Design cybernetics offers a way of looking at ourselves – curious, creative, and ethical humans – as self-organizing systems that negotiate their own goals in open-ended explorations of the previously unknown. It is a theory of and for epistemic practices (learning, designing, researching) that is deeply committed to the autonomy of others and hence offers no prescriptive methodology. Design cybernetics describes design practice as inextricable from conversation – a way of enquiring, developing shared understanding and reaching the new that harnesses reliable control as well as error and serendipity. Recognizing circular causality, observer-dependency and non-determinability, design cybernetics extends beyond tenets of scientific research into the creative, ethical and aesthetic domain. From this perspective, design is not an ill-conceived subset of scientific research. Instead, scientific research emerges as a particularly restricted subset of the broader human activity of design. This volume offers a cross-section of design cybernetic theory and practice with contributions ranging across architecture, interior lighting studies, product design, embedded systems, design pedagogy, design theory, social transformation design, research epistemology, art and poetics, as well as theater and acting. Addressing designers, design educators and researchers interested in a rigorous, practice-based epistemology, it establishes design cybernetics as a foundational perspective of design research.
Design cybernetics can be traced back to the adoption of W. Ross Ashby‘s notion of variety in design theory by Horst Rittel and (independently) Gordon Pask. The field was later developed significantly by Ranulph Glanville who collected many of his major writings in his Black Boox trilogy. The field was further consolidated with the edition of the 2019 volume Design Cybernetics: Navigating the New, which brings together the design cybernetic research of the following authors building largely upon Glanville’s work: Johan Verbeke (foreword), Hugh Dubberly and Paul Pangaro, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Thomas Fischer and Christiane M. Herr Ranulph Glanville, Michael Hohl, Timothy Jachna, Wolfgang Jonas, Klaus Krippendorff, Ted Krueger and Ute C. Besenecker, Laurence D. Richards, Tom Scholte, Ben Sweeting, Liss C. Werner, and Claudia Westermann. The book contains a chapter that offers An Introduction to Design Cybernetics (of which an online Chinese translation is available) as well as a chapter titled Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better: The Cybernetics in Design and the Design in Cybernetics by Ranulph Glanville.
The following is a keynote address delivered by Ranulph Glanville at RSD3, the Third Symposium of Relating Systems Thinking to Design. In it, Glanville discusses how design and cybernetics reflect each other. A transcript of this keynote presentation can be found here.
The following lecture titled Design Cybernetics: An Introduction was delivered during a visit to SCUT in October of 2024. It also offers an outline of the field.
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