Peter Kroes

Design methodology and the nature of technical artefacts

Abstract Design methodology aims at the improvement of design processes. In contrast to the methodology of science, it is strongly process oriented and takes a normative point of view. The paper argues that, despite its process orientation, design methodology cannot avoid addressing questions concerning the nature of the products being designed for two reasons. The first is that the design process and the design product are so intimately related to each other that an understanding of the nature of the design process requires insight into the nature of the kind of product designed, and vice versa. Second, in order to justify its normative stance towards design processes, design methodology will have to consider the issue of the quality of the product being designed. To support these claims, the nature of technical artefacts, considered to be the outcome of a design process, will be examined. It will be argued that they have a dual nature: they are physical objects on the one hand, and intentional objects on the other. Some of the consequences of this dual nature of technical artefacts for the research agenda of design methodology will be explored.

Modelling infrastructures as socio-technical systems

The conceptualisation of the notion of a system in systems engineering, as exemplified in, for instance, the engineering standard IEEE Std 1220–1998 (1999), is problematic when applied to the design of socio-technical systems. This is argued using Intelligent Transportation Systems as an example. A preliminary conceptualisation of socio-technical systems is introduced which includes technical and social elements and actors, as well as four kinds of relations. Current systems engineering practice incorporates technical elements and actors in the system but sees social elements exclusively as contextual. When designing socio-technical systems, however, social elements and the corresponding relations must also be considered as belonging to the system.

Philosophy and Design

0.1: Table of Contents. Introduction. 0.2: Peter Kroes, Andrew Light, Steven A. Moore and Pieter E. Vermaas: Design in Engineering and Architecture: Towards an Integrated Philosophical Understanding. Part I: Engineering Design. 1.1: Maarten Franssen: Design, Use, and the Physical and Intentional Aspects of Technical Artifacts. 1.2: Wybo Houkes: Designing is the Construction of Use Plans. 1.3: Don Ihde: The Designer Fallacy and Technological Imagination. 1.4: Philip Brey: Technological Design as an Evolutionary Process. 1.5: Anke van Gorp and Ibo van de Poel:Deciding on Ethical Issues in Engineering Design. 1.6: Peter-Paul Verbeek: Morality in Design: Design Ethics and the Morality of Technological Artifacts. 1.7: Patrick Feng and Andrew Feenberg:Thinking about Design: Critical Theory of Technology and the Design Process. 1.8: Kiyotaka Naoe: Design Culture and Acceptable Risk. 1.9: Paul B. Thompson: Alienability, Rivalry, and Exclusion Cost: Three Institutional Factors for Design. Part II: Emerging Engineering Design. 2.1: John P. Sullins: Friends by Design: A Design Philosophy for Personal Robotics Technology. 2.2: Bernhard Rieder and Mirko Tobias Schafer: Beyond Engineering: Software Design as Bridge over the Culture/Technology Dichotomy. 2.3: Alfred Nordmann: Technology Naturalized: A Challenge to Design for the Human Scale. 2.4: Daniela Cerqui and Kevin Warwick: Re-designing Humankind: The Rise of Cyborgs, a Desirable Goal? 2.5: Inmaculada de Melo-Martin: Designing People: A Post-Human Future? 2.6: C.T.A. Schmidt: Redesigning Man? 2.7: Kristo Miettinen: Design: Structure, Process, and Function: A Systems Methodology Perspective. 2.8: Ulrich Krohs: Co-designing Social Systems by Designing Technical Artifacts: A Conceptual Approach. 2.9: Kathryn A. Neeley and Heinz C. Luegenbiehl: Beyond Inevitability: Emphasizing the Role of Intention and Ethical Responsibility in Engineering Design. 2.10:S.D. Noam Cook: Design and Responsibility: The Interdependence of Natural, Artifactual, and Human Systems. Part III: Architectural Design. 3.1: Howard Davis: Form and Process in the Transformation of the Architects Role in Society. 3.2: Steven A. Moore and Rebecca Webber: Expert Culture, Representation, and Public Choice: Architectural Renderings as the Editing of Reality. 3.3: Ted Cavanagh: Diverse Designing: Sorting Out Function and Intention in Artifacts. 3.4: Joseph C. Pitt: Design Criteria in Architecture. 3.5: J. Craig Hanks: Cities, Aesthetics, and Human Community: Some Thoughts on the Limits of Design. 3.6: Glenn Parsons: Nature, Aesthetic Values, and Urban Design: Building the Natural City. 4.1: Index.

Modeling engineering systems as socio-technical systems

The IEEE standard for the systems engineering process is problematic when applied to the design of (socio-technical) systems. This is argued using examples of automated vehicle systems. A conceptualization of socio-technical systems is introduced. This distinguishes technical and social elements and agents, as well as four kinds of relations. Next to physical and functional relations, intentional and normative relations play an important role. The IEEE standard defines social elements as contextual and focuses on total design control. Because of the involvement of agents and social elements in socio-technical systems both these viewpoints are problematic.

A semantics for means-end relations

There has been considerable work on practical reasoning in artificial intelligence and also in philosophy. Typically, such reasoning includes premises regarding means–end relations. A clear semantics for such relations is needed in order to evaluate proposed syllogisms. In this paper, we provide a formal semantics for means–end relations, in particular for necessary and sufficient means–end relations. Our semantics includes a non-monotonic conditional operator, so that related practical reasoning is naturally defeasible. This work is primarily an exercise in conceptual analysis, aimed at clarifying and eventually evaluating existing theories of practical reasoning (pending a similar analysis regarding desires, intentions and other relevant concepts).

Rationality in Design

Publisher Summary This chapter aims to present a systematic overview of the different kinds of rationality issues that may come up with regard to engineering-design practice. Engineering design has many faces, ranging from the almost exclusively functionally oriented design of new materials and technical devices in fields like mechanical and electrical engineering, to strongly aesthetically oriented design projects that may be encountered in industrial and architectural design. On the one hand, this state of affairs makes a discussion of rationality in engineering design not an easy matter; on the other hand, it may explain why there are so many diverging opinions on the role of rationality in engineering design. It is a premise of much work done in the field of design methodology and engineering design itself that rationality plays a significant role in design processes, not only at the level of the organization of design processes, but also at the level of the design of products. The underlying idea is that many of the decisions that are made regarding design—regardless of whether they concern the set-up and execution of the design process or the object of design itself—can be justified because of reasons.

Can Technology Embody Values

Under the banner of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) various proposals have been put forward in recent times to integrate moral values in technology through design. These proposals suppose that technology, more in particular technical artifacts, can embody values. In this contribution, we investigate whether this idea holds water. To do so, we examine the neutrality thesis about technology, that is, the thesis that technology is neutral with regard to moral values. This thesis may be interpreted in various ways depending on the kind of values involved. We introduce two distinctions with regard to values: (1) final value (value for its own sake) versus instrumental value, and (2) intrinsic value (value on its own) versus relational or extrinsic value. This leads to four different kinds of values to which the neutrality thesis may refer. We argue that the most interesting version of the neutrality thesis refers to extrinsic final values. We provide a number of counterexamples to this version of the neutrality thesis, and, on the basis of these examples, we suggest a general account of when a technology may be said to embody values. Applying our results to VSD, we introduce three different values involved in a design process, namely, intended value (the value intended by the designers) embodied value (the value designed into the artifact) and realized value (the value that is realized in actual use) and we discuss how we can verify what values are embodied in a designed technical artifact.

Experiments on Socio-Technical Systems: The Problem of Control

My aim is to question whether the introduction of new technologies in society may be considered to be genuine experiments. I will argue that they are not, at least not in the sense in which the notion of experiment is being used in the natural and social sciences. If the introduction of a new technology in society is interpreted as an experiment, then we are dealing with a notion of experiment that differs in an important respect from the notion of experiment as used in the natural and social sciences. This difference shows itself most prominently when the functioning of the new technological system is not only dependent on technological hardware but also on social ‘software’, that is, on social institutions such as appropriate laws, and actions of operators of the new technological system. In those cases we are not dealing with ‘simply’ the introduction of a new technology, but with the introduction of a new socio-technical system. I will argue that if the introduction of a new socio-technical system is considered to be an experiment, then the relation between the experimenter and the system on which the experiment is performed differs significantly from the relation in traditional experiments in the natural and social sciences. In the latter experiments it is assumed that the experimenter is not part of the experimental system and is able to intervene in and control the experimental system from the outside. With regard to the introduction of new socio-technical systems the idea that there is an experimenter outside the socio-technical system who intervenes in and controls that system becomes problematic. From that perspective we are dealing with a different kind of experiment.

Technical Artefacts as Physical and Social Constructions: The Case of Cité de la Muette

Technological artefacts are physical/material as well as social constructions. Both the function and meaning of technical artefacts are mainly socially constructed. Usually the function of a technical artefact is taken to determine its use, but in particular in housing a close interrelation between use and meaning is also observed. The use and the meaning, as intended by technicians and architects, may differ from the use and the meaning of housing, as managed and used in the real world. In exceptional, mostly dramatic, cases the housing function of housing estates may finish within 10–20 years after completion. This paper presents the horrific case of Cité de la Muette (not far from Paris), a public housing project which may be understood as a form of a changing social shaping of technology during which the physical construction involved remained essentially the same. There was a huge gap between the modern ambitions of the architects and the engineers, and the difficult-to-let situation of the housing estate after completion. The use and meaning of the estate changed in a dramatic way when the housing function of the estate was replaced by another function, namely that of a transit camp for the deportation of Jews. This dramatic change in use has had an irreversible impact on the meaning of the estate; although it was used (partly) for social housing again after the Second World War, its symbolic legacy plays an important role in recent discussions about its ultimate fate.

Extending the Scope of the Theory of Knowledge

The invention of the light bulb is without any doubt one of the major inventions of the nineteenth century. It changed life profoundly in that it made human activities independent of the natural light circumstances on a hitherto unknown scale. The idea of electric light goes back to Humphrey Davy. He discovered that an electric arc between two poles could produce light. This phenomenon, however, was rather unpractical for home applications and could not be an alternative to existing gas light. New ideas were explored on the basis of the theoretical work on heat production in resistant conductors. An electric current could heat a conductor to such an extent that it would glow white-hot. Joseph Wilson Swan was the first to construct an electric light bulb on these physical principles. It contained a thin strip of material (filament) in an oxygen-free environment to prevent the strip from burning. An electric current heated the strip. He had, however, serious trouble maintaining the vacuum in the light bulb. Thomas Edison was able to solve this problem and at the same time to construct stable enough carbon wire that could function as filament. On October 21, 1879, he illuminated an electric lamp that glowed continuously for 40 h. That was an enormous achievement in those days.