ABSTRACT
It was by reference to Simon's idea of human limited capacities leading to bounded rationality that Schön and Wiggins (1992) qualified designing as possessing "the conversational structure of seeing-moving-seeing" (p. 143). It may be interesting to notice that Simon himself did not realize the bounded-rationality view in his approach to design. As observed already, Simon did not apply to his general model of design the approach he adopted for social planning—and human economic behavior. He discussed the bounded-rationality idea, which was so central in his approach to economics (Simon, 1955), as relevant to his view of social planning. However, he did not apply it to his analysis of design in general, which he presented through discussions of two other domains, namely engineering and architectural design, without introducing notions related to cognitive limitations and their consequences for human activity.
