Designing in a design community: insights and challenges

This presentation critically focuses on an experience gained from interactions between practice and research on designing complex artifacts (such as cities) in the communities of physical design over 25 years. Grounded on this experience, insights and issues which have emerged over time will be shared to form the basis for the arguments that: "design can never be static over time," and for the "dream of a common language". These arguments in tum are offered as suggestions which may be useful in thinking about design support systems beyond existing rhetoric (reflection in action, participatory design, etc.) to support design as a CREA TJVE PROBLEM SOLVING AND LEARNING PROCESS WITH INNOVATIVE PRESCRIPTIVE OUTCOMES AS ITS GOAL. To this end, it is argued that: creativity is fundamental in design; time effects and affects complex artifacts; the origins of conflict; and dreams of computational simulations and games and of a common Language. The conclusion moves toward designing the design community by offering some future directions and challenges to think about the DIS community.