Dear Francois-Xavier Nsenga

I have not quoted Gui Bonsiepe in my note but I had given an
interpretation of what he had to say in the table on comparision between
technology, science and design innovation as I understood it. I did not
look at his book while making this statement since it was done from my
memory of the past reading since the book "Interface" (impressive and
exciting) which (is tucked away in many piles of books and papers in my
quite chaotic office where I use pile management rather than the key
word organising that I can do for all my digital files, my digital
desktop is caotic too but lends itself to boolean search...) is not
easily accessible each time I want to respond to a post on the list.

However what I take away from Bonsieppe is that he would distinguish
between a design concept and a "design in the field" that is found
acceptance in a "market place" or in the hands of numerous users (market
success), which is the ultimate test of the validity of a design,
acceptance by users. Here the distinction works for me since all
innovation of technical specifications and procedures can be tested
repeatedly in a laboratory if the stated procedure is followed
explicitly but in the case of a "design" it can fail if any one
condition in the environment or context were to change and further since
we are dealing with people they too can change their mind in a fickle
manner, which explains the shift of fashion, and it also makes that
activity of design reflexive since competition and other thinking
persons in the environment can intervene, oppose or otherwise hamper the
smooth acceptance of the design which makes the activity very political
indeed. (sorry for the long scentance, just flowed from your
provocation). Therefore patents work for technical innovations but not
for design, which has to depend on copyright and the design act.

Science on the other hand claims that it is in pursuit of truth, which
it is but shall never find, since there is no such thing as an absolute
truth. Therefore the peerr review system is great since a theory can
stand as long as it is approved by informed and distinguished peers or
by an authority, whichever may be the case, till it is challenged and
disproved by a new theory and a paradigm shift in the discipline, as
Kuhn would have us believe. That design is wicked is then explained by
this classification that we can never know at anytime if a particular
design will work or not and only the unfolding future can show us the
rsults, however I must qualify this by saying that the risks can be
reduced by rsearch and expert insight as well as power to manage markets
as it may be in the case of monopolies and in some other specific
situations of control and coercion.

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my Mac at home on the NID campus
28 July 2007 at 9.15 am IST

_______________________________________________________________________
Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
Head, Centre for Bamboo Initiatives at NID (CFBI-NID)
Chairman, GeoVisualisation Task Group (DST, Govt. of India) (2006-2008)
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 India

Tel: (off) 91 79 26623692 ext 1090 (changed in January 2006)
Tel: (res) 91 79 26610054
Fax: 91 79 26605242

email: [log in to unmask]
web site: http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/
web domain: http://www.ranjanmp.in
blog: http://design-for-india.blogspot.com
_______________________________________________________________________


Francois-Xavier Nsenga wrote:
> 
> Dear Prof. Ranjan,
> 
> In your response yesterday to Thomas Rasmussen, you wrote:
> 
> " Gui Bonsiepe has a table in his book "Interface" where he makes a
> comparative positioning of technology innovation, science innovation and
> design innovation, all of which need imagination and all the qualities
> that suggest the presence of vision and experimentation. However the
> location where these are typically tested take place are the company
> workshop, the university laboratory and market place respectively and
> the significant aspect is that while tech innovation can be tested
> repeatedly by set procedures  and science innovation needs to be peer
> approved to find acceptance, in the case of design innovation its
> validity can only be tested by its acceptance in the market place since
> it is context dependent and cannot be standardised."
> 
> While agreeing that locations of vision and experimentation of
> technological and scientific innovation are respectively in workshop
> floors and in university and all other R&D labs, I personally tend to
> think that the locus of design shouldn't be viewed at the market place,
> the domain essentially of marketers and procurement agents. Rather,
> artefacts validity should be tested in all real use contexts of daily
> life. There is where they are approved or disapproved by concerned
> users, and in this last case either put away or...helplessly endured
> until alternatives (other artifacts, other users and or other contexts)
> are found!
> 
> Francois
> Montreal
> 
> Email Scanned for Virus & Dengerous Content.