An artifact can be thought of as a meeting point—an “interface” in today’s terms—between an “inner” environment, the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an “outer” environment, the surroundings in which it operates. If the inner environment is appropriate to the outer environment, or vice versa, the artifact will serve its intended purpose. . . . Alexander puts it similarly (1964, 15): . . . every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form in question and its context. The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem. In other words, when we speak of design, the real object of discussion is not the form alone, but the ensemble comprising the form and its context. Good fit is a desired property of this ensemble which relates to some particular division of the ensemble into form and context. . . . we may even speak of culture itself as an ensemble in which the various fashions and artifacts which develop are slowly fitted to the rest. Simon (1996 → Text 3) also pointed to the evolutionary and iterative character of design (1996, 163): The idea of final goals is inconsistent with our limited ability to foretell or determine the future. The real result of our actions is to establish initial conditions for the next succeeding stage of action. What we call ‘final’ goals are in fact criteria for choosing the initial conditions that we will leave to our successors. How do we want to leave the world to the next generation? What are good initial conditions for them? One desideratum would be a world offering as many alternatives as possible to future decision makers, avoiding irreversible commitments that they cannot undo. . . . In the first issue of Design Studies, Archer (1969) introduces “Design as a discipline.” It is obvious that design research must include a huge diversity of disciplines in order to become productive at all. The prolific paradox of the “undisciplined!” discipline (2008) has been present from the very beginning. Archer (1981, 30) took a Wittgensteinian stance, when he said “that my own approach to finding an answer to the question What is Design Research? is to try to discover what design researchers actually do.” He gives the following definition: Design Research . . . is systematic enquiry whose goal is knowledge of, or in, the embodiment of configuration, composition, structure, purpose, value and meaning in man—made things and systems .
14 MAppING DESIGN RESEARch