Comments on: Fourth Order Design? http://jamin.org/archives/2008/fourth-order-design/ Jamin Hegeman on design, writing, and life Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:54:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: uday http://jamin.org/archives/2008/fourth-order-design/comment-page-1/#comment-68691 uday Fri, 09 May 2008 18:33:11 +0000 http://jamin.org/archives/2008/fourth-order-design/#comment-68691 The way I see it, "fourth order" is Dick's special shorthand way of labeling an area of design practice centered around problems that are highly intangible, wicked, and complex. I wouldn't get hung up on the term. Nobody goes around saying, "Heyyy, i'm a fourth order designer! Wanna have a drink?" :-) It's really about applying the design process (and more specifically the rhetorical arts/methods of the architectonic perspective) to problems that have existed forever (culture, process, organizations, systems) but never had the benefit of the holistic, humanistic design/innovation POV, but always more of the entitative system mechanical POV or other less enlightened POV's. That in itself is the novelty and potential for both the design profession and the targeted problem space, imho :-) Laid out end to end, Dick's four orders describe nicely the spectrum of problems from the material to the immaterial, which raises questions about the applicability of design at various points within that spectrum. It's not about seeing it as "better" or "more elite" than other kinds of design. In my view, All that other stuff about "designers losing control of design" is just grumping by those not willing to admit the fundamentally liberal, pluralistic nature of design, in all its expanding forms of thought and practice. New connections, ideas, territories, spaces, all contribute to the thriving of the field... The way I see it, “fourth order” is Dick’s special shorthand way of labeling an area of design practice centered around problems that are highly intangible, wicked, and complex. I wouldn’t get hung up on the term. Nobody goes around saying, “Heyyy, i’m a fourth order designer! Wanna have a drink?” :-) It’s really about applying the design process (and more specifically the rhetorical arts/methods of the architectonic perspective) to problems that have existed forever (culture, process, organizations, systems) but never had the benefit of the holistic, humanistic design/innovation POV, but always more of the entitative system mechanical POV or other less enlightened POV’s. That in itself is the novelty and potential for both the design profession and the targeted problem space, imho :-)

Laid out end to end, Dick’s four orders describe nicely the spectrum of problems from the material to the immaterial, which raises questions about the applicability of design at various points within that spectrum. It’s not about seeing it as “better” or “more elite” than other kinds of design.

In my view, All that other stuff about “designers losing control of design” is just grumping by those not willing to admit the fundamentally liberal, pluralistic nature of design, in all its expanding forms of thought and practice. New connections, ideas, territories, spaces, all contribute to the thriving of the field…

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