Design Praxis?

I
have been mulling over the idea of Praxis in design. Praxis is the philosophical
term that many practitioners use about their work when they wish to sound
deep. (Man sidles up to hot babe at a party and says 'would you like to come
upstairs and see my praxis'.). You will normally find first level definitions of Praxis
that make it synonymous with 'Practice'. Or as Marx defined it a patterned
activity: with the 'patterning' being an element of socially awareness. As defini-
tions go this is not a bad definition, being not far from Plato's (or Socrates via
Plato) original definition of creative activities, which had three internal elements.
He listed Theoria (mental work, contemplation, etc.), Poeisis (an unthinkingly
patterned activity, like a bee building a hive, or a blossom opening.), and Praxis
(a patterned activity informed by a moral dimension).
Others have their own versions of Praxis, which rather muddy the water: Bour-
dieu for example claims that Praxis can be unconscious. While I see that this is a
natural end product of Post-Modernism, in which each observer is co-creator of
each interpretation of each artefact, it does seem to force Praxis stray into Poeis-
ical territory, where things happen in a patterned way but are accidental and
unthought. This serves to undermining earlier meanings with no visible
advantage.
Which brings us to design theories of Praxis. These tend to regard Praxis as prac-
tice + theory, and are broadly in line with the stated aims of Design Education (in
caps), if not the actual nature of the teaching of the subject.
If you (or anyone) have read my blog post 'Disruptive Technology, Non!' you will
see that this is a definition that I have been mentally working around for some
time. I have been trying to uncover the difference and have come to some sorts
of conclusions informed by the ontology of Jean-Paul Satre.
Satre says that there are three parts of human ontology (ways of living / models
of living): en-soi, pour-soi, pour-autrui. For us in design we may say that:
• en-soi (of ourselves) which is 'self-indentical' (i.e is concerned with internal
things that are givens; our heredity, language, environment, previous choices
or our existing selves), I would regard en-soi in design practice as including
craft, heuristics, instinct, in which we design in an unthinking manner, using
responses informed by instruction or previous experience;
• pour-soi (for ourselves) which is concerned with our ability to transcend
these en-soi limitations through conscious effort; this corresponds to the
reflective application of theory to our individual design practice as a method
to transcending our own limitations; finally we have…
• pour-autrui (for others) practice in which we allow an awareness of the
other (all exterior influences) to guide our design.
I would venture to say en-soi design (which I call Poeisical Design) is the kind of
design that typifies a design or designer with a strong personal style founded in
critically unexamined taught methodologies and possessing a disinclination to
move their work on in any way that alters this state. Their personal toolbox has
one tool, their gearbox has one gear, all their work looks the same. This is the
realm of craft. (In the diagram these designers show no development).
Pour-soi design (which I call Reflective Praxis) is the descriptive model for the
bulk of art school graduates. These folk have been enabled through theoretical
tools to reflect on their work and transcend their personal limitations. (In the
diagram they can be seen to inhabit loops that make them increasingly self-
aware designers over time).
Pour-autrui design (which I call Open Design, because it is an open-ended, open
minded, and methodologically open) is the model for theoretically well informed
designers who do not only inhabit the theory > practice > theory feedback loop
of pour-soi design, but also use an open awareness of the world, it's people and
customs, to use design as a loop that will feedback ideas as a loop that will feed
ideas into both the world and their own practice, helping both transcend their
limitations.
<See the diagram below for a graphic representation of this idea. Which in
process terms is exactly what I have been talking about.>
Author: Simon Downs, Lecturer in Graphic Communications at the Loughborough University
School of Art and Design.
Co-Editor of TRACEY – the journal of contemporary drawing
Associate Editor of the International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society
Member of the Design Research Society.
Learn more at www.Design-Without-Frontiers.eu
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