Open peer commentary on the article “Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design” by Abigail C. Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace & Joyce Yee. Upshot: The target article provides a thorough and insightful review of the Research Through Design (RTD) conferences and discusses the successes and limitations of the events in the dissemination of design knowledge.

Working for decades as both theorist and teacher, Ranulph Glanville came to believe that cybernetics and design are two sides of the same coin. Working as both practitioners and teachers, the authors present their understanding of Glanville and the relationships between cybernetics and design. We believe cybernetics offers a foundation for 21st-century design practice. We offer this rationale: – If design, then systems: Due in part to the rise of computing technology and its role in human communications, the domain of design has expanded from giving form to creating systems that support human interactions, thus, systems literacy becomes a necessary foundation for design. – If systems, then cybernetics: Interaction involves goals, feedback, and learning, the science of which is cybernetics. – If cybernetics, then second-order cybernetics: Framing wicked problems requires explicit values and viewpoints, accompanied by the responsibility to justify them with explicit arguments, thus incorporating subjectivity and the epistemology of second-order cybernetics. – If second-order cybernetics, then conversation: Design grounded in argumentation requires conversation so that participants may understand, agree, and collaborate on effective action. Second-order cybernetics frames design as conversation for learning together, and order design creates possibilities for others to have conversations, to learn, and to act.

Key words: conversation, cybernetics, design knowledge, design methods, design rationale, design, systems, ethics, language, models, second-order cybernetics

In contrast to traditional models of design process fundamentally defined by the abstract manipulation of objects, this study recognizes that the resources available for rethinking architecture are to be found in a reformulation of its theory and practice. This reformation should be based on non-linear design processes in which dynamic emergence and invention take the place of a linear design process fixed on a particular object evolution. Advances in computation thinking and technology have stimulated the design and formulation of a large number of design software. Its elaboration supposes a new conceptualization of our discipline’s knowledge, in a body of principles and regulations, which commands the artifact’s design and its realization; therefore, it constitutes a preliminary datum for its comprehension, and thereby is of theoretical importance. Despite the continuous increment of power in computers and software capacities, the creative space of freedom defined by them acting as cognitive instruments remains almost unexplored. Therefore, we propose a change from a design knowledge based on objects to one focused on design as a network of processes. In addition, this study explores the concept of Distributed Cognition in order to redefine the use of digital tools in design process as Cognitive Instruments.

Our challenge as teacher educators and researchers was to design a teacher education program module that centered on an ambitious constructivist teaching model. How could such a program be designed that stirred vision, motivation, and inquiry on classroom, self, and the aims of education, that furnished considerable disciplinary and design knowledge and management skills, and that hatched professional community? The project experimented with three different versions over three years. In the first year, the program generated a great deal of inspired pioneering; but technical skill and keen observation was submerged at times in ideological commitment, and understanding of the model was truncated. In the second year, the program placed great emphasis on the mastery of the model aiming at clinical tryouts. Unfortunately, this formal sapped the novices’ inspiration by over-burdening them with abstract theory and fixed pedagogical forms, thus disconnecting the model from the philosophical and moral reasons of teaching it. In the third year, the program concentrated on practical inquiry and careful bottom-up reflection to develop classroom community. Novices maintained their vision and motivation for the constructivist model, left the project with “reflective prompts, ” but missed fundamental design competencies. Thus, none of the program iterations stands out as a shining example of success, but together they demonstrate the indispensability of all the components.