Of Birds and Bushes

I was once a professor at a large research university where design was housed in the School of Art and Art History. This arrangement and a zero-sum competition for resources made for the sort of enduring, low-stakes politics that are endemic to academia. Once, after a faculty meeting, a senior colleague commented that “art historians have as much to do with art (or design) as ornithologists do with birds.”

I have no issues with art history or ornithology. But the bird quip stayed with me—partly because it was funny (you had to be there) and because it illustrates a tension between abstract and applied knowledge and the implicit value and role of each. Or rather, it distinguishes between analytical knowledge—gained from observing at a distance—and embodied knowledge—gained from direct engagement with material reality, with a clear preference for the latter.

Since then, design has evolved from a small collection of discrete disciplines to include new frameworks and engage interdisciplinary domains like systems, circularity, policy, transformation, regeneration, futures, social innovation, and "dark matter," among others. This has been accompanied by a shift in the zeitgeist toward more analytical practices—or from birds to ecologies to extend the metaphor. As subject matter became more complex, direct material engagement gave way to mapping, modeling, and theorizing. Systems can’t be approached like artifacts, so the work became more observational and abstract by default.

But is it either/or or both/and?

One issue is when practitioners position emerging practices within hierarchical structures—always at the top. Definitions and conceptual boundaries tend to invoke progressions in scope, ambition, or complexity and confuse these shifts for equivalent differences in value or rigor (e.g., “Unlike Design 1.0 which was focused on artifacts…Design 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…” or “Unlike Human-Centered Design…Life-Centered Design…” or “Unlike the Double Diamond…the Systemic Design Framework…” etc.). It’s a common pattern.

I say this as someone who has spent a lot of time on the analytical end of the spectrum, working toward a hybrid model of practice inclusive of strategic foresight, complex systems, and strategic design—and as the product of a formal design education. Until recently I thought of my own trajectory as a similar, linear progression—from the material to the analytical and from smaller problems to larger ones. I now think of it more like an oscillating pattern that is necessarily inclusive of both types of knowledge and varied ways of working.

In practice, this means moving intentionally between modes depending on what the problem space affords. Working on AI, for instance, requires both strategic foresight (analytical) and design/prototyping (embodied). While I've written about AI and the future of work often over the past two years, actually building with the technology over the past few months has been invaluable for understanding its current state, constraints, and trajectory. That embodied knowledge, in turn, has enhanced my ability to discern signal from noise and think more clearly and critically about the future.

And we all could do with more of that.

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