- Title: [[Engineering Design]] - Author: [[Peter Kroes]] - Tags: #summary #llmgenerated #toread #paper ## Introduction - [[Engineering design]] is intimately related to making technical artifacts, a form of intentional (productive) action - But making technical artifacts is not systematically discussed in philosophy of action or mainstream philosophy - [[Philosophy of technology]] has only recently given [[engineering design]] sustained attention - Modern [[engineering design]] emerged from division of labor between mental and physical work in making technical artifacts - Design phase focuses on conceiving and working out ideas/plans - Production phase focuses on realizing those ideas/plans - Division absent in early crafts where craftsman performs both - [[Engineering design]] is about making technical artifacts, but demarcating them from other artifacts (art, social) is an intricate problem - Focus on changes to physical vs social world - Designed things can be objects or processes producing desired physical effects - Recent shift from designing objects to designing services (processes) involving objects - Technical artifacts serve 'practical' functions, unlike art - Term 'design' used as verb (designing activity) and noun (outcome/feature of artifact) - Both senses key to making new kinds of technical artifacts ## Design as an Activity - Designing relevant when artifact expected to have new features vs existing artifacts - New overall user-relevant functions or new internal technical operations - Core of designing: - Starts with description of desired features/behaviors (function) - Transforms/translates functional description into physical description of structure able to perform function - Functional description: - States what features artifact should have / what it should do - Black boxes physical features - Physical description: - States detailed physical properties - Black boxes functional features - Designers appear to bridge normative-descriptive gap in explaining designs - Chains of functional explanations at multiple levels - At lowest level, functions 'explained' by physical properties - Seem to reason from 'is' (physical) to 'ought' (functional), a fallacy per Hume - Similar issues arise for instrumental/means-end reasoning common in engineering - Means-end reasoning akin to practical reasoning (von Wright) - Factual premises about ends and [[causal relations]] yield normative conclusion about required action - Suggests problematic descriptions-to-norms inference - Design methodology: methods for rationally solving design problems - Often prescribes analyze-synthesize-evaluate process - Used for rational reconstructions and to guide/improve real design - Improving design efficiency (same result, fewer resources) vs improving design quality (better result) may diverge - Methodological problem: does process rationality ensure better products? ## Design as a Feature of a Technical Artifact - Technical artifacts are physical objects 'embodying' designs - Makes them means to ends, gives them 'for-ness' (Paley) - Seeing design is different than seeing physical properties - Having a design (designer) makes an object an artifact (Hilpinen) - Design is implicit in post-design physical description needed for manufacture - Purposefully arranges parts to perform function - Has normative force - prescribes required physical properties - Design as 'plan' - idea/drawing of purposeful part arrangement to perform function - Artifact inherits purposefulness from plan - Fits design/production phase division of labor - Artifacts have physical and functional properties - Both ontologically constitutive - pure physical or functional object isn't an artifact - Functional properties: - Intentions-related, give artifacts teleology/purposefulness - Make normative performance claims meaningful - Physical properties: - Factually describe artifacts - Make normative claims meaningless - Dual property types make artifacts [[sui generis]], unlike purely physical or social objects - Embodiment relation between design and artifact unclear ## Design and Values - [[Engineering design]] produces value - values depend on stakeholder perspective - Design, production, legal, economic, labor, user value - Requirements reflect stakeholder values - Design often requires value trade-offs (e.g. safety vs sustainability) - Presume value commensurability and measurement for rational choice - Sometimes no unequivocal 'best' design exists (no overall ranking) - '[[Value sensitive design]]' - designing for (moral) values - Imply artifacts aren't value neutral - Unclear how artifacts 'embody' values ## Design and Creativity - Creativity valued re: design features and process - Aesthetic, functional, operational principle, trade-off avoidance creativity - 'Out of the box' problem framing and constraint negotiation - Two notions of creativity relevant to design: 1. Ontological: creativity as enriching world ontology with new artifact kinds - Requires largely correct new design and successful execution (Thomasson) 2. Problem-solving: creativity as relative to background it transcends (Briskman) - Novel, solves emergent problem, conflicts with and rises above background standards ## Conclusion: [[Engineering Design]] and the Social World - Social world enters physical artifact design via: 1. Symbolic functions (techno-symbolic artifacts like thrones) 2. Social rules/practices essential to artifact functioning (sociotechnical systems like traffic lights) - Raises [[philosophical issues]] about interpreting hybrid physico-social nature of [[designed objects]] > From a philosophical point of view, technical and techno-symbolic artifacts as well as sociotechnical systems are not at home in the [[physical world]], since they are more than simply physical constructions, nor are they at home in the social world, since more than social acceptance is involved in performing their function.