Abstract

Ranulph Glanville came to believe that cybernetics and design are two sides of the same coin. The authors present their understanding of GlanvilleGlanville, Ranulph and the relationships they see between cybernetics and design. They argue that cybernetics is a necessary foundation for twenty-first century design practicePractice: If design, then systems: Due in part to the rise of computing technology and its role in human communications, the domain of design has expanded from giving form to creating systems that support human interactionsInteraction; thus, systems literacy becomes a necessary foundation for design. If systems, then cybernetics: InteractionInteraction involves goalsGoal, feedbackFeedback, and learningLearning, the science of which is cybernetics. If cybernetics, then second-order cybernetics: Framing wicked problemsWicked problems requires making explicit one’s valuesValues and viewpoints, accompanied by the responsibilityResponsibility to justify them with explicit arguments; this incorporates subjectivity and the epistemologyEpistemology of second-order cyberneticsSecond-order cybernetics. If second-order cybernetics, then conversation: Design grounded in argumentation requires conversationsConversation so that participantsParticipation may understand, agree, and collaborate on effective action – that is, participantsParticipation in a design conversation learn together in order to act together. The authors see cybernetics as a way of framing both the process of designingDesignprocessand the things being designed – both means and ends – not only design-as-conversation but also design-for-conversation. Second-order cybernetics frames design as conversationConversation, and they explicitly frame “second-order design” as creating possibilities for others to have conversationsConversation.