Phrased in this way, the objection may immediately be turned into a response. Creative use does not show that designer’s intentions are irrelevant for actual use. Instead, it shows that agents who typically use artifacts can occasionally, or even regularly, be designers, i.e., the constructors and communicators of use plans. The use-plan analysis concerns roles, and does not make any claims about which agents may play these roles. Just as agents engaged in designing, say civil engineers, are typically also engaged in using artifacts, for example when driving to their work or brushing their teeth, so agents who are typically engaged in using can occasionally or regularly engage in designing. In the examples given above, the creative users were designers by definition: in constructing and communicating a use plan, they have fulfilled all the conditions for playing this role.
This does not mean, however, that there is no distinction between agents who occasionally engage in designing and those who do so on a daily basis. Apart from relevant experience and expertise, which may improve the quality of the designed use plans, it is an elementary social fact that some agents are professionally engaged in designing, and other agents are not. Contemporary societies are characterized by a multitude of divisions of labors and specializations; that between professional designers and, for want of a better term, “consumers” is one such division. This social mechanism does not make designing by consumers impossible; it does not make the use plans produced by professional designers rational by definition; and it does not preclude “consumer designers” from producing rational use plans. However, the distinction between professional and non-professional designers shows up in several normative notions, such as that of “improper” use, which serve to privilege - socially and legally, if not rationally
- some use plans over others. These notions, and the tension between the rational reconstruction and the social mechanism, form the backbone of the use-plan analysis as an evaluative framework for artifact use and design. In section 4, I list the basic elements of this evaluative framework, and indicate some further ramifications.31
Another objection may target the description of the design process given in section 2. Actual designing is not a linear process. Designers do not start with a user goal, which is then translated into specifications, which are subsequently and successively satisfied by constructing a use plan or a material object with particular physical features. In reality, designers switch back and forth between specifications, plan designing and product designing, continuously reframing the problem that they are trying to solve, testing solutions in various stages of development, etc.32 Here, I consider only one way in which the use-plan analysis may fail to match design practice; the response to this criticism also applies to many other alleged failures.
In some cases, the end product of designing does not satisfy its original goal, but it may be successful nonetheless. One familiar example of such an “unplanned product” is a type of glue, developed by Spencer Silver, which did not turn out to be the looked-for strong adhesive, but a very weak one. This unsuccessful product was later, and by another designer, found to be very effective for another application, namely for removable self-stick notes, and so effective that it became the basis for one of the most successful office products of recent times.
These serendipity effects in designing seem to undermine the intentionalist basis of the use-plan analysis. The end product has only a tenuous relation to the original designer’s intentions: the product does not turn out to be what the designer expected. Still, these unintended products exist, they are successfully marketed and used, and they may be as common as “as-predicted” products.
In response, it should be noted that serendipity only undermines some naive intentionalist accounts, namely those which emphasize a designer’s original intentions. There is no need for an intentionalist account of designing to be this restrictive: as long as there is a clear basis for selecting some mental states of the designer, or other agents, as focal points of the analysis, intentions may change. The basis for determining the relevant intentions for the use-plan analysis, is provided by the requirement of communication: different use plans may have been constructed, or just entertained, at different points in the actual design process, but only communicated use plans add to the resources available to users. These users may be, and in the case of components typically are, designers of other artifacts (Vermaas, 2006).
In the self-stick notes case, the use-plan in which Silver’s material was to be a type of glue was communicated, and it provided the basis for evaluating the material as a failure. Then, a different use plan was constructed, in which the existing material played a different role; this plan was effective, and it was communicated to users of the end product, namely self-stick removable notes. Both the construction of the “glue” plan and the material, and that of the “self-stick removable” plan count as designing on the use-plan analysis; the plans can be easily distinguished, and they explain the change in the evaluation of the product. That one component of reusable self-stick notes was previously an unsuccessful type of glue is irrelevant for evaluating its use for these notes.
Following up on the serendipity response, one may target the communicative aspect of the use-plan analysis. In this analysis, designer’s intentions - structured as a use plan - are the content of some communicative act, meant to address the community of users. Perhaps this account may be developed in sufficient detail, for instance by applying a Gricean theory of communication. But this, so the objection goes, would be a waste of effort. Even if designers attempt to communicate their intentions or plans clearly, and if this communication can be analyzed in some sophisticated manner, no user is interested anyway. Studies into user behavior show time and again that users do not read manuals or pay much attention to any other form of elaborate verbal communication. Yet if use plans are such extensively structured patterns of action, elaborate verbal communication seems to be the only way to communicate them. So whatever analysis is chosen for the communicative actions of designers, it is inappropriate. No-one is listening on the other side of the line.
This objection may be strengthened by a positive account of artifact use and design. Users do not need to pay attention to the communicative efforts of designers, because they already know how to use the vast majority of artifacts that they encounter. Beds, teapots, toast, and newspapers - to give some examples from daybreak onwards - do not come with manuals, nor do users often consult any other information regarding their use. All of these artifacts play their role in an existing, well-established practice. Designers seem to have little freedom to deviate from these practices: designing is not just constrained by physical (im)possibilities, standards and regulations, it is also constrained by traditional patterns of use. For many artifacts, especially simple ones such as teapots and toothbrushes, designers seem to have little choice but to adopt the familiar use plan, because users will execute this plan anyway.
In combination, unread manuals and inflexible existing practices suggest that communicating a use plans is like trying to steer a whale: the only way to pretend one has achieved success and to avoid frustration is to follow the whale’s lead and direct it to where it was headed anyway. The use-plan analysis appears to ascribe to designers an unrealistic amount of freedom and authority.
31
Many anti-intentionalist accounts of artifact use and design, most notably constructivist accounts in Science and Technology Studies, lack evaluative notions such as “expertise” and “properness”, or lack ways of relating such notions to values such as practical rationality. Recently, a similar lack has been noted by prominent researchers in this tradition, most notably Collins and Evans (2003).
32
There is a rich body of literature in design methodology that tries to represent designing as (very loopy) flowcharts. The phenomenology of designing suggests that any such chart is an impoverished representation, because of the reframing described in the main text; see, e.g., Schon (1987) and Bucciarelli (1994) for examples from various types of engineering design.