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The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals think in Action

Donald Schon

Schon questioned of the relationship between the kinds of knowledge honored in academia and the kinds of competence valued in professional practice. He was convinced that universities are not devoted to the production and distribution of fundamental knowledge in general but inattention to practical competence and professional artistry. This study is an analysis of the distinctive structure of reflection-inaction. Schon argues that it is susceptible to a kind of rigor that is both like and unlike the rigor of scholarly research and controlled experiment.

In the university, there is a dominant view of professional knowledge as the application of scientific theory and technique to the instrumental problems of practice. Technical Rationality is the heritage of Positivism, the powerful philosophical doctrine that grew up in the nineteenth century as an account of the rise of science and technology and as a social movement aimed at applying the achievements of science and technology to the well-being of mankind. It became institutionalized in the modern university when Positivism was at its height, and in the professional schools that secured their place in the university in the early decades of the twentieth century.

From the perspective of Technical Rationality, professional practice is a process of problem solving. But we ignore problem setting, the process by which we define the decision to be made, the ends to be achieved, the means, which may be chosen. Problem setting is a necessary condition for technical problem solving.

Knowing has the following properties:

There are actions, recognitions, and judgments which we know how to carry out.

Spontaneously; we do not have to think about them prior to or during their performance. We are often unaware of having learned to do these things. We are usually unable to describe the knowing which our action reveals.

It is in this sense that I speak of knowing-in-action, the characteristic mode of ordinary practical knowledge.

Reflecting-in-action. If common sense recognizes knowing-in-action, it also recognizes that we sometimes think about what we are doing. “feel for the ball” that lets you “repeat the exact same thing you did before that proved successful.

When someone reflects-in-action, he becomes a researcher in the practice context. He is not dependent on the categories of established theory and technique, but constructs a new theory of the unique case. His inquiry is not limited to a deliberation about means which depends on a prior agreement about ends. He does not keep means and ends separate, but defines them interactively as he frames a problematic situation. He does not separate thinking from doing, ratiocinating his way to a decision which he must later convert to action. Because his experimenting is a kind of action, implementation is built into his inquiry. Thus reflection-in-action can proceed, even in situations of uncertainty or uniqueness, because it is not bound by the dichotomies of Technical Rationality.

Semiotics: A Primer for Designers

Challis Hodge

“Semiotics is important for designers as it allows us to understand the relationships between signs, what they stand for, and the people who must interpret them — the people we design for.”

Semiotics can be described as the study of signs that includes anything capable of standing for or representing a separate meaning. Paddy Whannel offered a slightly different definition. “Semiotics tells us things we already know in a language we will never understand.” Semiotics is important for designers as it allows us to gain insight into the relationships between signs, what they stand for, and the people who must interpret them — the people we design for.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered to be the founder of linguistics and semiotics. Structuralism is an analytical method used by many semioticians. Structuralists seek to describe the overall organization of sign systems as languages. They search for the deep and complex structures underlying the surface features of phenomena.

Semantics focuses on what words mean while semiotics is concerned with how signs mean. Semiotics embraces semantics, along with the other traditional branches of linguistics as follows:

Semantics: the relationship of signs to what they stand for.

Syntactics (or syntax): the formal or structural relations between signs.

Pragmatics: the relation of signs to interpreters.

Valentin Voloshinov proposed a reversal of the Saussurean priority, language over speech: “The sign is part of organized social intercourse and cannot exist, as such, outside it, reverting to a mere physical artifact.” The meaning of a sign is not in its relationship to other signs within the language system but rather in the social context of its use.

The study of semiotics needs to account for the relationship of the symbols and the social context or context of use.

Daniel Chandler sums up: “The study of signs is the study of the construction and maintenance of reality. To decline such a study is to leave to others the control of the world of meanings.” Semiotics teaches us as designers that our work has no meaning outside the complex set of factors that define it. These factors are not static, but rather constantly changing because we are changing and creating them. The deeper our understanding and awareness of these factors, the better our control over the success of the work products we create.