Cover

Editor

iF Industrie Forum Design e. V.

in collaboration with

Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl

Qualitative Decision-Making Competence as an Opportunity for the Discipline of Design

Preface

In September 2013, designers met scientists and business representatives on the island Frauenchiemsee to discuss the future of design. The association Industrie Forum Design invited them there for this purpose.

The event was shaped, for one, by a persistent, though not exactly new concern that design is being marginalized and merely plays a cosmetic role determined by marketing. However, the more profound concern that gave impetus to the event is the prevailing lack of clarity for many with regard to the place and importance of design in the sciences and in society. The discussions on Frauenchiemsee served as a way to take stock of, orient, reappraise and sketch the future of design.

The participants aimed to give serious consideration to the challenge of how to design all aspects of the professional and private spheres in a way that is both dignified and humane. Anyone who takes this matter seriously knows that planet Earth is in jeopardy − in both environmental and financial terms − due to the overexploitation of resources and the excessive amount of debts. Though the situation was once different, this is why a design conference is now bound to tackle more than just the graphic and technical aspects of design. One question that kept coming up during the discussions was whether and how design can also live up to environmental responsibilities. This issue addressed not least the design education, which ought to have a solid scientific basis, as many called for, to make the connection to other disciplines and to science and research a fertile one.

Among the many insights from the conference is the realization that approaches already exist that demonstrate how design can contribute to the solutions to the current crises. A broad and basic scientific education provides the necessary knowledge for working with and designing environmentally friendly materials, for instance. With these kinds of skills, it is possible to develop energyefficient means of transportation. The job of designing means of communication in a sustainable way, thereby playing a part in putting the internet in the service of humane objectives, no longer requires any special justification. The conference considered all aspects of the spaces in which humans live and work. From apartments to the workplace and the routes in between: Everything needs to be redesigned if anything at all is to change for the better. All of the conference participants agreed that the corporate importance of design in global economic competition also has to be a major consideration in establishing this new understanding. At which point in the development, planning and production process is design deployed in a positive, appropriate and profitable way?

The conference speakers (Andreas Dorschel, Winfried Nerdinger, Nils Ole Oermann, Wolfgang Sattler) wrote essays based on their talks.1 Several discussants (Thorsten Frackenpohl, Sandra Hirsch, Lisa Hoffmann, Kristian Gohlke, Johanna Kleinert, Helge Oder, Ingo Wick) also turned their contributions to the discussions into essays. These essays round off the scope of the conference. Information on all of the authors, the organization, the program and the list of participants are located at the end of this volume.

Unfortunately due to a lack of time, Torsten Oltmanns was unable to turn his presentation into an essay ready for publication.

Wilhelm Vossenkuhl

Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (*1945 in Engen) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. From 1997 to 2003 he was Senator of the German Research Association (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) in Bonn. In 1998 he received the international philosophy prize from the Margrit-Egnér Foundation in Zürich. In the 1980 s he worked with Otl Aicher on a number of projects. Prof. Vossenkuhl is the author of books and articles on ethics, Ockham, Kant and Wittgenstein. He achieved public prominence by way of appearances on television and radio programs.

Introduction

Designing everyday objects or buildings, whether for residential or commercial use, entails a great deal of work, which leaves precious little time for reflecting on design work in general and its future. The same is true for doctors, engineers and other professionals whose work is closely related to the lives of human beings. They all mainly attend to what needs to be done and less to things that, more or less in general, could be − perhaps even should be − thought about and considered beyond the scope of their current activity. Moreover, designers work in a complex world of clients and developers, competitors and critics, all of whom have specific ideas before the designers are even brought into the picture and can develop a project. With regard to the concrete ideas and objectives that their work is subject to, designers usually appear on the scene by definition too late. This complicates or, in the worst case, hinders designers from being able to clearly define their tasks and objectives as they see fit. Then, in addition, they are bound to somehow manage to meet various goals, such as maximizing profits, boosting consumption, optimizing products and fulfilling sustainability targets − all while going up against competitors in the global marketplace. Anyone who does neither resign him- or herself to the status quo, nor back down or adapt to the way things are when faced with this situation will therefore attempt to rewrite the rules of design as they apply to the world in which humans live. As in many other disciplines, the result is always a balancing act between conformity and innovation, between heteronomy and self-determination.

The ability to use design to bring order to the world in which we live requires good training and education that not only fosters knowledge, but also creativity. It may sound easy enough, but in reality it is almost impossible because establishing order through design requires the hand as well as the head. The mind can wrap itself around almost any course of studies, but to have the certain touch, the right feel for something is essential if something greater is to come of it during the years of study. Doing the impossible − it might sound trite, but that is precisely the crux of a designer’s training. The course of studies should foster what the hand can do naturally. Not much more can be expected than this. The best degree program, even in an age of ever more sophisticated software, can only meet with limited success if the natural talent is lacking. The head and the hand have to be one organ and complement and inspire one another.

“Doing the impossible − it might sound trite, but that is precisely the crux of a designer’s training.”

This reciprocal inspiration is what Otl Aicher meant when he reflected on ‘making’ and ‘use.’ ‘Making’ sounds like ‘maker,’ but that is misleading. In order to understand what ‘making’ means, we have to consider the Greek word ‘techne,’ the origin of the word ‘technology.’ Aristotle called techne an art, a skill; “it is a habit of creation combined with true reason.”1 This may sound strange to modern ears, but the reference to the great Greek philosopher nevertheless shows that he described a long time ago what we are able to accomplish today only with great effort. The making is obviously not a new subject. It is older than the modern age, though it is the very issue of modernity. This becomes clear when we look back at the history of making, in which we come across − just to name two examples − the Neapolitan Vico in the early 18th century and Karl Marx in the 19th century.2 Both were convinced that we human beings shape our world on our own; indeed, that we make and literally produce ourselves in the process. In an age in which − at least as a promise for the future − human genes can be altered or, in a sense, defused to protect against hereditary diseases, and when each individual human being can be so precisely parsed with the help of algorithms that his or her future wishes are known in advance, this idea is nothing exceptional. Or so it seems.

“The link between the head and the hand is definitely a topic in some design studies programs, sometimes even an integral element.”

We must not overlook the great discrepancy between these biological, IT and mathematical possibilities and what is meant by ‘making.’ Those possibilities have absolutely nothing to do with what we are able to do ourselves. On the contrary, they shape us, regardless of what we want to make of ourselves, and above all regardless of whether that which happens to us in the process is actually good. Compared with this, what we are able to make of and form ourselves has faded into the background, as good as forgotten. Unfortunately, this trend has not entirely spared the world of designers, either. The link between the head and the hand is definitely a topic in some design studies programs, sometimes even an integral element. However, the reciprocal dependency of thinking and making is given too little consideration. Otl Aicher described the basic idea a quarter of a century ago: “Because the hand can grasp, the mind can grasp, too. Because the hand can take hold, our minds can also apprehend.”3 Aicher is talking about the “playing hand” as a physiological prerequisite for design and its use as a “source of recognition,” which he discovered in Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings.4

At this point, many people will stop and wonder whether design today is not already overstrained by such thoughts, or whether such thoughts are not completely besides the point. Aicher believed quite differently. He goes even further, as this quote, which sets out great demands, demonstrates: “Despite everything, design also continues to be a cultural activity, and its space for reflection is filled with fundamental questions pertaining to human existence under the conditions of not just industrial reproduction, but industrial production, which is to say of life in a new and largely artificial world.”5 If we take this seriously, then we also − like Aicher − have to take seriously the claim that design, with its complex set of tasks, also amounts to “a decision about a way of life.”6 When Aicher penned these thoughts in the late 1980 s, biopolitics and its dreams of gene-based breeding and reproduction was still far from becoming a reality. The artificial world that Aicher refers to in the quote is amplified even further by these dreams because the artificial will not stop at human design and the genetic make-up of all living beings, including that of humans.

Aicher did not prescribe any course of action for overcoming modernity’s permanent state of crisis. However, he did assign design a certain position that must be maintained if there is to be any hope at all of managing the crisis and if design is to have a future. “We design because we are searching, not because we know”: the place of the designer cannot be formulated more precisely than that.7 Aicher’s warning to distrust the zeitgeist, to oppose it if necessary and to object to superficial convention is not dated. Rather, we ought to show great nerve and heed it at all times. To design is to reveal, “to show how something is made.”8 It is neither irrelevant nor reaching too far to call this process of making ‘enlightenment.’ In the process, a lot more than the function and purpose of the design is elucidated. The task of design is embedded in the world in which we live, where questions of functioning products, their serviceability and market price are not the only issues; design is also about the order in which people can and want to live with these products, a live-world. This is why Aicher firmly believed that designers are “a kind of moralist,” “they judge, their work consists of valuations.”9

“Beyond the university and at the edge of the market, there is a qualified critical public in the form of professional journals and forums used by architects and designers to organize themselves.”

If design is seen as a demanding task within the framework of the world in which humans live, then it necessarily has to do exactly what Aicher said: judge. Each valuation is based on prior assumptions as to what is good and bad, right and wrong. If it did not, then it would not be responsible.10 However, if these assumptions are not to harden into dogmatic and domineering tenets, then they must be a part of the search for what is right and expose themselves to critique and review. A public forum is the only venue for reliable criticism. Even self-critique cannot manage without public opinion because the valuation of oneself is only reliable when measured against what others think. Without public input, the search for what is right quickly ends in self-satisfied dogmatism, and dogmatism translates into tedium and stagnation, if not worse. One indispensable source of public critique is the university. Another public, which is no less critical, can be found in the market and among consumers. Beyond the university and at the edge of the market, there is a qualified critical public in the form of professional journals and forums used by architects and designers to organize themselves. These three public cornerstones create the framework for the question of where design is heading to. The search for the right and good design moves within these rough contours.

This was the very framework that applied to the presentations, talks and discussion on Frauenchiemsee. Many presentations showed in various ways how the university can become an effective venue for public critique. Designing is a matter of searching, an open-ended process; it is not a precisely synchronized and exactly defined procedure. Design degrees have to account for this fact. In this respect, Wolfgang Sattler referred to Hans Gugelot’s11 statement that design cannot be taught12 and that questions are more important than answers. Sattler expressed certain convictions, which were already in practice at the Ulm School of Design (Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung), that design is all about opening the minds, and not just during training and education. He claimed that designers are enablers, and if they do not manage to achieve this, they are only capable of providing prosthetics.

Fritz Frenkler addressed the idea of making and emphasized the privilege that everyday use should have over vain “author designs” in the design process. However, Frenkler believes the process of making has to be learned and should first be taught. According to him, the process of learning how to make has yet to be endowed with its own scientific basis and quality, which are essential nowadays. He believes that a new set of methods within related sciences and disciplines has to be developed for design programs. This will prevent design from becoming just one among other scientific disciplines. In many cases, the solution to the practical tasks of a designer now requires broad as well as in-depth scientific expertise. For Frenkler, training and education have to accommodate this.

Winfried Nerdinger addressed the qualified critical public outside of the university setting at the edge of the market. Nerdinger doubted that this public has the appropriate voice, however. He objected to the lack of a journalistic design critique in analogy to architectural critique. If such a forum existed, it may illuminate contextual design problems that designers cannot anticipate, as is the case with architectural critique.13 Nerdinger also critically questioned whether the pressure that design faces and is exposed to as regards innovation is absolutely unavoidable. He further wondered if there might not actually be much more continuity in design, or at least the potential for it. Nerdinger presented a similar argument in the introduction to his exhibition publication Geschichte der Rekonstruktion – Konstruktion der Geschichte (The History of Reconstruction − The Construction of History).14 These considerations raise the question as to whether historical recurrences might not also have a purpose in design within the reference framework of functionality and within its historical and aesthetic context. At least with regard to this frame of reference, the question of why design is developing in one direction and not another is a valid one. Nerdinger’s reflections culminated in the assertion that the context in which design occurs is more important than the cult of the new. According to Nerdinger, innovation has no intrinsic value. He believes that it is possible to formulate answers to the question of the future of design by looking at two basic points: the models of designers and their self-perception. Do the models convey a good design standard? And how have the designers realized what they themselves engendered? For Nerdinger, those are the decisive questions that provide information about the future of design.

“Nerdinger’s reflections culminated in the assertion that the context in which design occurs is more important than the cult of the new.”

The market and consumers, which form the third pillar of the public, were not forgotten. In keeping with his work as a consultant, Torsten Oltmanns very decidedly and deliberately chose the economic perspective, asking how notions of retail and consumption can be combined with the solution of the design problem in a meaningful way. He doubted that marketing is the natural enemy of designers and argued that the job of design is not fully realized and fulfilled in individual products. Instead, the task consists far more in designing whole systems and has less to do with creating a shape than empowering users. Oltmanns used mobility as an example to elucidate his position. According to Oltmanns, if we wish to redesign mobility − something that many people are interested in − we would first have to conceive of it systematically. The various forms of mobility should not be thought of in either/or terms, however, but rather in terms of this as well as that, corresponding to the changing needs of humans.