Designing Engineers by Louis L. Bucciarelli

1030 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Designing Engineers. By Louis L. Bucciarelli. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Pp. x + 220; figures, notes, index. $24.95. Recent years have seen a surge of scholarly interest in the history, ideology, and work life of engineers. Much of the research has been done by academic “outsiders,” historians and social scientists, but there have also been some noteworthy studies by members of the engineering community. Designing Engineers is such an insider’s ac­ count. Louis L. Bucciarelli teaches engineering at Massachusetts Insti­ tute of Technology and has also worked as an engineer. His analytic concern in Designing Engineers is with the way technical and social factors jointly affect the design process. Bucciarelli’s research method for the study was basically anthropo­ logical. He gathered data as a participant-observer with design proj­ ects in three high-tech engineering firms. The projects involved work on photovoltaic power modules, an X-ray inspection system, and a problem in photoprinting. Bucciarelli’s participant (engineering) re­ sponsibilities with the projects were relatively minor, an advantage in this type of research, and he seems to have enjoyed the confidence of those he was observing. He spent many hours with each of the projects and appears to have been present for key decisions. Buccia­ relli admits he was a novice in doing this type of research. But he seems to have prepared himself well, in terms of reading up on the methodology (and getting some assistance from social science col­ leagues). And there is no reason to question the accuracy of the data he collected. The analytic agenda for Designing Engineers reflects the influence of deconstructionist thinking. In his introduction, Bucciarelli argues that the instrumental, means-ends explanations engineers typically give of their design work are only partial truths. “We must,” he says, “distinguish between the way participants in design think the process of designing works and the way it actually does work” (p. 12). There is a broader social context which impinges on the design process in crucial ways. “My goal in this book,” he continues, “is to probe the function of the discrepancies between the social process of design . . . full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and the ideal image of an instru­ mental process” (p. 13). The data analysis is laid out in five chapters of expository narrative about problems and issues in the three design projects. Bucciarelli uses many quotes from his field notes, and his style of analysis is rather similar to that found in anthropological field reports. His main concern in these data chapters is with the mind-set of engineers, what he calls their “object world,” and its role in design work. Bucciarelli offers some fascinating examples of object-world thinking. It is some­ thing that is essential for the problem-solving work of engineers; they solve problems by stripping away irrelevant details and applying the appropriate scientific principle(s). But in the design arena, as Buccia- TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1031 relli notes, things get more complex: some decisions are based on the engineering mind-set, but others are affected by cost factors, power battles, organizational allegiances, and a variety of other social influ­ ences. Although Bucciarelli provides some real insights into the objectworld mind-set of engineers, his analysis of the social dimensions of the design process is not as satisfactory. He does not say anything that is outrageous or wrongheaded. Not at all. The problem is that he deals with these social influences in a very tentative and inconclusive manner. In his “Ecology” chapter, for example, he offers no system­ atic accounting of when and how different groups in his three firms attempted to influence the design process. In “Design Discourse,” he offers the observation that the overriding issue for design teams is “achieving consensus among participants with different ‘interests’ in the design” (p. 159). But he never clearly documents how this consen­ sus-building process unfolded. There are also some stylistic problems with Designing Engineers. Bucciarelli does not provide a clear sense of direction in his chapters, tends to jump around from one observation to another, includes too many unexplained or irrelevant quotes from his field records, and provides no

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