From Goal-Oriented to Constraint-Oriented Design: The Cybernetic Intersection of Design Theory and Systems Theory

@article{Fischer2017FromGT,
  title={From Goal-Oriented to Constraint-Oriented Design: The Cybernetic Intersection of Design Theory and Systems Theory},
  author={Thomas Fischer and Laurence Richards},
  journal={Leonardo},
  year={2017},
  volume={50},
  pages={36-41}
}
ABSTRACT This article traces the changing notions of constraints in design and of systems since the mid-20th century in the intersection of design theory and systems theory. Taking a second-order cybernetic perspective, the article develops constraints as observer dependent and it analyzes conditions under which constraints tend to be beneficial or detrimental. Ethical implications of constraints in design processes are established with reference to system boundaries. Constraint-oriented design… 
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16 Citations
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16 Citations

An Introduction to Design Cybernetics

Since it ascended in the mid-twentieth century on the basis of technical and scientific advances made during World War II, cybernetics has influenced design theory and research. It was appreciated by…

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Norbert Wiener warned us to avoid the potential application of cybernetics to the production of technologies of oppression – that is, we need to design structures and processes in which violence is…

A cybernetic perspective on determinability and design research

The proposed framework connects the Navigation between deterministic observables and determining observers to the navigation between the design criteria form, meaning and utility and contributes to the establishment of observational determinability as observer-dependent.

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Constructing Cybernetic Thinking, Design, and Education

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  • 2019
Radical constructivism can be described as the epistemological twin of second-order cybernetics. This chapter presents a close look at radical constructivism, at its implications for design, and at…

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In the 1960s, environmental designer, Lawrence Halprin, in collaboration with his wife Ann, choreographer and artistic director of the San Francisco Dance Workshop, engaged in an examination of group…

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At the heart of much academic design research lies a paradox: An appreciation of designing requires, systemically speaking, an inside perspective, while scientific research requires robustness under…

Wicked Problems in Design and Ethics

While the relationship between ethics and design is usually thought of in terms of the application of the former to the latter, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can…

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The article presents SAAP’s relations to process-based fields and their media and concludes with their integration and synergy in a ‘Real Life Co-Design Laboratory’ where collaborative and collective processes are seen as the resulting design objects.

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