The Design Way
Intentional
Change in an Unpredictable World -
Foundations
and Fundamentals of Design Competence
by Harold G. Nelson and Erik Stolterman
Educational Technology Publications, Inc.
A flyer and how to order the book from the publisher
The book at Amazon.com
July 2005
This book explores the idea of design as the ongoing genesis of the real world—the seminal process of world creation. The authors make the case for design as both the oldest form of human intention—the one that defines us as being human—and design as one of the emerging approaches to creative human inquiry and innovative action, superbly suited to facilitating intentional change in an unpredictable, complex and dynamic world. Design is presented as an intrinsic process that people are continually engaged in and have used throughout time. Explained as a form of strategic intent, design is presented as disparate from problem solving. Rather, it is presented as a tradition of reflective inquiry and practical action; distinct from science and art, built on its own foundations, with its own fundamentals and located within its own metaphysical domains. Design is treated as a means of creating both the material and immaterial world. The book is a composition of ideas that creates an image of design, designers and designing as an integration of imagination, systemic reasoning and pragmatic action with applications in business, government, and the professions. The book provides a starting point for the acquisition of personal and organizational design competence. The authors introduce the challenges of design learning and education with an eye to the development of design character.
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Reviewer's
Comments
The
Design Way is a fascinating and provocative look at what most
would assume, incorrectly, to be a well-understood topic. Nelson and
Stolterman identify and explore rich concepts that are worthy of much
attention by anyone associated with design, professional designers,
educational and organizational leaders, in fact, any user of a design.
They do so in a way that illuminates the thinking and actions of designers
and carefully explores underlying beliefs, values, and assumptions.
This can and no doubt will prompt the reader to examine and challenge
current practices regardless of field or setting and whether he or
she is an experienced designer, novice, or user. The authors reveal
how design can provide powerful guidance to our thinking and acting
in the complex contexts that are now the norm rather than exception.
The book is for both professionals in design fields and general readers.
A careful reading offers the potential to change not only how we look
at professional activity but the ways in which we live.
Chair, Department of Organizational
Communication, Learning and Design
Roy H. Park School of Communication
Ithaca College
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You have
achieved far more than I have seen anyone else do in articulating
what the design process actually involves as opposed to what people
assert that it involves, and giving the subject a proper philosophical
grounding, so that it can take its rightful place as a substantial
subject of human endeavour.
Jim Platts
Lecturer, Institute for Manufacturing
Examiner, Manufacturing Leaders' Programme
University of Cambridge
I must
admit that I was quite taken by the first section of the book, particularly
the Prelude and the First Tradition. These sections of the book, in
my opinion, set the stage for thinking about instructional design
in qualitatively different ways than I had seen in any other book
or article. These two sections alone make the book worth publishing.
Russ Osguthorpe
Chair, Instructional Psychology
and Technology
Brigham Young University
I found
the manuscript engaging, well-written, and thought provoking. It is
certainly an ambitious and overdue effort to find what all of the
design disciplines share, and to clarify what design thinking and
making entails. Such things get a lot of lip service among designers,
but we rarely make the careful distinctions and precise definitions
that you have made here. I can see the book especially useful in courses
that focus on design thinking or that combine students from various
design disciplines.
Tom Fisher
Dean, College of Architecture
and Landscape Architecture
University of Minnesota
Authors
Dr. Harold G Nelson is the President and Co-founding Director of the Advanced Design Institute. Dr. Nelson is working as a consultant to corporations, governmental agencies, international organizations and educational institutions in the areas of: Organizational Design Competence, Leadership Development, Social Systems Design and Systems/Design Education. He is presently an affiliated Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and visiting lecturer in the Information School at the University of Washington. He is Past-President of the International Society for Systems Science. For over 12 years Dr. Nelson was the Director of the graduate programs in organization and social systems design at Antioch University. He received his Ph.D. in the Design of Social Systems from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a registered architect in the State of California. He can be reached at
nelsongroup@worldnet.att.net or hgnelson@u.washington.edu
http://www.advanceddesign.org
Professor Erik Stolterman
is at the Department of Informatics, Umea University, Sweden. In 1991,
he received his Ph.D. in Informatics at the same university. His main
work is within information technology and society, information systems
design, philosophy of design, and philosophy of technology. Stolterman
is also one of the founders of The Advanced Design Institute. Apart
from the academic scholarly work, Stolterman is engaged in consulting,
seminars, and workshops with organizations and companies. He can be
reached at
http://www.informatik.umu.se/~erik/