Dear Elisa, I tend to agree with Lubomir...for me the 'meta' seems to
point in a different direction than what your description of the
'substance' of your topic seems to point to. While you indicate that
the substance is derived from the way the term has been used, it
seems to me that the substance is so important that it would need a
term that better helps to communicate the substance.

Actually, I also support the point of view you present, as far as I
understand from the short description. I feel that this direction is
very important for two reasons:

1) all humans design, but in our current western society which is
founded on expertism, design is generally understood as something
reserved only for experts; this alienates 'ordinary people' from
design debate and makes them unnecessarily dependent on the experts

2) the society is all the time becoming more design intensive, and
the freedom to live, act and realize one's own aspirations is
increasingly dependent on designs people have not had a chance to
influence, as well as competences to compete in the market through
designing. The social and political importance of enabling people to
design for themselves, and to participate effectively in the design
of things/systems/policies that affect their life, and to make a
living designing (to some extent), is growing.

I feel that the approach you are promoting is not a completely new
future direction, it is returning to the roots of design, and
restoring to 'the people' the possibility to design, which excessive
specialization and intellectual right protection (tools are expensive
and designed for experts only) has removed from their reach.

(Let me know if I am completely misinterpreting you...)

Not design-for-all but design-by-all?...I guess that would be a
little too provocative and also not really feasible. But something
that indicates the involvement and agenda setting by the
stakeholders, but does not carry the baggage of the other terms. For
example participatory, user driven, user inspired, democratic, etc.
all have connotations and links to other ideas about design that make
it hard to discuss the kind of approach you seem to be advocating.
But the main point is that to me, the term 'metadesign' has similar
problems.

In any case, interesting topic!


Kari-Hans

...

At 09:17 -0500 28.10.2002, Lubomir S. Popov wrote:
>Hi Elisa,
>
>One good contribution that you can make is to create a new term describing
>the phenomenon you construe. The term metadesign is too general and too
>misleading. I understand that you just borrow it from someone who have
>already generated it. However, as long as we are at the beginning of using
>it and there is  no convention about it, it might be better to think about
>a better term that implies more correctly your intentions. For example,
>sociotechnical design, sociomaterial design, sociospatial design or
>whatever. Actually, what I see in your conceptualization is more like user
>participation, user empowerment, and the like rather than a comprehensive
>social approach. It directs toward participatory design.
>
>Terms like metadesign and total design are too general to imply the social
>aspect you envisage. They imply a higher level of generalization and
>conceptualizing the ontology, which includes the social aspect as well,
>however, they imply also many other principles that you do not refer to in
>your contextualization of the issue. It seems to me that the prefix "meta"
>is often abused.
>
>Regards,
>
>Lubomir
>
>At 02:46 AM 10/28/2002 +0100, elisa giaccardi wrote:
>>What I can see in the many different uses of the term metadesign, if I
>>articulate them in a matrix, is the recurrence of some conceptual and
>>operational elements like - for instance - the capability for
>>users/communities to be in charge of, to "control" their own "meanings", or
>>to "modify/generate" their own artifacts/realities through "seeding"
>>processes and "transformation rules". If I put all these conceptual elements
>>together (I am still in the process of identify and organize them
>>coherently) a clear philosophical, ethical, and political perspective
>>(utopia?) emerges, whose final aim - from my point of view - is to provide
>>people with the means to get back their everyday horizon of life, ultimately
>>to be creative, to be able to enter poietically - as designers? - into the
>>contemporary process of enactive production of the world.