NextD Journal I ReReThinking Design Conversation 22
Managing is Designing?
Dick, Kalle and Youngjin are doing in the construction industry is a good example of such field-based research. We’re also doing work around developing representations and interfaces that invite managers to think more like designers. But these things are in an early stage. I have also looked at other designers in an effort to better understand the principles that can be derived from their practices. Maya Lin, another great architect and designer, has explored the elements of her design process in her book Boundaries. Her work reinforces the ideas that it is important to use multiple models and to accept the condition of thrownness. It adds the idea of an intuitive gesture. She talks about creating a balance between analytical study and, “in the end, a purely intuitive gesture.” And both Lin and Joe Paradiso of the MIT Media Lab provided insight into the importance of another design principle, the importance of “thinking with our hands.” So, there are many principles emerging beyond the five that you see on the video. This is part of our ongoing effort to articulate a vocabulary that will help managers to engage in design thinking. Richard Boland: Actually, the five themes in the DVD came from the workshop discussions. We had two very talented filmmakers, Tom Ball and Brian Neff from Telos Productions in Cleveland, interview the participants and capture their reflections during and immediately after the workshop. The DVD is an edited compilation of the ideas that emerged in those interviews. Some of those design themes came from Frank Gehry directly, most importantly from his discussion of trying to keep a project in a liquid state in the face of so much pressure to crystallize it. The theme of multiple models came from observing Frank rom the description of his design method he gave during the workshop. The theme of collaboration was introduced by Lucy Suchman, who is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. It was her way of highlighting the distributed nature of the design process, from her own research and from Frank Gehry’s presentation. Throwness, which recognizes the complex set of conditions and forces already existing in any architectural or organizational design situation, was introduced in the workshop by Karl Weick, Rensis Likert Professor of Organizational Psychology at Michigan, and is based on Heidegger’s philosophy of being in the world. The importance of legacy and a manager’s need for an awareness of the legacy of design they create was raised by Sandra Dawson, Director of the Judge Institute of Management Studies at the University of Cambridge. It was based on her own reactions to Frank Gehry’s talk at the workshop and on her work with Boards of Directors in the UK. The DVD is available free from our website at design.case.edu, and its content is quite different from the Managing as Designing book (Stanford University Press, 2004) which has 37 chapters on various design themes contributed by workshop participants after the event. Some chapters from the book are also available from the design.case.edu website. As for Frank Gehry’s design process, he was remarkably open about it during our building project. In fact, his openness has continued over the last three years by cooperating with us on a National Science Foundation project to explore the innovations in technologies, work
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