Nigel Cross’s Designerly Ways of Knowing is one of those books that is quoted more than read. Myself included. This is ironic because, like Polanyi’s The Tacit Dimension, it is in reality a remarkably slim and easy to read paper-meets-book.
Notes:
Levin (1966): designers must look for ‘that extra ingredient’ (usually an ordering principle).
Hillier and Leaman (1976): pattern constructing is like learning an artificial language, a kind of code that transforms thoughts into words “to make a useful transaction between domains which are unlike each other (sounds and meanings in language, artifacts, and needs in design) by means of a code or system of codes which structure that connection”
While the language is often tacit, teachers still need to be as articulate as possible.
Pye: invention comes before theory
Designers can read and write the messages in products
Designers tackle “ill defined” problems
Their mean of problem-solving is solution-focused
Their mode of thinking is constructive
They use codes that translate abstract requirements into concrete objects
They use their codes to both read and write in object languages
Design and non-verbal?
Ordering principles and primary generator…
Gardner on intelligence (linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, personal)
Design is rhetorical, abductive (intuitive), reflective, ambiguous, risky.
Sketches help handle different levels of abstraction simultaneously, and enable IX and recall of knowledge.
Study by Cross into words and design solutions (use of tray)
Persuasive tactics for the choosing of ideas
Examining-drawing-thinking Akin and Kin (1996) Rapid alternation, also Cross et al (1996)
Ball and Omerod (1995): novice and expert terms not as relevant in design; experts tend to use structured and opportunism.
Creative writing and programming more relevant.
Protocol analysis not useful for non-verbal action!
Design knowledge is in people, processes and products “in the forms and materials and finishes which embody design attributes”.
Good research is: purposive, inquisitive, informed, methodical, communicable.