Carl DiSalvo
In most all of its most familiar uses, to derive means to obtain. But to derive is not simply to come into possession of something, rather it is to acquire something by means of drawing it out from something else, and often in the endeavour of drawing it out, transforming it. We derive by extension. We derive by modification. What we derive is myriad; the term has common usage in linguistics, in mathematics and in the sciences. It also has common usage in descriptions of the everyday, for instance we say that we derive calm from meditation, excitement from sport and pleasure from sex.
Deriv-ing, then, is a process. It is a process of extension and modification through which some thing is produced. Most often, this process is assumed to be logical. That is, there is assumed to be an ordered sequence of steps, a clear articulation by which we achieve that which we achieve. For instance, we derive the term designerly by affixing the term designer with a standard suffix that changes the lexical category and meaning of the term. This general process (of adding a suffix) can be repeated time and again in linguistic contexts for producing new terms (even when, as in the case of designerly, the outcome is awkward, it is still sensible). Such logical sequences and articulations are similarly the case in the production of, that is, derivation of, mathematical proofs, chemical compounds and so on.
Contemporary research in the humanities and social sciences is increasingly engaging in practices of making as part of the scholarly endeavour. Making is, in fact, not a singular thing or even a stable category, but rather shorthand for a swathe of practices including design, art, craft, multiple forms of media (video, photography, sound), as well as the so-called maker movement (whatever that might turn out to be, or not; see Anderson 2012; Pye 2015; Sennett 2008). Why this interest in making in the humanities and social sciences? What is it that making purportedly provides?
What making provides interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences with is novel means of deriving knowledge. This occurs through a process – making as a mode of derivation. But that process presents a challenge because of the unfamiliarity of the logics, sequences and manners of articulations used. Rather than attempting to engage with all kinds of making, I will confine this brief discussion to the domain of design.
Designers have a fraught relationship with process, which affects those who work with designers as well as those who study design. Within design, there is a fetishization of process. Perhaps one of the most manifest historical perspectives on this fetishization is the Design Methods movement (see Jones 1992; Cross 2001) and the canonical example of Christopher Alexander (Alexander, Ishikawa and Silverstein 1977). The Design Methods movement sought to formalize processes for design. In effect, the Design Methods movement sought to formalize processes of deriving effect (or affect) through particular actions and forms. So, Alexander’s pattern language could be seen as a means of arriving at ‘a good city’ or ‘a good neighborhood’ or ‘a good street corner’ by the extension and modification of a series of structural elements and material configurations. Design Thinking could be taken to be a contemporary version of this impulse; Design Thinking purports to provide designers and non-designers alike with a means of deriving invention, if not innovation, from a specified manner of engaging contexts – any and all contexts (Brown 2008). The promise of Design Thinking is that we all might be able to derive, to draw forth in inspired and meaningful ways.
And yet, while process – the means of derivation – is an ongoing interest to practising designers and design scholars, it is also a point of contestation. At the same time that many designers fetishize process, many also concomitantly resist any idea that the design process might be scientific, formulaic, fixed or prescribed (see, again, Cross 2001). This is not to say that the derivation is not logical, simply that it (purportedly) follows another logic or logics.
Lury and Wakeford (2012) use the term inventive methods to capture a range of these new ways of deriving knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, many of which involve making, and some which are decidedly designerly. I want to argue that what makes design such an exciting (and sometimes maddening) approach is that it is itself an inventive method. The logics of design are continuously being re-invented and re-articulated as the contexts and purposes of design change. If, as Buchanan (1985) claims, design has no fixed subject matter but, rather, like rhetoric is a means of invention, then each design calls for a re-imagination of what design is capable of doing and how. Making doorknobs is not the same as making buildings which is not the same as making logos which is not the same as making interfaces and yet it is all, comfortably, design.
Within the context of product and service innovation Kolko (2010) has argued for understanding the inventiveness of design (how it derives) as a process of abductive reasoning; Buchanan (1985) offers a conceptualization of design as a modern form of rhetoric, a means of situating design as a liberal art concerned with the invention of arguments for how we could and should live; and with speculative design in the context of public understanding of science and technology Michael (2012) invokes the trope of the idiot to explain the practice and purpose of design. Each of these is correct – each of these is a proper means of deriving given its particular context and purpose. This is both the resilience of design and the source of quandaries with regard to research. Design is itself a series of inventive logics.
In its context of origin – serving industry through the creation of goods – the fact that designers could approach the same situation and conditions time and again, and time and again arrive at different ends via a similar process, was of benefit. It filled the marketplace with a plethora of variation (whether or not this was beneficial beyond the marketplace is another issue). Within the context of research, this variation can be troublesome. Yes, it does produce an abundance and diversity of interpretations in both content and form (taken together as the materialization of the derivation). This abundance and diversity, however, might trouble some who look for coherence in scholarship.
One approach would be to standardize, or at least catalogue and typify, designerly approaches to knowledge production. And indeed, there are those who pursue that vector. Another vector is to shift our perspective on what we value in methods and what we mean by deriving or achieving knowledge.
Perhaps one value of designerly methods in the humanities and social sciences is the extent to which the endeavour of designing enables us to derive problems. The interpretations, the meanings produced through design are not means of settling concerns, but rather of materializing them and their significant factors. In this way, the derivation takes on its double meaning of both the process of deriving and the source from which something is derived, its origin. Rather than designerly methods producing the ends of inquiry, maybe they produce its starting point. Deriving is not merely a process, but an experiential endeavour, an event that enables productive problem-making (Wilkie 2014). There is a quizzical aspect of this. Design, in this context is not about usability, usefulness or even desirability. What we derive from design, as mode of making-as-inquiry, are not solutions, but rather productive glitches, difficulties and complications.
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S. and Silverstein, M. (1977). A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, C. (2012). Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. New York: Random House.
Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6): 84.
Buchanan, R. (1985). Declaration by design: rhetoric, argument, and demonstration in design practice. Design Issues, 2(1): 4–22.
Cross, N. (2001). Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science. Design Issues, 17(3): 49–55.
Jones, J. C. (1992). Design Methods. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Kolko, J. (2010). Abductive thinking and sensemaking: the drivers of design synthesis. Design Issues, 26(1): 15–28.
Lury, C. and Wakeford, N. (Eds.) (2012). Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. New York: Routledge.
Michael, M. (2012). ‘What are we busy doing?’ Engaging the idiot. Science, Technology & Human Values, 37(5): 528–554.
Pye, D. (2015). The Nature and Art of Workmanship. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
Sennett, R. (2008). The Craftsman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wilkie, A. (2014). Prototyping as event: designing the future of obesity. Journal of Cultural Economy, 7(4): 476–492.