Feature: Design Machines - Method and the Division of Labor

An excerpt from "Cornucopia Limited: Design and Dissent on the Internet" by Richard Coyne, published by MIT Press, October 2005, Ł25.95.

Increasing specialization leads to increasing automation. For the social critic Marx, the invention of machinery comes about by less auspicious means, by "a process of analysis—by subdivisions of labor, which transforms the worker’s operations more and more into mechanical operations, so that, at a certain point, the mechanism can step into his place."(1)38 The production-line workers, and now data entry clerks and digital operatives, are at the lowest levels in the division of labor.(2) Their labors are the most easily replaced by the labors of others and by increasingly sophisticated machines.

This implicit model of invention resonates with the early models of the design methodologists, those heirs to the optimism of the modernist tradition in the 1950s and 1960s, who sought to put design on a scientific footing and saw design as a mechanical process. Design methodologists attempted to systematize the design process in a manner analogous to the treatment of production as the organization of increasingly specialized labor. One such theorist, Alexander, proposed that design operates as a process of analysis, whereby a design problem is broken down into sub-problems to such an extent that the lowest level of sub-problem can easily be met by a simple, predefined solution.(3) The next stage is to synthesize a complete solution from all those ready-made subsolutions, that is, to work back to the whole. So the design of a small town can be dealt with by considering the need for food to be grown, goods to be exchanged, and people to reside. Each of these sub-problems can be further divided.

So the exchange of goods needs areas for display, storage, keeping money safe, and making purchases. Eventually, each sub-problem presents with a known sub-solution in terms of banks, vaults, cash registers, supermarket shelves, and parking lots. As any designer of retail facilities knows, the assembly and configuration of the big solution from these components requires repeated iteration and evaluation. The design method is commonly summarized in terms of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. We break a whole problem into its parts (analysis), we synthesize a provisional whole solution, and we evaluate the product, and the process repeated.

This model gives one account of computer systems design.(4) With modular programming it is possible to break the design of a system into components. So the design of a system for electronic purchase might involve storage of product, customer, and transaction data, an interface that presents products to potential purchasers, a means of facilitating payment, confirmation, delivery, and then stocktaking and inventory. There are off-the-shelf "solutions" to each "subproblem," in the form of database systems, browser plug-ins, and Web page templates. Synthesis involves configuring these components and adapting them to the specifics of the problem. Evaluation is an iterative process taking place repeatedly throughout the design, but most evidently during the phase of user testing.

Criticism of this approach comes from many quarters. The Romantic would counter that a design method is a case of rampant metonymy, a machine out of control. The part is given undue significance as standing for the whole, as if dividing the whole into parts provides access to the whole. A design method is metonymy multiplied. From a pragmatic point of view the reductive model has limited applicability in understanding the operations of invention, creation and design, including the subsequent writings of Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein.(5) Problems that lend themselves to the reductive treatment are already "solved," in that the appropriate reduction is already known, as in the identifi- cation of the components of a factory process, a town layout, or a supermarket plan. Reducible problems are not necessarily the kind of problems that pose a challenge for designers, or at least it is the reducible aspects that provide the least challenge. Interesting design tasks present interconnections between levels in the problem hierarchy, and there are often many ways to divide an interesting problem into sub-problems, parts into sub-parts.

These complexities are not easily addressed by simply iterating the process. Criteria for evaluation also fail us. A problem space expands and contracts depending on how we define it in relationship to its context. In fact the challenge of Web site design might be not only to select and organize the components, but to convey a message, react against the usual user expectations, develop a visual and interactive language, and adopt and adapt a metaphor, processes resistant to the workings of method.(6)

The shortcomings of design method also cast doubt on the sovereignty of the division of labor as a model of commerce, making us skeptical of any thought that the division of labor generates a "grand design," a better society or even simply a better system. If retail, by this model, is to benefit from increasing specialization, then all retail would conform to the model posed by the supermarket, where labor is divided into delivery reception, forklift operators, shelf stackers, checkouts, complaints personnel, accounts, supervisors, managers, security, and so forth. Increasingly we find that these tasks are being automated: checkout is handled through mobile bar code readers, mail-order systems substitute catalogues for sales personnel, and customer loyalty is promoted through financial incentives, the awarding of points, and bonus schemes. The substitution continues with online retail, with the complete automation of the customer interface. Not only does the piecemeal substitution of work tasks by yet simpler tasks, and their eventual replacement by automated machines fall under the charge of being uncaring, treating individuals as machine components waiting to be replaced, but clearly the division of labor has its limits.

Design methods commonly borrowed from models of language that assumed the fixity of meanings, the view that in language we are constantly trying to establish the truth status of propositions and that truth can be understood atomically. If the parts of a statement are true, then the whole statement is true. It was also an attempt to get down to clear unambiguous language, devoid of metaphor. It is as if language, as for design, can be understood reductively. If we follow the neo-Marxist critic Marcuse, whatever the political ideologies of the promoters of the reductive view of language (logical positivism) and of design methods, they unwittingly bolster the capitalist ideology.(7) It is in the interest of those who wish to conserve a particular ideology to treat certain words and meanings as if fixed and to deny the metaphorical or metonymic nature of language. It is in the interest of those who wish to diminish the power of troublesome labor by rendering their work more machine-like and to formulate atomic design solutions that are rational, inevitable, and efficient. If the antidote to concealed metonymy is to apprehend language as multivalent, situated, and performative, then the antidote to design methods is similarly to apprehend design as complex, situated, social, and indeterminate. As for design, there are other models of making things that are counter to those of the production line. For example, contemporary management theory commonly presents the importance of the team in setting production goals, and setting and solving problems, and the importance of diversification among the labor force.(8)

If, as we have already examined, irony provides an "antidote" to concealed metonymy, then irony also provides an alternative view of design: design as the play of opposites, the indeterminate workings of metaphor and metonymy, and an exploration into the surreality of incongruous juxtaposition.


Richard Coyne

Notes:
(1) K. Marx, Grundrisse, excerpted in Marx, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 379. For critical
accounts of Marx’s writing, see G. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, and
D. McLellan, Marx After Marx: An Introduction.
(2) Rifkin, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Work-Force and the Dawn of the Post-
Market Era.
(3) C. Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form.
(4) See, for example, Sommerville, Software Engineering.
(5) Where he seems to adopt a more linguistic model of design. See C. Alexander,
S. Ishikawa, and M. Silverstein, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.
(6) I characterized the rival approach as "edgy design" in the introductory chapter.
(7) Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society.
See also L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Reading Capital.
(8) See Rifkin, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Work-Force and the Dawn of the
Post-Market Era, and A. Feenberg, Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited.

References:
* Alexander, Christopher. 1964. Notes on the Synthesis of Form. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
* Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. 1977. A Pattern Language:
Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press.
* Althusser, Louis, and Étienne Balibar. 1997. Reading Capital. Trans. B. Brewster. London:
Verso. First published in French in 1968.
* Feenberg, A. 2002. Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
* Lukács, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. Trans. R. Livingstone. London:
Merlin. Essays first published in French between 1918 and 1930.
* Marcuse, Herbert. 1991. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial
Society. London: Routledge.
* Marx, Karl. 1977a. Grundrisse. In D. McClellan (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 245–
387. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* McLellan, David. 1977. Marx After Marx: An Introduction. London: MacMillan.
* Rifkin, Jeremy. 2000. The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Work-Force and the Dawn
of the Post-Market Era. London: Penguin.
* Sommerville, Ian. 2001. Software Engineering. Harlow, England: Addison-Wesley.

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