The desire to “scientise” design appears to be coming around again and again. If we take a look at the past of our discipline, we see that in the sixties the Design Methods movement wanted to develop scientific approaches to design. Although the movement was very important in establishing design as an autonomous discipline, it failed in their aim to develop a set of objective, systematic “rules”.

Even Christopher Alexander one of the fathers of the movement, was soon disenchanted about their practical applicability:

“I’ve disassociated myself from the field.., there is so little in what is called ‘design methods’ that has anything useful to say about how to design buildings that I never even read the literature anymore…I would say forget it, forget the whole thing.”
Design Research and Methods. Vol 7 No 2 (1973) pp 133-135

After that we had 2d and 3rd generation design methods, we’ve learned about the notion of wicked problem, about the reflective practice, about the constructive nature of design…it’s not as simple as data + human = design

I very much like the idea of the design process as being irrational in some degree. It is actually also put forward by John Chris Jones (in the first part of Essays in Design, Wiley, 1984) Jones was another notable member of the design methods movement who became an apostate.

Let me finish with this quote by Mies van der Rohe concerning the Tugendhat House, that somehow complements Bierut’s words very well:

“He (the client) wasn’t very happy at first. But then we smoked some good cigars, … and we drank some glasses of a good Rhein wine, … and then he began to like it very much.”
Quoted in Designerly ways of knowing by Nigel Cross.

1) Understand the problem,
2) Devise a plan,
3) Execute the plan,
4) Examine the result.

I did a little presentation a few months ago that takes it into account. The book I based the talk on (one of them at least) is called How to Solve It by George Pólya.

In design when the budget is tight (most cases) we are also forced to hone in on the single best idea and reject the rest untested.

First off not every piece of design is ground breaking. Just like not every piece of scientific research is a major discovery. There is a lot of day to day hum-drum scientific research and design.

There is one aspect you seem to be no focusing on is that scientific research can have a creative element to it. Tagging something design, doesn’t mean that it has the exclusivity on the creative mind.

I have personally seen some amazing creative ideas and rethinking during the scientific process. In fact I would say that sterile environment of science sometimes promotes the creative thinking. To even suggest that science doesn’t have that input of creativity (that computers lack) is just a complete misrepresentation.

It is the process of peer review that forces the element of repeatability of scientific research. However sometimes this research just isn’t repeatable eg sometimes due to various environmental and macro biological events. It is this type of field research that is so like the design process. Studies of animal zoology, behaviour and psychology tend to fall into this area.

Now what would happen if you removed the peer review process. The need for strict documentation and experimental rigour… then the basis of scientific methodology is very similar to the design process.

I can see where you are coming from, the “design” element of the design process used to be a lot larger in the process. But now in has been reduced (or rather other elements added on) to a smaller segment. The design element is left to creative spark and iterative process.

In the scientific process this is the creative process of designing the experiment and the hypothesis. Too often the designing of the experiment is an iterative process in its self. Just like with design, things often don’t go to plan. Results get biased, the environment has too much of an influence, the source material is wrong…and so on. Just like in design.

The only difference is in that design is a very sloppy poorly disciplined and documented process by comparison. Mainly because there is no peer review.

Also consider as a side note…on a macro scale that design research is also repeatable, to a degree.

You can’t hide from it the design process has had scientific and engineering based processes added to it. These are based from scientific methodology.