What design can't do

What I read

In this article, Dorst remarks on an article by Michael Lissack; he indicates that Lissack’s argument—that design thinking can be used to understand culture and politics—doesn’t work, because it doesn’t build critical understanding.

First, Dorst describes that a designerly way of thinking can be used to understand the man-made world, through observation and “reverse-designing” (later explained as reaching understanding). This understanding is developed by inductive experience, which leads to the formulation of a form of certainty about how the world works.

Next, Dorst summarizes Lissack’s view, that the way of thinking like a designer is something that should be used by everyone to understand the world. Dorst describes that there are two distinctions between design and the creation of understanding, which may contradict Lissack’s perspective; first, political understanding is likely much more complex than a typical design problem, and second, that “the design way to reaching understanding… presupposes deliberate intent, causality, and (implicitly) the existence of an actor that has the intent.” He indicates that this second contradiction leads to conspiracy theories, which actually are design, at least in the context as described.

In design, there are two “checks” that “keep the designer’s feet on the ground”—that the design has to actually be made, and that a designer must defend their decisions to the world around them. Lissack’s argument doesn’t permit these things. Dorst describes that designers are “intuitive, nonsystematic, opportunistic, and sometimes inconsistent…” and that they are used to iteration. He notes that design literature has little to offer about how this iteration happens, or how to collect and deal with precedents, or how to question.

Finally, Dorst concludes that designerly thinking is one of the ways in which conspiracy theories come to life, and so it is a poor way of preventing these theories from emerging. He describes that “the field [of design] doesn’t have the practices, methods, and tools to safely support the creation of understanding.”

What I learned and what I think

I’m stumped by this one. I selected this because it is short (I’m in a hurry today) and I’ve always respected Kees’ thoughts and perspectives on design. I didn’t realize that this would be a response to two papers I haven’t read, and that makes it difficult to understand context to the response. I’m going to guess that Lissack’s articles indicate that conspiracy theories are leading to a lack of understanding about culture and politics, and that he argues that design can help find our way out of that trap. I may be wrong, and I think I should be able to make sense of the parts in this article that are not directly responding, and are instead assertive. And I can’t really make heads or tails of it.

I’ve read and re-read this sentence over and over, as it’s at the heart of his argument: “Most importantly, the design way to reaching understanding (the ‘reverse designing’ I referred to earlier) presupposes deliberate intent, causality, and (implicitly) the existence of an actor that has the intent.” I don’t get it. An actor that has the intent; is this a user? A designer? If it’s a designer, is he saying that a design approach assumes that a designer was purposeful in making decisions, and that their work was caused by something?

Dorst makes claims that I just don’t think are accurate:

• “Design practice in itself doesn’t seem to have any well-developed internal mechanisms for this”, referring to limiting creations to things that have to be made, and receiving feedback and criticism
• Designers are nonsystematic
• “Design literature has very little to offer in terms of methods and tools to achieve a good, and valid, iteration.”
• “Design doesn’t have a systematic way of collecting, accessing, and critically dealing with precedents”
• “Designers are not particularly good at questioning”
• “As design and design literature exist today, the field doesn’t have the practices, methods, and tools to safely support the creation of understanding”

I would expect someone as well-read and established as he is to support the claims with citations, but he doesn’t. Perhaps he means in academia as compared to practice, but that doesn’t make much sense either.

I’m not motivated to read Lissack’s work, or to be more thorough in my response here, but I do want to revisit some of Dorst’s earlier work to see if his opinions changed, or if I romanticized his earlier material.

I should probably also not read short articles just because they are short.