The problem and the pattern which connects

Design problems are wicked because their solution exceeds what is ready to hand - on the other hand solutions are confined by the horizon of imagination of those who has the problem, and this horizon we may assume is framed by what they see as a solution space, and working rules for acting within this space - hence to reformulate a wicked problem we must exspand the imagination's solution space and rules of manipulation.

After Luhmann

He is right, Luhmann: systems do not understand each other, they disturb, they mingle, and then maybe they change - but although informative for a social scientist, this position is not very helpfull to a designer - we must be concerned with what understanding - despite all disturbance - can run from a user to a producer and back, because the flow between producers, retail/politics, and users is the flow that eventually inform our choices and make things end up the way they do, in the market place or as an application on my desktop. So - designers can not stop at sense making as phenomenologists would recommend - we need to invent pattern languages which against all odds can generate communication between users and designers, between designers and engineers, between designers, engineers and customers. To say that communication in this chain is impossible is to say design is impossible.

and ….. phenomenology

“Where were you then”? “What does your stomach tell you”? are common questions when journalists interview people involved in dramatic events. A search for embodied localized knowledge, it seems. The idea of common knowledge is under pressure, however, at the expense of the idea that experience is all we have. Locations do, however, not speak up themselves, neither do bodies. Humans make locations and bodies speak. Humans interpret experiences in language. Humans communicate. And as soon as we speak, we generate more speak. Language is the currency by which we exchange experience, and hermeneutics is the way we evaluate the exchange.

Phenomenology is a name for the acceptance of knowledge originating from experience, from being-in-the-world, but without language and without interpretation, sharing is impossible, and without evaluation through interpretation knowledge is impossible.

Hence, in case we want to evaluate a learning environment of some sort, let us begin by asking (1) Does this learning space allow participants’ experience to be spoken of? (2) Do participants share a language in which to exchange experiences? (3) Do participants share rules by which to commonly discuss and evaluate the exchange?