Hi Noemi,
I work in a design area that is not definitely the main stream, although
someone says that this area is emerging. I work on service design and I
had the opportunity to present my paper to the conference. Of course I
don't know what your area is or whether my area is less marginal than
yours. There may have been many reasons why my area was included and
yours was ignored. The idea of including all the areas of design studies
may prove too ambitious if you consider the whole landscape of design
research.
No doubt there is large scope for improvement in the next conference,
both in organizational aspects that may have emerged in this conference
and in the inclusion of marginal areas.
For instance:
- As I was mentioning before I would have been happy if the
proceedings were available before the conference.
- I would also try not to overlap meetings of general interest and
other presentations (whether or not they are marginal). In my case, for
instance, my presentation was parallel to the meeting on PhD (that
turned to be a sort of plenary session) and there were only about 10
people attending my presentation, but probably no one could have thought
that the PhD session would have had such a big audience.
- Finally other areas that could be considered as marginal could
be included, but we should discuss what areas are marginal...
Given this I must say that I really appreciated the effort the
organizers put in the conference. To be one of the first event of this
kind in the context of design studies I believe it would have been
difficult to do any better.
Nicola
Ass Prof Nicola Morelli
Institute of Architecture and Design
Aalborg University, Denmark
Web: http://www.aod.auc.dk/staff/nmor
-----Original Message-----
From: noemi sadowska [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 September 2002 15:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Common Ground - a title or a theme
Hi everyone
Before I make my comments, I would like to point out
that this email is not a criticism of the the Common
Ground conference, its organisation and its content.
It is more of a desire to view Common Ground from yet
another perspective.
I have been closely following the discussion strand on
the conference, since a lot of the raised issues about
its 'common ground-ness' touch on the notions I have
been questioning myself. Therefore, I decided to join
the discussion and voice what I believe the common
ground conference meant to me.
When I read the call for papers for the conference
hosted by the DRS I was very excited about it. It was
one of the first times that I had come across a
conference in design that seemed to open its doors and
embrace the multitude of research areas in design.
Whether theme or title, the common ground opened up
opportunities to present research in design in its
broad sense being inclusive rather then exclusive -
or so it seemed.
Unfortunately as it became apparent it was not the
case. Here I would like to point to another issue that
the recent discussions about the common ground of the
conference have made me think about.
To me the common ground conference was a platform to
present research and its many strands including areas
that might be 'marginalised' by other design
conferences. It was a conference that to me symbolised
inclusion of many interest areas in design eve those
that exist on the borderlines of the discipline either
by being cross disciplinary or by their thematical
nature. However, as I found out through my own
experience and further discussion with other possible
contributors there was no room for the design margins.
It seems that this time around the main stream of
design research received the voice.
So following David Durlings comment about the
conference being one of many DRS conferences to follow
I would like to suggest a somewhat of challenging
venture for a future conference to focus on the
marginalised lands of design research. It is only
through the inclusion of these marginilised areas of
interest as part of discussion of generating new
knowledge in design that I believe, we can really talk
about the notion of common ground.
noemi sadowska
=====
noemi sadowska
(communication designer)
department of design
goldsmiths college
new cross, london
se14 6nw, united kingdom
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