Dear Chuck,
Yes, the task of "perceptual categorisation" as you say seems to be
central to design thinking and ofcourse "reflection" on experience
followed by atriculation (visual & verbal), and here I must stress that
models and proximity and affinity maps or diagrams are a great help in
making "visible" many of the contributing elements and the
"relationships", even in a fuzzy manner at first through brainstorming,
and it is this kind of inquiery and expression that permits the other
partners and stake holders to "see" the critical components and
therefore identify the seeds of some design opportunity that can be
addressed in depth as the task progresses. Usually there are many
opportunities, located at many levels in the systems model that
emerges, several of these may be details, while others may deal with
the meta themes that need to be addressed, but the macro - micro
switch is facilitated by such a flexible visual representation, a
doodle at an early stage and a well developed scenario at an advanced
stage. The early task would be to discover the structure of the
situation and the components of the system and in the process the
critical parameters are defined (tentatively at first) and with deeper
conviction as the model evolves and is concretised as the work
progresses ("tangibalised" as our product designers call it at NID).
Here understanding the models and tools to deal with each class of
opportunity is of great value and in many cases new tools need to be
experimentally tried out for garnering insights from the field, from a
very particular location and context, sometimes these cannot be
generalised, nor are there any general approaches available in any
classified manner, since the context may be far too specific or
localised to find prior work that answers the questions that come up in
the designers or design teams mind/s.
I have recently (March 2005) described our method of teaching this
approach to students in our foundation programme in some detail in my
paper for the EAD06 conference in Bremen titled "Creating the
Unknowable: Designing the Future in Education" and this paper can be
downloaded from the conference web site link below:
<http://www.verhaag.net/ead06/05_pub_read_full.php?id=103>
The visual presentation that I used is placed as an online slide show
at the web link at my site shown below:
<http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/Learn_Design_Think/PhotoAlbum37.html>
and a pdf file of the same at full resolution is available for download
at my web archive (4 mb size) (file name : EAD06_2005_Show_MPRs.pdf)
<
http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/12/wo/
0STBa4oCaFnrpCtB.1/3.2.1.2.26.29.2.1.1.2.3?
user=ranjanmp&fpath=&templatefn=FileSharing1.html>
or from this Tny Url Link given below:
<http://tinyurl.com/d5a4a>
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
19 August 2005 at 7.55 pm IST
___________________________________________________________________
Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives
Faculty Member on NID Governing Council (2003 -2005)
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 INDIA
Tel: 91+79+26610054 (Res)
Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 1090 (Off)
Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 4095 (Off)
Fax: 91+79+26605242
email: <[log in to unmask]
web archive: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>
__________________________________________________________________
On 19-Aug-05, at 6:38 PM, Charles Burnette wrote:
> On 8/18/05 3:50 PM, "M P Ranjan" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>> However if you ask them to list opportunities for improving what they
>>> see around them in the city roads, hospitals, schools, shops, malls
>>> and hotels, and homes, to name a few typical places that they fan out
>>> to at the beginning of an assignment in design, they come back from
>>> field observation and brainstorming and discussions, with each other
>>> and with faculty, with a very long list of possible directions, a
>>> germ
>>> of an idea which they believe is do-able, which in my view is a great
>>> way to start building "intentions' and then "convictions' to make
>>> some
>>> of these "opportunities" a part of their own career goals, very deep
>>> commitments indeed, some life-long.
>
> Dear M.P.:
> A great way to teach and a good statement of how intentions arise from
> situations and are translated into directions to pursue. There is a
> little
> mystery in how this happens, but my view is that perceptual
> categorization,
> reflection, and metaphor shape the intentional proposition that is the
> first
> expression of commitment.
>
> Best regards,
> Chuck
>
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