In the literature, the term 'decision-making' is used in two senses: a narrow sense to the choice process only, and a much broader sense that includes the whole sequence of problem analysis, design, evaluation and choice (e.g., Quade, 1975). Likewise, the term 'design' is used in a narrow sense (the 'formulation of alternatives' or equivalents) and in a broader sense, that includes also the problem-analysis and evaluation (e.g., 1984). The figure 3J follows the pars pro toto tradition; 'design' is used as an umbrella term for design and evaluation. This section focuses on design (or: 'designing research') in its narrow meaning; evaluation will get some attention at the end of the section and more fundamentally in Section 4.9. Design in the narrow sense is defined as the selection and combination options to the higher system level of one or more possible solutions. This process is fed and guided by facts and values, identified in the preceding problem- analysis and problem-explanation. The options are usually also identified in the course of the problem-analysis and problem-explanation but may also, as explained in Section 3.4 with respect to opportunity-driven design, have jumped into existence out of 'nothing'. Other terms for options are "potential plan "building blocks for solutions" or "components" (Alexander, 1982). The 'possible solutions' of the defini- tion may be technical designs, but more typical in environmental science, they denote more general plans, policies, projects, strategies or other courses of action, by govern- ment agencies or self-organized actor groups. The design principles to be explicated in this section remain the same irrespective whether options or possible solutions are of a technical, social, cultural or (as they often are) of a mixed character (Alexander, 1982).
Relevance, nature and range of design
As et al. (1975) and Marchand and De Groot (1986) assert, any evaluation and choice cannot be better than the quality of the alternatives to be evaluated. It is therefore unfortunate that designing research is very much a neglected research type. Concerning government planning practice, Steiner (1975, p. 351) writes that "a most serious and probably warranted criticism of government agency decision procedures is that they tend to devote little or no effort to generating the alternatives among which they choose", which causes, according to Steiner, "large losses in efficiency". Con- cerning general planning theory, Alexander (1982) observes that the literature usually "dismisses the design of alternatives in a sentence or two prior to focusing on their Environmental management and planning literature forms no exception to this general rule. Wathern (1988) simply says that "intuitive methods" should be used for the development of plans. Baldwin (1985) enumerates options for solutions in fields
such as water pollution, energy resource management and waste management, but the question of how these options should be selected and combined into plans is reduced to imperatives like "one must convert goals and policies into action proposals" and "the planning staff, in conjunction with public administrators, experts and citizens, should analyse the implementation tools and strategies" (p. 82) and should be developed" (p. in spite of the title of this book 'Environ- mental Planning and Decision-making' is even more exclusively devoted to (physical- science) models and evaluation. How the policies to be evaluated actually come into being is left in the
Also in the Netherlands, the literature (e.g. Heuer, 1980) complies with Alexan- der's observation of the neglect of design, even if titled, for instance, 'The Design of Public Policy' 1984) or 'Planning Methods and Techniques' (Pols and Voogd, Taking a look at environmental science more specifically, it shows that the attempt of Udo de Haes and Saris (1984) to draw attention to 'integrated policy studies' (in which design is the core activity), remained an isolated phenomenon in a sea of analysis and evaluation. Dutch government-sponsored research programmes are still largely restricted to physical-science modelling, even when called "integrated environmental research" and Langeweg,
This section can of course only shed a very modest light in the gap created by the neglect of design in the general literature and in environmental science research. Yet, by showing some general design principles I hope to make design theory more access- ible for further study and application. Doing so, I will rely on the fact that, as is the case with the epistemology of any other type of research, design theory builds upon common-sense, natural faculties. To mention one example, the daily life activity of making a holiday plan is also the selection and combination of options (places to go, things to do, modes of transport etc.), led by facts (maps, wheather expectations, prices etc.) and values (fun, peace, spiritual enrichment etc.), to form the higher system level of the holiday plan.
Design thus being nothing special or esoteric, why then do methodologists so obvious- ly keep their hands off it? This, I think, is largely because, unlike analysis and evalu- ation, it cannot be fit into the deductivistic mainstream idea of what is scientific.
A system that is taken apart into two or more separate elements looses one or more of its 'system A clock, for instance, does not tick or show the time anymore after being disassambled. Reversedly, if you put two or more things together, you create a new Gestalt with new, 'emergent' system properties. And since it is very rare that a single option can be declared a proposed solution, design typically involves
An exception is a sieve analysis method presented to solve location problems.
More than 90% of the space in these texts goes to information systems, analysis of policy goals, analysis of spatial flows, mathematical evaluation techniques etc., in other words, analysis and evalu- ation, not design.
the combination of options into something new, and therewith the creation of prop- erties that were not there before. As we will see shortly, these properties are usually the most important characteristics of a design. Designing research, in other words, is essentially and very visibly an inductive research process, from which a creative, 'pattern-finding' element cannot be removed.
Induction (in designing research but in empirical research too) implies that the research result can never be proven to be the best result possible. Any inductive research, regardless of its or budget, runs the risk that some outsider may look at the research result and see a solution that is better, also when the outsider applies the same facts and values as those upon which the design has been built.
Everybody who has been involved in empirical research knows that most of this research proceeds the inductive, 'bottom-up' way: researchers try out which data transformations, correlations etc. 'work'. To publish these results, however, one has to fit into the mainstream and report a 'reconstructed logic' out of which the pattern-finding trials have been removed: the 'testing' rhetoric. If reporting an inductive research strategy cannot be avoided, the induction has been made acceptable by covering the creative element under a blanket of high-tech and high-mathematics methods, for instance, computerized cluster analysis. Popper may have said that science proceeds by this is not the way "normal science" plods on.
It is no wonder, then, that shy away from something so visibly inductive as design. It is striking that when they do treat design methods, they usually either (1) suggest that some deductivistic, 'top-down' approach is possible (e.g., dividing policy objectives into ever more specific sub-objectives and sub-sub-objec- tives95, or (2) mention only the high-tech and high-mathematics approaches of com-
puterized permutations and (e.g. Pols and Voogd, 1989).
All this has severe practical consequences. Concerning empirical research, it gives rise to perpetual difficulties in interpreting reported statistical levels of significance, for Concerning methods, students and researchers are either led astray or are offered methods at a level of sophistication that can never be reached in practice. I know of only one environmental design process supported by mathematical design techniques (De Groot, 1985), and that happened to be a case unusually access- ible to quantification. Forester (1989), Landy et al. (1990) and Schoof (1988), who studied urban planning, EPA policy making and Dutch environmental planning, mention not a single sophisticated case. As a result, researchers fall back to unsystematic common sense approaches, never to be accounted for in their policy documents and resulting in Steiner's "large losses in efficiency". For this reason, my treatment of designing research will lie at a level between unsystematic common sense
For instance, (1984).
If you try out 100 you can't help finding at least one with a 5% level of signifi- cance, even if your data are completely random. Now, if you report this correlation as a
and sophistication; it will be, I hope, enhanced, reflected, improved com- mon sense and common practice.
The term design is often associated with a fairly restricted field, both and namely, the development technological things by researchers working in more or less splendid isolation, on the basis of a more or less clear-cut terms of reference. As has already been briefly indicated, design is a far more general phenomenon. complex laws and regulations, spatial zoning plans, military strategies, research programmes and financial policies are all designed (or: 'formulated', 'drafted', 'developed' etc.) one way or another. They all share the basic characteristic of being systems with system characteristics that have emerged by the selection and combination of lower-level options, and the same design methods and problems essentially apply to them all. In order to more fully come to grip with the range of application of design approaches, the 'design field' may also be described in terms of a number of more dimensions.
A first dimension is a scale that runs between the extremes of the design of a brand-new policy or project (say, a new incentives system or a big land reclamation project), and the day-to-day adjustments of 'incremental' planning. Most environ- mental design situations lie somewhere in-between.
A second dimension is the well-known scale that runs between the extremes of "rational planning" and "the politics of muddling through" (e.g., March, 1982). This scale is in itself a mix of three oppositions, namely, of ideal versus real, of transpar- ency versus insecurity and of planning rationality versus self-interest. At the "rational" extreme, the oppositions are mixed so that there arises the ideal model of transparent planning researchers knowing all facts and values) and decision-makers diligently sticking to their democratic At the extreme arises the claim that in the real world, planning is done by researchers groping in the dark and decision-makers scheming in the arena of pursuit of selfish objec- tives" et 1990). Most design situations, of course, lie somewhere in- between; Section 3.4 has already gone into the dangers and remedies of naive rational- ism, a too idealistic assessment of the context and role of a designing research assignment.
A third dimension is the as De Groot Chapter 6) calls it, of the of target groups in the design process. Here, it suffices to note that the scale runs from the autocratic (researchers-do-all) position to the support of self-help, and that 'target groups' may denote the general public, decision-makers or anything in between.
Lastly, there exists a scale of designing research types that runs between the applied designs on the one hand, and the more pure, theoretical exercises on the other. Although the directly applied studies are of course far more numerous, also the more general, more fundamental, more 'testing', more explorative and more Utopian designs are a rich and relevant field, for which the universities, in my opinion, have a special responsibility. In Annex Norman's effort to find the Essential Bicycle is an example of general, fundamental design work. Designs of a post-materialistic society
(Steenbergen, 1983b), of low-energy economies and even blueprints for survival (Goldsmith, 1972) play an important role to focus public debates. Countless 'ecolo- gical' houses, on paper and in reality, test and demonstrate advanced design ideas. Recently in the Netherlands, the exhibition 'The Netherlands As Design' showed long- term images of the country, based on four alternative world De Groot
explored the physical planning consequences of the world view for the Dutch lowlands.
Needless to say, the position of a particular design study in this wide variety of design situations has consequences for the choice of design methods and accompanying communication strategies. We may turn to Forester (1989) for an illustration. He distinguishes between five design situations, on a scale that largely coincides with the scale between the "rational" and extremes. Forester's most muddled situation is called "Rationality Bounded by Structural of com- munication and power relations. This situation calls for
"strategies that anticipate and counteract structural inequalities Some strat- egies focus on the regulation of capital (....). Others seek to empower the disen- franchised (....). Still other strategies seek political restructuring ( ). (p. 62). Since most people in power will not be eagerly awaiting restructuring, this situation will probably have many special featuers with respect to research tactics and ethics. Yet, designing research it still is.
Design techniques
In the following, I will first concentrate on the common core of design epistemology by way of an informal example; then a number of design methods will be enumerated, and finally I will focus on the 'value input' of the design In the example, the options are literary 'building blocks' for solutions.
Imagine a fairly large and high lecture room and a group of students that has been given the following task: "Make a design to put this thumb tack into this high
How will the students approach this task? Everybody will start looking around for options, and chairs and tables will be immediately identified as such, based on a basic design idea to build a pyramid on which somebody may climb up to put the thumb tack in the ceiling.
During the period that the details are sorted out, some studens might develop hesitations about the quality of the basic design idea. Isn't the pyramid a too cumber- some, solution? Have all the potential options really been identified?
"A ventures someone who has come into the right mood, but this option is voted down immediately. An other student proposes: "We should be able to do something with a stick or something .... Look! Let's take that long pointer over there. We loosely attack the thumb tack at the end, pointing upward, with a bit of adhesive tape Like this .... See, if you now hold the pointer at the other end, you can bridge two more meters in a second, and without danger that you fall down!" This
Option is adopted further discussion and it turns out that a construction of four tables, on which four chairs are put to support one other table, on which one chair is put in order to carry a student with the pointer, can bridge the meters to the ceiling.
In this informal design process, knowledge of has been applied, although this knowledge has been so common sense that it went without saying. Everybody knew, for instance, that the tables and chairs were strong enough to carry each other and were sufficiently equal in height to keep the different layers of the pyramid stable. If it would have been doubted, for instance, whether the rather pointed legs of the table would not break through the chair seats, a little empirical 'research' experiment would have been carried out.
Two basic values have guided the design process. They have been revealed already by the student who advertised the pointer option: the construction time and the construction stability. Note that both apply to the system level of the construction as a whole. They are 'emergent', system level characteristics.
In their design the students have implicity expressed their weighing of the con- struction time and stability This may be demonstrated by slightly complicating the design assignment, turning it into the task to design a construction for two differ- ent hypothetical client groups, a group of aged people and a group of flashy young- sters.
After some discussion, the students will decide that aged people will put less emphasis on the construction time, but will stress the stability value. Thus, the stu- dents may design a very broad-based pyramid consisting of a first level of 16 (4 x 4) tables, on which 9 (3 x 3) tables, on which 4 (2 x 2) tables, on which one table, all levels supplied with a chair next to it in order to facilitate safe climbing. The most daring of the aged people will then go up with the stick, and reach almost 7 meters. For the youngsters, the students will go to the other extreme and design a construction that needs only one table and one chair. Standing on a table, four youngsters may lift up a chair on which stands the tallest group member holding the stick, reaching more than 7 meters in no-time and lots of pleasant risk.
Besides illustrating our definition of design (the combination ... etc.) and the system characteristic concept, the example shows the of design: the same facts (tensile strengths, law of gravity etc.) and the same options (tables, chairs etc.) yield different designs when different values or value trade-offs are 'put in'. The student who invented the pointer option was one with a design talent. He or she did spontaneously what most people will be able to do by means of a more explicit design method, called 'abstract oppositions' underneath.
Although I try to avoid lists in this study, a brief enumeration of some easy design methods may be in order here, because of the gap in existing textbook literature. In order not to complicate matters I will assume that the problem analysis and explanation (facts, values, options) are sufficiently complete, as well as the design's terms of reference. These conditions are often not satisfied, giving rise to all kinds of cyclical and participatory research set-ups. These, however, do not
interfere with the design methods as such, and will therefore receive separate treat- ment later. The design methods have been grouped in four clusters, that are roughly put in order of increasing level of sophistication. Combining them is often quite feasable, since they all have their particular strengths and restrictions.
The natural approaches: Pattern Finding
Natural approaches are typically 'enhanced common sense', facilitating to do more systematically what everybody does when facing a design problem. As a basic characteristic, they all are ways to break down the 'big jump' from the options to the system level of the design into more manageable steps, intermediate