with and in. (Rather, what sometimes
seems to be happening is quite the opposite—a notion is spreading that
there are certain ways that designers think that can be extracted, exported,
and put to work in other disciplines.)
This push towards having to open up the basic what of design accelerates
as we move to a place where the balance between certainty and uncertainty
shifts even more towards the latter. If we look at contemporary challenges
such as sustainability, a solution might not even be visible until our perspec-
tive has changed enough to allow another world to come into view. To gain
access to possible ways for us to cope with complexity, we need to more ac-
tively start designing the conceptual spaces we depend on as we design, and
we need to be at least as experimental, speculative, uncertain, and willing to
let go of things taken for granted as the ones who initiated similar transfor-
mations in design before us. Indeed, design education might become much
more theoretical than it has been in the past. But it will not be theory as we
know it from other disciplines, because it will not be framed by a desire to
nd out what is, but driven by a need to nd out what could become.
Naturally, one can decide to position an educational program anywhere
on the spectrum between how much is considered certain and how much is
not. There is nothing stopping us from simply deciding or dening (whether
based on our own opinion, a study of current job market needs, or something
else) that this is what design is and this is how you do it—and then teaching
our students everything they need to know to practice precisely that. But that
would be to disregard the critical shifts that design emerged from, and there-
fore to try to capture something that was never meant to be caught.
A Design/Designing
Besides theory, another contemporary issue in design education concerns the
relationship between basic education and research. As the outline of design’s
history above suggests, research did not get incorporated into design as the
eld evolved, or because the academy values knowledge and expertise based
on where and how it is produced. Research is part of what made design
emerge in the rst place. This is research not necessarily in the sense of
“producing knowledge as an end in itself,” but as “an integral part of making
(new) things possible.” Indeed, I have argued that the most important shift
making design possible was the substitution of actual production for learning
and generating new knowledge. What we now call research through design,
or research by design, or any other similar notion, is not really new—it is
a more articulated cultivation of something that has been a central part of
design ever since it rst came about. Still, something important is happening
and I believe it has to do with the issue of how to further open up design to
being designed. To explain this, I will need another illustration.
Elsewhere, I have explored the idea that central dichotomies in design
can be seen as continuous spectra.21 There I argued that while some
Redstrm, Making Design Theory,
98 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
concepts might not be very easy to dene on their own, they receive a pre-
cise, yet uid, meaning in relation to each other. One such spectrum extends
between the particular and the general, and I suggested that this can be used
to understand a range of concepts spanning from what a design is to what
designing is about (Figure 7).
If we look at research done in design, it is often quite close to the partic-
ular “what a design is” end of this spectrum. And this might be because this
is where it all started, as we saw earlier in the words of Gropius22
“In the conviction that household appliances and furnishings must be ratio-
nally related to each other, the Bauhaus is seeking—by systematic practical
and theoretical research into formal, technical, and economic elds—to
derive the design of an object from its natural functions and relationships.”23
Today, we see traces of this idea in projects that might have a research phase,
early on, during which designers aim to nd out more about an outcome’s
use, potential users, contexts, technologies, and so on—knowledge that will
support the creation of an appropriate right design. But if we are to open up
the what of design, and make designing something we actively design, then
this kind of research will not help us much, because it still revolves around a
particular outcome and not the practice(s) that produce it.
As illustrated in Figure 8, we need design research that pushes the focus
more towards the middle, where questions about what designing is are
much more present. Some of the work happening in research through design
can be interpreted as making such a shift away from the end of the (ulti-
mate) particular24—from making a design towards creating an alternative
Fure
The dchotom between prtculr nd
enerl n desn, nsted depcted s
contnuous spectrum rnn from wht
desn s to wht desnn s Adopted from
Redstrm, Making Design Theory, ©
b John Redstrm
Fure
Usn desn reserch not to determne
whch desns mht be best, but rther
wht nds of designing re possble ©
nd b John Redstrm
Gropus, “Prncples for Buhus Produc-
ton,”
Itlcs mne
For exmple, see Hrold G Nelson
nd Er Stoltermn, The Design Way:
Intentional Change in an Unpredictable
World, nd ed (Cmbrde, MA MIT
Press, ),
99 Redström: Certain Uncertainties and the Design of Design Education
example of what designing could be. Any resulting designs are not the only
outcomes, they are also examples or illustrations that express something
about what the act of designing could be. Such research opens up a perspec-
tive on designing itself as a central aspect of what is being explored—else-
where, I have termed these “programmatic experiments.” These offer hypo-
thetical worldviews that illustrate something about what kind of designing
they might support.25
This could potentially lead design research in very different direction
compared with more traditional notions of practice-based research. There is
a considerable difference between seeing practice as a foundation for car-
rying out research, and seeing practice itself as something to be prototyped
through speculative experiments (to paraphrase the quote from Gropius
above). In any case, this is a kind of practice research I think we will see
much more of in design education: research that allows students to critically
explore the idea that designing is not something you are taught how to do,
but something you learn how to make.
A Concluding Remark
In this paper I have argued that complexity and uncertainty are intertwined
in design, but perhaps not necessarily in the ways one might initially think
of. I have argued that the perceived increase in complexity in design does
not (only) stem from external factors, but from an inherent, continuous and
critical questioning of what design is and could be. And that it is this critical
attitude that has allowed the scope of design to grow, as less and less of what
designing must be like has been taken for granted. To conclude, let us there-
fore take a look at two arguments regarding the future of design education
sometimes heard from our surrounding context in academia: that design
needs to be based on research, and that it needs to develop a stable theo-
retical basis. I would agree that both research and theory are of signicance
to us, and that both are likely to become even more important as design
evolves. But I profoundly disagree as to why this will be the case. Research
has always been central to design, as it was placed at its heart when making
things was replaced by making things possible. Theory will become central,
in the sense that designing will more actively engage in making the con-
cepts and conceptual spaces needed to open new possibilities and address
complexity. But neither research nor theory will be used to bring order and
stability to design. On the contrary, we will use them to make things less
certain.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Maria Göransdotter, Elisa Giaccardi, and colleagues at
Umeå Institute of Design.
Declaration of Interests
There are no conicts of interest involved in this article.
Redstrm, Making Design Theory,
100 she ji The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2020
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