Current Radical Propositions

Abstract

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Introduction

Some years ago I wrote about (scientific) research and design: I argued that (scientific) research is a subset of design, and we should therefore not ask that design should be a subset of (scientific) research. Indeed, not only should we not ask it, it’s not possible (Glanville 1999).

In this brief piece I want to outline an argument concerning design and thinking, but not to argue it in detail. The central thesis is that design is the essential part of thinking: that is, thinking is a type of design activity. So it’s not just science and research that are design activities: to design is to be human, and vice versa! To construct this outline, I shall look at Piaget’s account of how babies learn to recognise their mothers, surely one of the primitive human acts of mentation. I use the somewhat awkward word mentation to reduce arguments about cognition and perception.

Before I undertake this, I should say a word or two about how I wish to talk about design: what I consider to be at the heart of that activity. For me there are many tasks the designer must undertake and somehow find a satisfactory response to. These include functionality and well-made-ness. But there is one activity which is particular and central to design, the activity by which we create form (truly, this is in-form-ation) and where we seek the distinctiveness, the novelty, that is essential to what we believe we do. This activity has traditionally been associated with sketching—and doodling. (I use the word doodle precisely because it has no pretence to special status: it’s a word that removes grand purpose, downplays an activity to the everyday, to the child-like: which is exactly what I consider this activity to be—purposeless, child-like and everyday.)...

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