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Proceedings of the 12th International Conference
on Design History and Design Studies
Lessons to Learn?
Past Design Experiences and
Contemporary Design Practices
Edited by: Fedja Vukić, Iva Kostešić
Zagreb 2020
Edited by: Fedja Vukić, Iva Kostešić
Zagreb 2020
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference
on Design History and Design Studies
Lessons to Learn?
Past Design Experiences and
Contemporary Design Practices
Future Learning on Design, Within and With Design
Fedja Vukić
History and Design History: Myths, Memories and Reality
Jonathan Woodham
Exhibition Design and the Relationship With the Spectator:
Historical Notes with El Lissitzky and Hebert Bayer
Renata Perim Lopes
Investigating Migrating Print Cultures:
Graphic Memory Research Methods Applied to a Study on Typographia Hennies Irmãos
Jade Samara Piaia and Priscila Lena Farias
Conjecturing Futures for Brazilian Design Law
Cassia M. De La Houssaye and Patricia Peralta
Appropriation, Adaptation, Redesign, Copy, Cut and Paste:
e Covers of Translated Books Published by José Olympio in the 1940s and 1950s
Carla Fernanda Fontana
Publishing on the Periphery:
Trade Design Magazines in Late 20th Century Greece
Niki Sioki
How Socialist Self-Management Contributed
to the Understanding of Participation in Design
Barbara Predan
Sadun Ersin:
An Influential Figure in the Development of Modern Design in Turkey
Deniz Hasirci, Zeynep Tuna Ultav and Melis Örnekoğlu Selçuk
Herbert Simon in the Design Field
Felipe Kaizer and Lucas Do M. N. Cunha
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Table of Contents
Lessons to Learn? Past Design Experiences and Contemporary Design Practices
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Design History
and Design Studies
Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde Zagreb
Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia
2
-10000 Zagreb, Medulićeva 20
385(0)1 4921 389
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- info@upi2mbooks.hr
Tomislav Dolenec, con 2
Fedja Vukić
Iva Kostešić
Helena Barbosa
Jonathan Woodham
Priscila Lena Farias
Chelsea Alethea Sanders
2, Otto Kušec, Miran Bašić
978-953-7703-67-7
Zagreb, October 2020
Roam Home to a Dome? e House that Bucky Barely Lived In
Hsiao-Yun Chu
Harmful or Useless? Victor Papanek and the Student Rebellion
at Danish Design Schools 1967 – 1976
Anders V. Munch, Vibeke Riisberg and Lene Kiærbye Pedersen
Repairing Domestic Objects as an Act of Sustainable Design
Pedro Álvarez Caselli and Antonio Batlle Lathrop
A Case Study Among Colombia’s Post-Conflict ‘Memory Machines’:
Reframing Memory rough Models of Social Design and Doris Salcedo’s Anti-Monument
Diana Duque
Design for Inclusion: From Ethical rough Aesthetic inking
Aura Cruz and Erika Cortés
Co-Creating Bauhaus Typography in Denmark:
e Avant-Gardist Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen and Printer C. Volmer Nordlunde
Trond Klevgaard
Mariska Undi and Anna Lesznai:
A Comparative Study of Two Early Twentieth-Century Hungarian Modernist Designers
Rebecca Houze
Torres Balbás’ Garden Design in the Alhambra
in Relation to His Restoration eory
Sara Satoh
1980’s Brazilian Rock Album Covers: A Visual Analysis
Paulo Eduardo Moretto and Priscila Lena Farias
Irish Suburban Housing:
Concrete Nationalism and the ‘House of To-Morrow’
Tom Spalding
e Armorial Movement:
Cultural Entwinements in the Legacy of Time From a Graphic Design Perspective
Paula Valadares and Helena Barbosa
Cultural Blends:
A Metaphorical Method for Designing Cultural Products With Traditional Cultural Properties
Zhenzhen Qin and Sandy Ng
Bohemians, Craftsmen and the New Woman
John Henry Martin
e Coexistence of Preservation and Modernisation Design Strategies for the Textiles
Heritage of Phlow Karen in the Rachaburi Province (ailand)
Nanthana Boonla-or and Teerapoj Teeropas
Italian Typographic Heritage:
A Contribution to Its Recognition and Interpretation as Part of Design Heritagev
Emanuela Bonini Lessing, Fiorella Bulegato and Priscila Lena Farias
Richard Hamilton and the 50th Anniversary Project
Noriko Yoshimura
Lina Bo Bardi and Pre-Artisanship in Northeast Brazil:
A Quest for the eoretical Basis of the Concept
Ana Sofía López Guerrero and Marcos da Costa Braga
Branding Japanese Olympics:
e Evolution of Design Between Local Tradition and Global Trends
Claudia Tranti
e Bedroom of Mademoiselle De Roo:
Private Inputs on an Ocial Culture of Taste in Domestic Interiors
Carlos Bártolo
e Performance of Design in the First Neoliberal Wave in Argentina
Veronica Devalle
Echoes of Tomas Maldonado’s Bond with Uruguay:
e Contact Zone Between Design, Art and Architecture
Laura Cesio, Monica Farkas and Magdalena Sprechmann
Learning From Past Design Experiences in an Educational Context: A Self-Reflective Account
Miray Hamarat and Koray Gelmez
Exhibitions as Political ‘Demonstrations’?
Artists International Association’s ‘For Liberty’ Exhibition, London 1943
Harriet Atkinson
Aestheticising Design: Revisiting the Concept of Commodity Aesthetics
Mads Nygaard Folkmann
e Monpe as a Totalitarian Costume:
Japanese Farmer Work Pants as a Wartime Uniform for Women in the Japanese Empire
Rie Mori
e Significance of Fiction: e Aesthetic Politics of Speculative Design
Li Zhang
Lessons Learned About Design Policies Based on Shared Experiences
Between Dierentiated Territories: e Transatlantic Case of Chile — Canary Islands
Bernardo Antonio Candela Sanjuán, Katherine Mollenhauer and Alfonso Ruiz Rallo
Liberation, Nation and Salvation:
South African Political Party Logos of the 2019 General Election
Deirdre Pretorius
Designers as Cultural Intermediaries:
Towards a Framework to Understand Design’s Engagement in Culture Wars
Emrah Ozturan, Gulname Turan and Dogan Gurpinar
Benjaminian Taktisch in Contemporary Critical Design
Tau Lenskjold
Portuguese Film Posters at the Dawn of Estado Novo:
Modernism Under Dictatorship
Igor Ramos and Helena Barbosa
A Brief History of Ergonomics in the :
Socialist Ergonomics and Its Development at the Institute of Industrial Design
Ana Sofía López Guerrero
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137
149
161
171
183
193
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293
307
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327
339
351
361
371
389
399
409
419
431
449
463
475
485
499
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3
4
e Eameses and Kenmochi:
Interaction Between the and Japan’s Industrial Design in the Post- Era
Izumi Kuroishi
and Lithuania: Industrial Design on the Western Soviet Periphery
Triin Jerlei
Objects of Desire:
Consumption and Popular Luxury in Early Modern Southeastern Europe
Artemis Yagou
Contradictions in Modern Design Aesthetics in Post-Colonial History
— e Introduction of Television in Taiwan, 1960s to 1990s
Ju-Joan Wong
e Master Approving of His Own Work
Žiga Testen
An Experience of Synthesis and Freedom:
Space and Design in Post-World War II Portugal
Sandra Antunes and Maria Helena Souto
Alexandre Wollner, the Ulm School, and the Newspaper:
e Use of Grids and Its Influence on the Formation of the Graphic Design Field in Brazil
Alice Viggiani
‘e School Question’: Race and Colonial Attitudes Towards Craft Education
in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, 1900 – 1930s
Mitha Budhyarto and Vikas Kailankaje
Women in Italian Graphic Design History:
A Contribution to Rewrite History in a More Inclusive Way
Francesco E. Guida
Surface, Deep, Implicit.
Basic Design as a Signature Pedagogy in Design Education
Giulia Ciliberto
An Analysis of the Visual Identification of Early São Paulo City Letterpress Printing Shops:
Contributions for Brazilian Design History
Fabio Mariano Cruz Pereira and Priscila Lena Farias
Discourses on Design History Methods:
e Case of ‘Cooperativa Árvore’ Posters
Mariana Almeida and Helena Barbosa
eory vs/ Practice in the Design Education Curriculum:
e Case of the Portuguese History of Design
Helena Barbosa
Lost in Translation?
Representing the Concept of Artificial Intelligence to the General Public
Tingyi S. Linand Jou-Yin Sun
e History of Parametric Design and Its Applications in Footwear Design
Marilena Christodoulou
Human Senses and the Enjoyment of Objects
Silvia Puig Pages
Using to Classify Instagram’s Dissident Images
Didiana Prata, Fabio Cozman and Gustavo Polleti
Decentring Design inking for Development Engineering
Yunus Doğan Telliel and Robert Krueger
Digital Communication and Global Visual Image Standards of Emojis as a Challenge
for an Intercultural Comparison between Japan and Germany
Christof Breidenich, Keisuke Takayasu and Nicole Christ
Can a Nation Survive through Craft?
e Colonial Past, Current Subjectivities and Sustainable Futures
Yuko Kikuchi
e Development of Creative Industries in Russia Between 1990 – 2020
Olga Druzhinina
Utopia or Belief?
Matko Meštrović
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Publishing Design Research
in Academic Journals
2
Designing Archives and Collections
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521
535
543
555
567
579
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601
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633
647
661
673
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1 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 111
Not only theories, but also practices constitute the design field.
And so it is convenient, from time to time, to look into the
making and canonisation of theories in order to understand
why certain works or figures have become relevant to the field.
e central position of the political scientist, cognitive psychologist,
computer scientist and organisational theorist Herbert A. Simon in
the field of design is one of those cases that calls for an investiga-
tion. is does not mean simply to question the intrinsic value of his
body of work or to dispense altogether with his thinking. We mean to
throw some light upon the historical process that culminated in the
adoption of Simon's theory by most design theorists today.
Simon's 1969 book e Sciences of the Artificial is regarded as one of
the main references in the specialised literature. As DJ Huppatz
(2015) puts it, the book ‘has long been considered a seminal text for
design theorists and researchers anxious to establish both a scien-
tific status for design and the most inclusive possible definition for
a ‘designer’ (p. 29). Considering this, it actually contributes to the
ongoing project of establishing a rigorous design discipline in high-
er-education systems. A single passage of it has been extensively
quoted and has recently set the tone for many academic papers:
‘Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones’ (Simon, 1996b, p. 111).
Design methodology, design theory, design history, management and planning
e organisational theorist Herbert Simon is one of the most important authors in the design field today.
His book e Sciences of the Artificial (1969) is considered a milestone in the development of design theory
and is extensively quoted by scholars. In it, Simon advocates for the existence of a science of design concerned
with ‘how things might be’ in contrast to the natural sciences, which are concerned with ‘how things are’.
However useful this definition is to the design field, its theoretical background and aim dier considerably from
the tenets of modern design upon which the field constituted itself historically. us, in order to comprehend
Simon's influence, it is necessary to investigate his life and work as well as the process through which his theory
was integrated into design research. In this article, we consider solely the first main literary landmarks of this
process, and, in this way, try to contribute to the understanding of the ongoing shift towards a more managerial
view of the design process. Simon's theory is seen then as part of a common eort to illuminate the design
process as such in the post-war period.
e Sciences of the
Artificial
Kaizer, Felipe; PhD in Design | Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Cunha, Lucas do M. N.; PhD candidate in Design | Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Herbert Simon in the Design Field
1 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 113
Department, Lee Bach. It was called the Graduate School of Industrial
Administration (). On this occasion, Simon worked to create a new
type of professional school, trying to combine ‘education in both arti-
ficial and natural science at a high intellectual level’ (Simon, 1996b,
p. 113). His eort addresses the ‘deep gulf’ between the scientific and
the ‘applied’ disciplines (Simon, 1997, p. 352). Simon and his colleagues
considered business education at that time as ‘a wasteland of vocation-
alism that needed to be transformed into science-based professionalism’
(Simnon, 1996a, Chapter 9). e same attitude was initially adopted
later on, in the early 1960s, in the curriculum reform of the Engineering
College at the same institution. But then, there was a twist:
‘My initial views were that engineering education needed less vocationalism and
more science.
With my experience in and a wider view of the world, I began to see things a
little dierently […]
As I began to understand the trends in the stronger engineering schools, I saw that
[…] science was replacing professional skills in the curriculum. […] Professional skills
were disappearing from the curricula, and professionals possessing those skills were
disappearing from the faculties.’ (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 16)
So Simon began ‘to urge Carnegie Tech to restore design and design-
ers (or theorists of design) to its Engineering College’ (Simon, 1996a,
Chapter 16). Basically, he advocated for the teaching of principles and
methods not only of analysis, but also of synthesis, considering that,
in engineering, people act on real situations and ‘design structures
and devices and processes’ (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 16). In his view,
design was to be taught as a science, but a science of the ‘processes of
synthesis’; and, for that, ‘an explicit, abstract, intellectual theory’ was
needed (Simon, 1997, p. 354).
From the debate on the engineering curriculum came the sub-
ject matter of Simon's lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1968. ey were entitled e Sciences of the Artificial and
were the beginnings of the book Simon published in the following
year (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 16). One of the lectures was dedicated
to the science of design and gave a prescription for a curriculum in
design (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 16).
In sum, Simon's interest in design and proposal of a science of design
stem from his reflections of the role of scientific disciplines in profes-
sional education and from his experiences in establishing curricula
112 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 1
is is understandable, considering Simon's proposal of a new general
science that covers a wide range of practical activities, including engi-
neering, medicine, business, architecture and painting, and attends
by the name design (Simon, 1996b, p. xii). e core definition of this
science is laid out in another famous quotation, stating that those
activities ‘are concerned not with the necessary but with the con-
tingent — not with how things are but with how they might be — in
short, with design’ (Simon, 1996b, p. xii ). is puts design at the centre
of the sciences of the so-called artificial world, in contrast to the
sciences concerning the natural world.
At first, it seems that this definition must have immediately drawn
the attention of designers and theorists in the design field. But that
was not the case. Literary evidence shows that the incorporation of
Simon's vision of design only started after 1980, mainly through the
eort of one author. Yet this is no surprise, considering Simon's back-
ground and aim.
Herbert Simon graduated in the 1930s from the University of
Chicago, during a time when a small revolution in the social
sciences was under way (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 4). is revolution
amounted to the use of behavioural concepts and empirical quan-
titative data in the analysis and critique of politics, and gave rise to
the Chicago School of Political Science. In short, the Chicago School
(to which Simon adhered) proposed the scientific study of politics
as the study of human behaviour. In the course of the next few
years, still owing to behaviourism, Simon expanded his knowledge
and experience in a number of correlated fields, especially in public
administration and organisational development (Friedmann, 1996).
His doctoral thesis — published in 1947 as Administrative Behavior: A
Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations — was
considered a milestone in the development of the behavioural
sciences within the field of management. Its main concepts, consid-
ered relatively new, were that of decision-making processes and the
‘bounded’ nature of the rationality of decision-makers. Simon is con-
sidered a central figure in public administration, policy science and
planning theory, having absorbed several intellectual traditions into
his own thinking, such as the rationale of public administration and
scientific management, and ‘approached the bureaucratic process
from a behavioural perspective’ (Friedmann, 1996, p. 11).
In 1949, Simon received an invitation to establish a business school
at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, together with
its Provost Elliott Dunlap Smith and the chairman of the Economics
e Origins of
Simon's Concept of
Design
1 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 115
dangers of Ulm's ‘methodolatry’ (Maldonado Bonsiepe, 1964). Besides,
the artistic trends inside the school never completely ceased to exist.
e school was closed in 1968, due to financial problems and political
tensions between the students, the faculty and the local authorities.
Secondly, there was the so-called Design Methods movement, which
was born by means of a conference in London in 1962. Similarly to the
Ulm School, the movement proposed the general study of designing
methods, apart from the specifics of each project. It revolved around
the concepts of problem and process, and posed the possibility of
combining intuitive and systematic methods of designing. Unlike the
Ulm School, though, the Design Methods movement was multi-pro-
fessional: it remained for a long time, through other initiatives, such
as the Design Research Institute, a meeting point for engineers, archi-
tects and designers of dierent strains.
But by the early 1970s, this common eort lost a lot of its steam. Some
of the exponents of the movement, such as John Christopher Jones
and Christopher Alexander, rejected its tenets, recanting previous
positions. ey reclaimed the importance of intuition and personal
judgment in the design process, looking suspiciously to its possible
full mathematisation. Roughly at the same time, some side figures,
such as Bruce Archer at the Royal College of Art in London, introduced
a dierent line of investigation, giving rise to a design research cen-
tred on the concept of material culture and on special ways of dealing
with design problems (Archer, 1979a, 1979b).
e legacy of the Ulm School and of the Design Methods movement
can be found concentrated in one idea: the idea of ‘problem’ and of the
design process as a problem-solving process. It is fair to say that this
idea paved the way for the integration of Simon's work into the field of
design. In the proceedings book of the second Design Methods confer-
ence, organised by Sydney Gregory, first references are made to Herbert
Simon and Allen Newell, regarding a number of texts on artificial
intelligence and problem-solving techniques (Gregory, 1966). Before
that, Simon is mentioned only in passing in the Ulm School magazine
(Maldonado, 1965, p. 11). It's worth noting that these references precede
the lectures on the sciences of the artificial and are quite independent
of them. ey signal a growing interest of design theorists in the con-
ceptual language of general problem-solving systems and also in the
rigorous mathematical framework for posing problems.
Despite the initial claims of the Design Methods movement to
integrate intuition and method, in the examples seen in the 1966
114 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 1
in an institute of technology and business. us it is only natural
that Simon's theory overlooks the issues traditionally pertaining to
the education of the arts, such as aesthetics and style. But ignoring
this aspect may lead to a misinterpretation of his ideas. is is often
the case when Simon's definition of design is merely inserted into an
argument still bounded by the tradition of art and architecture.
As a result, Simon's science of design is in fact very much at odds with
the principles of modern design. is discrepancy is revealed during
the brief time Simon taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology,
where the great architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also taught.
Relating to the same students, Simon concluded that the ‘functional-
ist’ architecture advocated by Mies meant the designing of ‘structur-
ally honest’ buildings, that is to say, buildings that worked ‘visually’.
e professional architect was viewed as an ‘artist, whose task is to
build beautiful buildings’ or to ‘produce a great work of art’ (Simon,
1996a, Chapter 7). Simon's course was on urban land economics, but he
found that, for the architecture students, economics was ‘a dirty word’
and that they ‘desired above all to preserve their profession for the
expression of noble artistic impulses and to protect it from the baneful
influence of money-grubbing speculators’ (Simon, 1996a, Chapter 7).
ere is no strong evidence that Herbert Simon's proposal for a science
of design was heard at the time by the architecture and design com-
munity. Simon himself wrote that ‘[t]here was no immediate seismic
response’ to his lectures on the sciences of the artificial, ‘but, in their
published form, they began to attract more and more notice’ (Simon,
1996a, Chapter 16). is may be because other scientific accounts of the
design process were starting to circulate around the end of the 1950s,
but in dierent contexts.
Firstly, there was a major change in the course of education at the
Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany, between 1956 and 1958.
Its first rector since 1954, Max Bill, left and the new school board
made a shift in design education from the arts and crafts tradi-
tion, bequeathed by the Bauhaus, towards more scientific methods
of teaching and designing (Lindinger, 1991). In the words of Tomás
Maldonado (1965), considering the new order of problems of the
post-war world, a new ‘methodological dimension’ was needed in the
development of future designers. It would conjugate theory and prac-
tice and consolidate a design methodology. In the same context, Horst
Rittel tried to apply ideas from cybernetics and operational research to
design (Huppatz, 2015, p. 36). But those ideas developed to the point of
critique: as early as 1964, Maldonado and Gui Bonsiepe pointed out the
Parallel Initiatives in
the Design Field
1 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 117
lysing ‘the problem’ (Ibid.). Yet, a solution to these problems must be
and often is found. e question is then how designers are able to do it.
e succinct answer is that there are ‘designerly ways’ to do it. Cross
takes up the expression first used by Bruce Archer in 1979 to refer to a
way of coping with problems that is dierent from the procedures of
science and academia.
e idea that there is a special nature to the design problems is found
in its most complete form in Horst Rittel's description of wicked
problems. In an article in 1972, Rittel defines a class of problems that
are intrinsically unsolvable by the methods of the natural or logical
sciences (Rittel, 2010). ey are ‘wicked’ in opposition to the ‘tamed’ or
well-definable problems of those sciences, whose parameters of solu-
tion can be properly set. Wicked problems, on the contrary, depend on
foreseeing solutions to even be defined, and so they don't have a closed
set of solutions. In other words, if design problems are wicked problems,
then the designer oscillates back and forth between possible solutions
and possible determinations of the problem. Cross concludes that
‘In order to cope with ill-defined problems, the designer has to learn to have the
self-confidence to define, redefine and change the problem-as-given in the light of
the solution that emerges from his mind and hand.’ (Cross, 1982, p. 224)
In view of this process, Cross evokes Simon's ‘satisficing’ process: a
process of ‘producing any one of what might well be a large range
of satisfactory solutions rather than attempting to generate the one
hypothetically-optimum solution’ (Cross, 1982, p. 224). According to
him, a process of satisficing applies to the practice of a myriad of pro-
fessionals including architects, urban designers and engineers.
In this way, Cross (1982) manages to articulate Simon's fundamental
insight about the design process with its own main critique, that of the
ill-structuredness of design problems. Rittel's (2010) account of wicked
problems is explicitly made against the first-generation approach to
systems theory. Although Simon is not named, it is easy to see the major
obstacle the concept of wicked problems represents to any theory of prob-
lem solving. e conceptual outlet for this quandary is, as much for Rittel
as for Cross, the study of the ways designers actually think and work. at
in turn opens a psychological strand of design theory and epistemology.
e defining moment of Herbert Simon's entrance into the design
field as a major theorist is Nigel Cross's (1984) edition of Developments in
Design Methodology.
e Crossing of
eories
116 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 1
publication, there are no accounts of the behaviourism underpinning
the theories of Simon and Newell. eir mathematical and logical
devices are taken at face value and applied to design problems in
a trusting way. Nevertheless, at that point, their application and
the consequences to design theory are only marginal. Still, they are
evidence of an early alignment of a certain strand of design research
with engineering and management.
An overview of the design literature indicates that the first major author
to assess and encompass Herbert Simon's ideas in his own thinking is
Nigel Cross. Cross was trained as an engineer and became a key figure in
the Design Research Society. In the beginning of the 1980s, accompanied
by John Naughton and David Walker, Cross quotes Simon's 1969 book.
But his line of argument goes initially in a dierent direction:
‘e basic text on which is founded the faith of the would-be ‘design scientists’
appears to be H. A. Simon's e Sciences of the Artificial. In this slim volume
the paradoxical ‘design science’ attitude is again strikingly evident. […]
Despite the openly acknowledged fundamental distinction between science and
design, Simon went on to outline a series of elements that would embody ‘the
science of design’ […] e examples of the elements of this emerging doctrine […]
included several that are now regarded as of dubious value in a design context; for
example, methods of optimization borrowed from management science (sic), and
methods of problem structuring based on the hierarchical decomposition techniques
developed by [Marvin] Manheim and [Christopher] Alexander.’
(Cross Naughton Walker, 1981, p. 195)
For Cross (1981), the focal point of the design field is not science, but
design proper methods. In this regard, design is more closely identified
with technology (Cross et al., 1981, p. 198). Nevertheless, Cross follows
the main thread of problem-solving theory in his proposal for a design
methodology. In his famous next article, ‘Designerly Ways of Knowing’,
he regards Simon's concept of satisficing as a ‘central feature of design
activity’ (Cross, 1982, p. 224). And on this occasion, he accepts Simon's
discerning between the sciences ‘concerned with how things are’ and
the sciences ‘concerned with how things ought to be’. But his view of
what constitutes the nature of design problems is crucially dierent.
Cross refers to ‘ill-defined, ill-structured, or ‘wicked’ problems, that
is, problems ‘for which all the necessary information’ cannot be
available (Cross, 1982, p. 224). ey are ‘not susceptible to exhaustive
analysis’ and in relation to them ‘there can never be a guarantee that
‘correct’ solution-focused strategy is clearly preferable to go on ana-
Design Methodology
and Wicked Problems
1 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 119
inside the Ulm School, the Design Methods movement and the Royal
College of Art, Buchanan integrated the artistic, scientific and mana-
gerial dimensions of design into his own thinking and teaching. And
following the trail left by him, much additional research on the close
relations between management, the service economy, design and
information systems has recently come into being.¹
Nevertheless, if one does not remain attentive to the subtleties of theory,
there is a great chance of hitting an impasse, where one has to choose
between two conceptions of design: either a modern art approach or
an abstract process. As seen in Simon's critique of Mies's doctrine, this
conflict is not easily shaken o. It all depends on what one considers to
be a proper design problem and how to appropriately deal with it.
On one hand, modern design considers world problems in terms of
their bare materiality and aims therefore to produce change through
the reshaping of environments. According to this conception, the
designer stands above other professionals and should assume the role
of coordinator of production. On the other hand, design methodol-
ogists address complex problems that concern no one in particular.
ey are simultaneously social, political, technological and environ-
mental, and can only be tackled through the coordination of dierent
types of knowledge and skills. Yet, they are also problems of form, and
thus also need the cooperation of form-giving experts.
In this regard, the concept of wicked problems became very useful. It
is responsible for the expansion of the scope of design activities and
for the integration of art, science and business into a potentially new
model of education. But, historically, the concept owes much to the
first generation of systems theorists. Among those who helped make
the transition from modern design to design methodology is Herbert
Simon. In the end, Simon's organisational theory considers above any-
thing else the importance of coordinating actions and communicating
plans. And those factors may be vital in tackling the complex problems
that concern us all today.
Cf. Richard Boland Jr. & Fred
Collopy (org.), Managing as
Designing (2004); Sabine Junginger
& Jürgen Faust (org.), Designing
Business and Management (2016).
1
118 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 1
Final Remarks
e volume consists of texts that range from 1962 to 1982. Most impor-
tantly, it puts authors belonging to dierent schools of thought side by
side, such as John Christopher Jones, Herbert Simon and Horst Rittel.
Cross (1984) writes an introduction to each grouping of texts in which
he tries to reconcile dierent theoretical positions. e publication was
quite successful. Nevertheless, Archer's text ‘Systematic Method for
Designers’, for example, is placed among those presented in the Design
Method Conferences, when it's known that, despite its specific subject,
Archer has a distinct line of thought. And serious omissions should also
be considered, such as of the writings of Tomás Maldonado.
More surprising, though, is the appearance of Simon's ‘e Structure
of Ill-Structured Problems’. e text was originally published in 1973 in
a periodical about artificial intelligence. In it, Simon presents the case
of designing a house and tries to give an account of the design process
as if the designer (in this case, the architect) was an information-pro-
cessing system. In accordance with his previous inquiries, Simon
describes the way an intelligent being (artificial or not) may take on
a problem considered ill-definable. But, unlike other authors in the
same publication, such as Rittel, Simon does not account for the intu-
itive dimension of the design process. One then wonders what role
Simon plays among authors who had already questioned the funda-
mentals of design problem-solving theory and the impersonal char-
acter of linear decision-making processes. As can now be deduced, the
trouble with Simon's account of the design process was not exactly the
lack of empirical evidence for his claims, but the theoretical frame-
work implied in his discourse. As Archer puts it in a text reproduced at
the end of the same publication:
‘One of the features of the early theories of design methods […] was their direc-
tionality and causality and separation of analysis from synthesis, all of which was
perceived by the designers as being unnatural.
Another problem was that design theories were so often communicated in language
that was alien, too. I do not mean that the wrong kinds of words were used. I mean
that words or mathematics or scientific notation alone were themselves inappropriate.’
(Archer as cited in Cross, 1984, pp. 348 – 349)
After Nigel Cross, many design authors include Herbert Simon among
their references. For them, Simon's theory of design represents a turn-
ing point in the ongoing interweaving of design and management dis-
ciplines. Above all of them stands Richard Buchanan who studied in
the same institution where Simon taught and knew the man himself
(Buchanan, 2004). Combining the works of Simon and those developed
120 | Herbert Simon in the Design Field | 1
Buchanan, R. (2004). Design, making, and a new culture of inquiry. In Resnick, D. Scott, D.
(Ed.). e innovative university. Pittsburgh, : Carnegie Mellon University.
Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies, 3(4).
Cross, N. (Ed.). (1984). Developments in design methodology. Chichester, : John Wiley Sons.
Cross, N., Naughton, J., Walker, D. (1981). Design method and scientific method. Design
Studies, 2(4).
Friedmann, J. (1996). Two centuries of planning theory: An overview. In S. Mandelbaum, L.
Mazza, R. Bruchell (Eds.), Explorations in planning theory. New Brunswick, : Center for Urban
Policy Research.
Gregory, S. (Ed.) (1966). e design method. Boston, : Springer.
Huppatz, D. (2015). Revisiting Herbert Simon's ‘science of design’. Design Issues, 31(2).
Lindinger, H. (1991). Ulm design: e morality of objects [1987]. Cambridge, : e Press.
Maldonado, T. (1965). e role of the industrial designer in the steel industry. Ulm magazine,
14/15/16.
Maldonado, T. Bonsiepe, G. (1964). Science and design. Ulm magazine, 10/11.
Rittel, H. (2010). On the planning crisis [1972]. In Protzen, J.-P. Harris, D., e universe of design:
Horst Rittel's theories of design and planning. Oxon, : Routledge.
Simon, H. (1996a). Models of my life [1991]. Cambridge, : e Press. Kindle.
Simon, H. (1996b). e sciences of the artificial [1969]. (3. ed.). Cambridge, : e Press.
Simon, H. (1997). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organiza-
tions [1947]. (4. ed.). New York, : e Free Press.
Felipe Kaizer is a designer who graduated from Pontfícia Universidade Católica do Rio de
Janeiro (-Rio, 2006) and a researcher with a PhD in Design at Escola Superior de Desenho
Industrial, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (, 2019), both in Brazil. His main
areas of interest are design theory, design history, and political science, especially Hannah
Arendt's theory of action.
<felipekaizer@gmail.com>
Lucas do Monti Nascimento Cunha is a Doctoral Candidate in Design at Escola Superior de
Desenho Industrial, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (). Since 2013, he has
been studying the relationship between design and public administration, inquiring how
design acts in the scope of public policies and services.
<lucasmncunha@gmail.com>
References
e 12th Conference was organised by the Institute for the Research of the Avant-Garde
(Zagreb) and supervised by the Board as a four-day online event from October 16 – 19, 2020.
(
)
Paul Atkinson, Tevfik Balcıoglu, Helena Barbosa, Priscila Farias, Lucila Fernández Uriarte,
Fredie Floré, Héctor Flores Magón Y Jiménez, Haruhiko Fujita, Javier Gimeno Martínez, Yuko
Kikuchi, Pekka Korvenmaa, Tingyi S. Lin, Victor Margolin (†), Oriol Moret, Viviana Narotzky,
Oscar Salinas Flores, Fedja Vukic, Wendy Wong, Jonathan M. Woodham
1. : , ,
Co-chairs: Barbara Predan and Tevfik Balcıoğlu
2.
Co-chairs: Fredie Floré and Daniel Huppatz
3. -
Co-chairs: Paul Atkinson and Tingyi S. Lin
4.
Co-chairs: Javier Gimeno Martinez and Priscila Lena Farias
5. :
Co-chairs: Jonathan Woodham and Helena Barbosa
6.
Co-chairs: Katharina Pfuetzner and Karolina Jakaite
Paul Atkinson, Tevfik Balcıoglu, Helena Barbosa, Adelia Borges, Petra Černe Oven, Mauro
Claro, Erika Marlene Cortes, Aura Cruz, João de Souza Leite, Özlem Er, R. Hakan Ertep, Kjetil
Fallan, Priscila Lena Farias, Monica Farkas, Marinella Ferrara, Fredie Floré, Davide Fornari,
Monica Gaspar, Javier Gimeno Martinez, Erick Iroel Heredia Carrillo, Daniel Huppatz,
Karolina Jakaite, Triin Jerlei, Guy Julier, Tomoko Kakuyama, Mariko Kaname, Krista Kodres,
Andres Kurg, Grace Lees-Maei, Tingyi S. Lin, Clice Mazzilli, Enya Moore, Oriol Moret, Anders
V. Munch, Sinan Niyazioglu, Shinsuke Omoya, Jesse O'Neill, A. Can Ozcan, Marina Parente,
Raquel Pelta, Tina Pezdirc Nograšek, Katharina Pfuetzner, Fátima Pombo, Barbara Predan,
Helena Rugai Bastos, Niki Sioki, Pau Sola-Morales, Maria Helena Souto, Keisuke Takayasu,
Sarah Teasley, Saurabh Tewari, Jilly Traganou, Zeynep Tuna Ultav, Mario Uribe, Ju-Joan Wong,
Jonathan Woodham, Artemis Yagou.
