What is engineering?, updated from 87 to 118 words.

What is engineering?

Engineering is people working as engineers.

What is an engineer?

A person, working in teams, who conceives, designs, implements and operates products, processes or systems that use new or existing technology to meet society's changing needs.(Crawley, 2007)

What is education?

Education is the acquisition of knowledge by people.

What is engineering education?

Engineering education is the acquisition of knowledge by people so that they can be effective engineers.(Crawley, 2007)

What is the School of Engineering Education (ENE) at Purdue?

ENE is a place where people learn how to improve knowledge acquisition by people who are or want to be engineers.

Crawley, E. F. S. L. (2007). Rethinking engineering education the CDIO approach. New York: Springer.

Outsiders’ approach and their interesting viewpoints

From the readings of this week, I find outsiders’ approach to a strange domain as well as their viewpoints of such domain very interesting. Though the authors of the two articles might actually be experts in the fields where they acted as observers, they did depict different kinds of pictures from those seen by insiders.

When stepped into a strange world – Artificial Intelligence (AI), Forsythe kept comparing the unfamiliar fascinating things she observed in AI with the things that an anthropologist was familiar with. She tried to understand how those AI people translate knowledge into computer language, which seemed very weird and challenging from an anthropologist’s point of view. By observation and comparison, she got some very interesting results. For example, she was skeptical about the self-definition as scientists by AI people, and argued that their performances were more like engineers’. Also, she described the way in which AI people thought about knowledge as “I am the world” reasoning, which might never be aware of by the AI researchers as they talked about what knowledge was.

Different from Forsythe’s approach to a new domain that mainly use comparison, Latour and Woolgar tried to refine their understanding of what scientists were doing in the laboratory by asking questions and seeking for answers. Though the questions might seem ignorant to the lab people, they were helpful tools for outsiders to think, to investigate and to be familiar with the strange world. In this process, the observers gradually realized the important “product” that all scientists in the laboratory were working on – articles to be hopefully published in scientific journals. The observers conceived the laboratory equipment to be devices that produced literature, and the scientists were manufacturers of such products. I think the scientists would be amazed by this factory-like description of their daily work.

I think the outsider’s point of view is indispensible in refining a specific domain. Though the insiders may be more familiar with the particulars and culture and knows what’s going on, they might be too close to the situation to see the forest for the trees. For outsiders, they have no stake in the situation, so they could give more objective judgments and offer dramatically different viewpoints that help insider clarify the situation. As was mentioned in Forsythe’s article, the AI people were unaware of the static and narrow view of knowledge they held, which seemed so obvious in an anthropologist’s point of view. The recommendation that AI people should step out of the situation to think about knowledge in different ways would finally help the insiders to meet their own goals.

In the domains of both engineering and education, I’m still an outsider. I find myself approaching the two new domains in a way very similar to that of Forsythe’s – comparing knowledge in the new field with my original background knowledge and try to figure out something different (as could be seen in one of my post http://ene-hp-f10.blogspot.com/2010/09/differences-between-engineer-and.html). By comparison, I'm able to add some unique characters to the new field to help me learn more about the situation. But at this time, I really wish to be an insider to enjoy the moment when outsiders share their amazing viewpoints with me.

Put the Lawson & Dorst chapter on Blackboard

Hi all,

This is the chapter that gives a many-faceted description of "design" - and it is very easy to read.

Also - for those who are interested in where I'll be next week - I'll be at the 8th Design Thinking Research Symposium (past events). This year the focus is on "interpreting design thinking". Oughta be fun!

what is engineering?

What is engineering?

Engineering is people working as engineers.

What is an engineer?

A person, working in teams, who conceives, designs, implements and operates products, processes or systems that use new or existing technology to meet society's changing needs.(Crawley, 2007)

What is education?

I believe education is the acquisition of knowledge by people.

What is engineering education?

Engineering education the acquisition of knowledge by people so that they can be effective engineers.(Crawley, 2007)

Crawley, E. F. S. L. (2007). Rethinking engineering education the CDIO approach. New York: Springer.

Purdue's Lack of a School of Music

After our ending discussion where it was mentioned that Purdue has no school of music due to a stipulation by John Purdue, I thought to myself "that's probably a myth." So I walked over to the Elliott Hall of Music to talk to a friend of mine, Professor Jay Gephart, Director of Bands at Purdue.

He was busy, but was able to quickly answer my question. "Why doesn't Purdue have a school of music?" I asked. He responded "I don't know exactly, but it has to due with the fact that it is a land grant institution and IU already had a school of music at the time of its founding." I replied, "Did John Purdue establish any requirements when he gave his initial donation prohibiting a school of music?" Jay's response: "no, it was nothing like that."

So there's an argument from authority. But that's hardly good enough, so I went digging in an old book that I bought a while back. It's out of print (though apparently the Purdue library system has it online). The book is called "Century and Beyond: The History of Purdue University". It's a good book and I encourage anyone planning to stick around here for a while to read it.

On page 29 you can find the letter that John Purdue wrote to the Governor of Indiana detailing the conditions associated with his donation. I've reproduced it below:

To His Excellency Conrad Baker, Governor of Indiana:
Sir --
As the General Assembly, at its present session, will doubtless be called upon to consider the questions relating to the establishment and location of the Agricultural College, contemplated by the act of Congress of July 2, 1862, I desire to avail myself of the opportunity to render a testimonial to the county in which I have spent thirty years of the ripeness of my life, and also to manifest my interest in the cause of collegiate education, by offering (as I now do) through your Excellency to the State of Indiana, to donate the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the use of such college, provided the General Assembly will, by law, secure me in the following conditions:
First. Locate the said college at such point in Tippecanoe County as may be decided upon by a majority of the present Board of Trustees of the Indiana Agricultural College, to whom I be added as a member.
Second. Name the Institution by an irrepealable law "Purdue University".
Third. Provide that I be a member of the Board of Trustees having control of said institution, and should I cease to be such, I be retained as a advisory member thereof, and have visitorial power over the University during my lifetime.
Upon these conditions I offer this donation, which I agree to pay in yearly installments of $15,000 until the full sum of $150,000 is paid; and I am prepared to render my obligations accordingly as may be required.
I will thank you to present my offer to the Houses of the General Assembly for their consideration.
Very respectfully yours,
John Purdue
April 15, 1869


So to clear up any ambiguities, the fact that Purdue University does not have a school of music really has nothing to do with John Purdue. The exact details are still unclear to me, and I spent a little time digging around trying to find Purdue's actual charter with no success.

My understanding is that because IU predates Purdue (and the Morrill Act) it was a more traditional liberal arts college, representative of post-secondary education at the time. When the Morrill Act was passed the Indiana legislature leveraged it to create an Agriculture/Mechanical (Engineering) college – Purdue – and in the process wanted to avoid duplicating programs that already existed at the other state institution. That is why, for instance, IU has a medical program and Purdue does not. Purdue has a vet med program, and IU does not. IU has a school of music, and Purdue does not (although you can minor in music here). As time progresses we can see some duplication of programs between the two universities, but that is probably to be expected as the enrollment increases. This is simply my understanding, I haven't put forth the effort to find any citations to support my claims.

That said, my main goal with this post is to help prevent the spread of misinformation. I hope that it is clear that Purdue's lack of a school of music has nothing to do with John Purdue.

If someone happens to have more information regarding this particular historical oddity I would be very, very interested in hearing it. Thanks!

Spirit of the Land Grant Colleges

We've been talking about the Morrill Land Grant Act in class last week, this week, and it will come back again.  If you haven't seen it, go check out the Spirit of the Land Grant Colleges mural that is located above HSSE's main entrance doors.  Look at all the imagery.  Look at who is doing work, and what work is represented, and how it is represented.  It is TOTALLY FASCINATING.

Here's information about the mural: http://www.lib.purdue.edu/hsse/infopages/news/spiritlandgrant.html
Here's the mural: http://www.lib.purdue.edu/hsse/infopages/news/spiritmural.html

Thoughts on "Re-engineering"

I found the paper "The Other Re-engineering of Engineering Education, 1900-1965" to be fairly intriguing. In particular, my experience in the electrical and computer engineering program at Purdue was reasonably laden with practical design exercises and considerations, at least for the undergraduate portion.

At times the paper seemed as though it was arguing that engineers should be engaged in more practical engineering, where practical is defined as going out and actually building something. I think we are long past that point in our history. Engineers no longer build things, they design them. Other people more skilled in construction and (generally) less educated are responsible for taking the schematics that the engineer architected and turning them into reality.

In particular a few quotes intrigued me. I really liked this quote:
" 'This is a book you can read without the use of the calculus.' If you're going to take the calculus out of engineering, you are going to destroy engineering."

I agree with that quote wholeheartedly.

Another quote which was intriguing, but that I disagree with is this:
"The tendency [of research] seemed to be toward such far-out matters as 'a theoretical study of the scattering of electrical waves by perfectly reflecting bodies...'" He
added, "when ... the engineering editor tried to get pictures to illustrate reports on research in progress, he was sometimes told there was nothing to photograph unless he was willing to photograph an equation."

The author seems to be implying that because there were only equations to take a picture of, what was being done must be so "far-out" as to be pure research and totally impractical. We can walk down to the Birck Nanotechnology Center on probably any day of the week, and the people there will be submerged in an ocean of models and equations. A lot of them will be accounting for quantum mechanical effects and other things happening at the atomic and subatomic levels. Particularly when dealing with the subatomic level, you're going to have a really hard time getting any pictures.

Yet, these models are used to guide the creation of new transistors and other solid state devices. There's nothing impractical at all about what is being done here.

Maybe my department is just so far along in this "re-engineering" process that I already reaped its benefits. I think that's probably unlikely, however. The fact of the matter is that we're at a point where a large part of engineering is engineering science, not just because that is what is being taught in colleges but also because that is what is being used in practice. It is for the better that we can model things before we build them.

Week 8, reflections on readings. History of Eng.Ed.

After the reading of Seely’s article I see some kind of paradox in the development of Engineering Education as a discipline. May be it is just my impression, but I still would like to share that.
1. People always were dissatisfied with the quality of Engineering Education and always complained that it does not correspond with “the real world” needs.
2. In past , Engineering Education was orientated towards development of practical skills with minimal focus on science and fundamental theoretical knowledge. Later (including present time), people complain that Eng. Ed. is too scientifically directed and does not provide appropriate practical skills.
3. Since the WW2, and up till now, the Government money (and the fights between schools to get this funding) always was a significant factor, which influenced on the development of Engineering Education.
In the second article (for this week) Dorst tried: (1) to identify what is design and (2) to establish the methodology of this process. He argues that the very first attempts to find out how a problem-solver makes decisions came from 1960-1970, when the idea of artificial intelligence was very popular. Dorst argued with Simon’s theory about the boundaries between well-defined and ill defined problems and their roles in problem-solving process. It was interesting article with many different perspectives on design, but in general, the author concluded that design process is still unknown, and many factors may influence on designer’s decisions: “The design is a revolution of paradoxes between discourses in a design situation” (p.17).
This is not too long posting, see you all in class.

Identity issues and Genetic predispositions

Based on last week's readings and conversation, I think the need to have an identity after having in existence is one of the cons of engineering. From a philosophical perspective, having an essence and then realizing and reflecting on that essence is going to generate different conclusions about that essence. Should there be an expectation of agreement? It probably happened with other professions (dare I say that) or fields, but to complicate it, some of their names and titles were actually derived from the activity that they do, ie., TEACHer, BARBer, CARPENT(i)ER. Engineers engine-ing? It is probably impossible, but it is almost as if the field/profession should have been named before it became, and much of our wrestling for identity and position is a response to others already having position and identity. We fight for respect when we have such power, and that causes me to wonder why we need such respect and identity when we already have power. (I choose not to go into what having that power actually means and the pros and cons to that. I think it is safe to say there are potential good and dangers associated with said power.) But how does it change the work or the essence of what we do? I would delve into identity work given the time. We rebel against boundaries others superimposed onto us, and then generate boundaries again. Such an interesting cycle.

I shift to observe how this is happening to engineering education. Do we fit into engineering or do we fit into education? Are we taking pieces of both because we are a grafted newborn? Are we creating our own space? If we are creating our own space, and we see how others have evolved, do we do it the same way and if we do not, then doing it a new way is still doing it some way. That way is responding to a previously established way by either agreeing with it or disagreeing and doing something else (opposite, nuanced, etc.)...but possibly in the same manner. Most of our movements are routines we cannot actually avoid...but uber-reflection has potential to do something different in the space afforded to us by others. So

Down the zigzag path to progress

I think there is an important lesson in the reading from Seely. The way engineering education developed, after the 50's, toward ever hypothetical mathematics that had less bearing on physical realities represents a departure from common conceptions of science and engineering developmental pathways. The Enlightenment, which is large part is the birthplace of modern science, carried many themes such as progress, the power of reason, and evolution of society. During this time societies began to shift from feudal and agrarian modes of operation toward industrial modes (in the west anyways), and writers at that time and following periods emphasized the power of reason to understand and shape increasingly complex societies. Progress and sometimes evolution of society were consistent themes in addition to reason in the Enlightenment; although the Enlightenment contains a very broad array of thinkers who sometimes hold contradictory beliefs. Science is commonly seen as an empirical mode of inquiry and discovery that builds upon itself and progresses over time toward better understanding. Not surprisingly, modern science, which developed during the Enlightenment, contains many of the same themes as the Enlightenment. From this vantage point, progress is often seen as inevitable; as we discover more we understand our world and the human condition better, and can use that knowledge to shape our ways of living.

Some thinkers, including Michel Foucault, through his work have questioned how inevitable or natural progress is, both in society and in science itself. By analyzing changes in discourse and practices over time, Foucault reveals ways in which what seems to be progressive, reasoned growth or development is sometimes not as well reasoned as we thought. Ultimately, although this is not something Foucault discusses directly, its a warning that progress is not always inevitable, even with fields like science.

Bringing this back to Seely, the divergence in engineering toward more esoteric math seems to represent a departure from a progressive development of science, in this case dealing with engineering applications of science. This is particularly important for engineering education students-to-be-researchers, and should remind us to be wary and skeptical about the way a field develops. Although science and engineering certainly grow, their growth and progression is not inevitable. Sometimes these fields take bizarre twists, and as students-to-be-researchers, we cannot be complacent and assume that things will develop properly without redirect. Of course, some level of peculiar development is probably inevitable, but as members of an emergent field who deal directly with how engineering is taught, I think we should also be the vanguard who tries to steer engineering toward the preferable--but not inevitable--path of progress.

--Corey

Engineering and Engieering Profession

In general, the following post discusses that the definition of engineering can be very broad as to every human's daily life, but the definition of engineering profession must be differentiated to the broad engineering by linking engineering profession with its products and business, so as to help professional engineers find their professional identity.

I didn't know "engineering" can be so broad, until:

• At the beginning monologue of the movie My Sister's Keeper (in this movie, a 13-year-old girl Anna has an older sister Kate who suffers from leukemia. Anna was born to be a perfect donor match to help save Kate's life), Anna said: Most babies are accidents, not me, I was engineered, born to save my sister's life. I appreciate a lot the usage of "engineered" here, better than "conceived" which is widely used in introductory literature of this movie and the novel it based on. Because "conceive" is "to take into one's mind" or "to form a conception of "--maybe--by accident or unconsciously, but it reveals here that "engineer" involves doing something on certain purpose.
• I saw an artificial crystal necklace at the Art Fair. The artist put certain materials into certain machine (something like high-temperature oven), and the materials will grow themselves into artificial crystal with beautiful patterns inside. Somebody said the crystal is engineered. Although the colors and materials used by the artists do set some constraints, the way the pattern grows are mostly random, thus we can see here the word "engineer" includes uncertain and uncontrollable factors.
• Koen(2003) says "To be human is to be an engineer".

Based on these points, I see engineering is a process of doing certain things on certain purposes under certain constraints with uncertainty. It is so broad that almost everybody encounters engineering in their daily lives. Yet to be broad is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

The advantage is that this broad character of engineering can be used into publicity, to persuade people that engineering is relevant to their daily life, and to encourage them to engaged in engineering, because it's easy, and everybody do it everyday. It's not like science and art that only belong to those gifted people who is somehow "geeky", it belongs to everybody.

However, the disadvantage is more obvious. When the category of "engineering" is broad enough to include everybody, everybody loses their identity as engineer (Pawley, 2009). So I see it's necessary to do a boundary-drawing(Gieryn, 1999) work here, to differentiate "engineering" and "to be an engineer (professional engineer)". Engineering can be very broad as Koen describes, but to be a professional engineer is not. A housewife may do the cook everyday, she does the cook on the purpose of making some food to eat using what she has in the fridge or from the grocery store. Although she is experienced, there are still uncertainty in the process as to things influencing the food that might happen at any time. She is engineering food everyday, but she is not an professional engineer, at best a chef. If there is no boundary here between everyday engineering activities and engineering profession, all professions including cook, writer, and artist can be regarded as engineer. Engineers have striven to professionalize themselves ever since the mid-1800s (Layton, 1971; Noble, 1979; Pawley, 2009), and I see lots of boundary works drawing differentiation between science and engineering, but few among engineering, cooking, writing, and art. Maybe because they looks so obviously different, and there seems no need to say they are different. However, I say, they are essentially the same, if by the definition of engineering no matter I give above or Koen gives. So why they looks so different? In my opinion, what differentiate them are the things/products they are making and the way their products link to business field, namely, the product of cooking is for eating, the product of writing is for reading, the product of art is for appreciation, the products of engineering is for usage, and the business ways these products go to consumers are very different. I think this is why business or money is so important when talking about engineering (myriad of literature has clues of the importance of money, and it's beyond the length of this post. I might develop it in my essay), because the definition of engineering profession must include the description of the purpose (the products) and the way it consumes. We couldn't give engineering profession a definition independently (like making things, or doing design), because this will result in a broad dangerous "universal" category where engineers will lose themselves.

P.S.
I came across Dear Dr. Pawley's article "Universalized Narratives: Patterns in How Faculty Members Define "Engineering"" when doing the quick and dirty review of JEE papers. It's very interesting, and the background introductory part really helps me a lot to digest and make connections among Layton, Noble, Koen, Gieryn, and also the Changing the Conversation Report. After reading the narratives of engineering faculty, I become interested in what the narratives about "engineering" of engineers in the industry will be?

What the new engineer needs to know.

My ASME magazine (Mechanical Engineering) arrived last week, and as I was flipping through it, I came across an article titled, "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering".  This title was first published in 1944 as as series of three articles in Mechanical Engineering, written by W.J. King.  The articles were later compiled as a book, with revisions and additions by James G. Skakoon.  (Most recent publication date is 2001)  The first of the three articles focuses on the new engineer, or "What the Beginner Needs to Learn at Once".

Several things struck me when I read this article.  First, that what a beginner needs to learn at once is not really all that different in 2010 than it was in 1944.  The "unwritten laws" addressed attitudes and behaviors expected of professionals.  The laws make clear that 1) you are part of a whole, 2) your part of the whole is important and expected to be accomplished, no matter how small it seems, 3) the way you relate to and communicate with others will affect your productivity, and 4) that whole that you are part of is a hierarchy, and as a beginner you are not at the top.  On a personal level I find these to be absolutely true, and though most students I work with seem to know them, occasionally there are a few that either don't know or don't believe the truth in these statements. 

Second, there was nothing in the laws that was specific to engineering, or was technical in any way.  There were a few that touched on business aspects of engineering (e.g. "promises, schedules, and estimates are necessary and improtant instruments in a well-ordered business"), but nothing about the technical competence.  It made me wonder if either technical competence was assumed, or if technical competence was not a priority.  I hope it is the former and not the latter. 

Refecting on this article, I see some threads that tie this to the article we read by Dall'Alba, and my earlier post about that article.  (See http://ene-hp-f10.blogspot.com/2010/09/epistemology-and-ontology.html for previous post.)  In particular, I suggested that "what we call formal engineering education is primarily the epistmological portion of becomming an engineer, and intern/co-op experiences primarily the onotological portion of becomming an engineer." 

Since the "laws" are not epistomological in nature, and are more centered on a way of being, I would classify them as ontological.  So here's my big question:  if they are "unwritten laws" for (dare I say) the way of being a new engineer in industry, how can we, as educators, be sure that our students learn them?

P.S.  If anyone is interested in the 5 page article, I'm happy to share copies.  Just let me know.

Evolvement of Engineering Profession as described in Noble and Layton

Layton looks at the balance/compromise/influence between business and professionalism in the formation and evolution of engineering societies in America. He talks about the requirements of becoming a member in the engineering society. Layton writes four different tests: 1) technical creativity, 2) ability to design, 3) being in “responsible charge” of engineering work, and 4) company or industrial affiliation for obtaining full membership in engineering society. These four tests of full membership constitute a definition of the term “engineer”. Layton goes on to discuss the complication and controversy that the tests created on who is and is not eligible for the full membership in engineering society. With this the two dominant engineering societies: America Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) and American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME) in the 1870s are discussed. The ASCE stood for “ideal of engineering as an independent profession” and the AIME embodied the engineering as “an integral part of business”. With both societies having drawbacks, two additional societies were formed known as the America Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). Both of these societies attempted to combine “the professionalism of the ASCE with the industrial service of the AIME”. These four societies were known as the “founder societies”. However, in the later 19^th and early 20^th century new were formed due to “discontent with the particular balance between business and professionalism of the parent societies”. The newer societies were “shaped by the nature of the field of technology that its members pursued”. Layton then looks at the degree of influence the professionals and businessmen are needed for a successful engineering society and its impact on society policy.

In Noble, engineering is defined as technology and capitalism. He discusses how the money always influence and is always involved in engineering. In addition, Noble writes about how engineering profession changes depending on the need of the society, “…and as the business aspects of engineering changed with the expansion of industrial enterprises, so too did the nature of engineering professionalism”. Furthermore, it was found by Wickenden that most engineers in 1884 to 1924 progressed onto management role and thus “reflected the unprecedented demand for technically trained managers in modern industry”. According to Noble, engineering is “applied science”. Noble quotes observation made by Edwin Layton, “unlike science,”, “technology cannot exist of its own sake”. With only the large corporations having the capital to “practice engineering”, engineers were “compelled to enter the employ of industry”. Therefore the discussion focused on “adapting graduates to industry,” changing the schools to meet the “specifications of industry”, and preparing the engineering graduates for “business leadership”.

As ASCE formed in 1852, the mechanical society struggled to define professional autonomy, standards of ethics and social responsibility within a context of professional practice. Similarly, in 1880, despite the formation of ASME, mechanical engineers had difficulty in defining their profession, as their roles consisted of, “primarily short-trained industrialists”, “corporation executives”, and “shop managers” and “school-trained corporate employees on the other”. As for the electrical and chemical engineers, since they had no traditional cultures to contend with, their professionalism was defined by the “position within the corporate hierarchy” and “scientific training”.

The article by Noble shows that engineering profession evolved based on the needs of the industry. Much of the article discusses on the close relationship/cooperation between industry and educational institutions and that engineers need to be trained to be successful in a large company. As for the Layton, engineering profession has been defined by the requirement of membership, which impact who is and is not included in the engineering society.

Summary of the description of design

After reading two weeks’ articles on the topic of engineering, I come across some different approaches to define what is engineering. As I read more, my uncertainty in understanding the word “engineering” grows. When I read a new article, I keep revisiting articles that I read before and try to find some similarities to help me link the fragment of ideas together. The most unfamiliar word in my understanding of aspect of “engineering” is “design”. Now I want to summarize my understanding related to “design” from the articles of Jonassen et al, Seely, Dorst, and Figueiredo.

The paper written by Jonassen et al. talked mainly about the attributes of workplace problem to address the need of redesigning curricula and experiences that better prepare students for workplace. They did mention a bit about “design problems” by saying that they were the most complex and ill-structured problems, which were usually vaguely defined or had unclear goals with unstated constraints. They said “design problems” had multiple solution paths, solutions and criteria for evaluating solutions.

In Seely’s paper, I simply interpret “design experience” to be problem-solving skills and practical experiences, and “design” to be problem-solving and practice.

I find lots of concepts related to “design” in Dorst’s article, which need to be further digested (especially the underlined phrases). He introduced several people’s approaches to “design”. 1. Simon defined the concept of “well-structured problems” as opposed to “ill-structured problems”, and considered “design” to be the solution to “ill-structured problems”. But in his definition, whether a problem was ill- or well-structured depended on the availability of solution methods, not by the property of the problem itself. 2. Dorst and Cross described “design” as a coevolution of the problem and the solution. 3. Dreyfus and Suchman described “design problems” as situated problems - if the designer thought the situation to be problematic, then the problem was a “design problem”. Meanwhile, the problem-solving steps could be logical, routine, and implicit, without any real choice by the designer. 4. Hatchuel illustrated that “design” was not merely problem solving, but it also contained other processes. 5. Dorst described in his article the term “design” without using “design problem”. He used paradox instead. He illustrated that “design” was the resolution of paradoxes between different aspects in a design situation.

When I revisit Figueiredo’s paper, I find he tried to give an all-sided definition of “design”. He said that the epistemology of “design” was related to “wicked problems” – the problems that were so complex and close interdependence with social and organizational factors that could not be handled by traditional scientific approaches. He stated that the evolution of systems design had been described as incorporating four categories: design as functional analysis, design as problem-solving (Simon’s approach), design as problem-setting, and design as emergent evolutionary learning (Dreyfus and Suchman’s approach).

To this point, the concepts of “design” are still fragments in my mind and need to be integrated. I could just figure out some key words related to “design”: problem-solving, ill-structured problem, vague and unclear. I hope that my understanding of the word “design” will get clearer by reading more materials in following weeks.