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Investigates the feedback to product designers of engineering and production costs in five industrial equipment firms. Reports that, despite the ubiquity of cost as an important design criterion, and the role that feedback should play in both individual and organizational learning, there were several significant problems: (1) Cost feedback was given as the difference between outcome and estimate in order to remove the effect of external factors, but this feedback then confounded the performance of estimation and design activities. (2) Distributional information in historical cost feedback was usually overlooked. The result was an excessive attention to detailed planning, consistent under‐estimation, and persistently negative feedback. (3) Designers and supervisors disagreed about the predictability of costs. Supervisors drew stronger inferences from feedback because they believed particular outcomes were more representative. (4) Engineering cost outcomes had poor reliability owing to the incentives to smooth cost discrepancies over different elements of the design; as a result it was unclear which were the problematic elements and opportunities were lost for calibrating the estimating process. This calibration also suffered from cost measurements being made at a higher level of aggregation than cost estimates. (5) The considerable delays between making design decisions and observing cost outcomes made it hard to learn cost‐effective design strategies through experience. There were instances where designers simply never found out how much it cost to engineer and produce their designs.

"This report translates results and findings of the intensive field work research carried out by the DELILAH consortium into practical guidelines for managers and designers of distant (vocational) training for corporate settings. Based on practical experiences of ISVOR-FIAT the guidelines are illuminated with a description of actual examples of three distinguishing distant training arrangements: a learning centre, video-conference courses and business television." (author's abstract)

This article examines the attitudes of studio instructors in architecture and landscape architecture departments throughout the United States toward the designer's role, sources of knowledge and inspiration in design, related disciplines, and essential skills. A cluster analysis of instructors' responses to a questionnaire identified five groups according to conceptions of professional identity: master designers, communicative designers, political designers, researcher designers, and those who see design, research, and political skills as almost equally important. The two most common self-conceptions are "master" and "negotiator." In-depth interviews with some instructors further elucidated each approach. The results revealed the coexistence of a multiplicity of ideas and convictions within a shared ethos and suggested various strategies for increasing the effectiveness of design education and practice. The article concludes that the professional identity of designers is being transformed from that of isolated creative individuals to that of politically active professionals.

"Technological balance" occurs automatically when the designer, builder, and user of a tool is the same person. "Technological imbalance" occurs when these activities become separated and in opposition to one another. Tools become menacing exoge nous objects. We see a shift in connotation of the word technology from the skill of the person to the object produced. Designers and builders create tools with the passive consent and willful ignorance of users. Curricula often contribute to this imbalance. Apprentice designers and builders receive specialized instruction in creating objects, whereas users uncritically learn the procedural requirements of the resulting objects. This system of education turns "machine tending" into a pedagogical goal. The university has the potential to become a model of technological balance for the soci ety as a whole using such means as selecting tools that encourage balance, "technology audits, " and break ing down the specializations among designers, builders, and users.