Naturalising the Design Process : Autonomy and Interaction as Core Features

1 Abstract/Introduction This paper attempts to provide a naturalized description of the complex design process. The design process may be abstractly conceived as a future creating activity that goes beyond " facticity " and creates visions of a desirable future among groups of agents. It requires the engagement of individual or groups of cognitive systems in purposeful and intentional (meaning-based) interactions with their environment and consequently with each other. It is argued in this paper that a design process should be interactive, future-anticipatory and open-ended. Furthermore, a framework to explain and support the design process should have in turn its basis in a framework of cognition. It is suggested that the design process should primarily be examined within an interactive framework of agency based on 2nd order cybernetic epistemology. Future-oriented anticipation requires functionality which can be thought of as future-directed activity; indeed all but the simplest functionalities require anticipation in order to be effective. Based on the fundamental notions of closure, self-reference and self-organisation, a cybernetically-inspired systems-theoretic notion of autonomy is proposed. This conception of autonomy is immediately related to the anticipative functionality of the cognitive system, which constructs emergent representations while it interactively participates in a design process. Consequently, the design process is seen as an interaction between two or more self-organising autonomous systems thereby constructing