Michael and all

Michael said:
> I would like to save David from some of his self-professed liability to
> embarrassment about the presence or absence of PROVEN methods.
Thanks for coming to my rescue, but I'm afraid my embarrassment would
remain. First, I'm not sure that I could so cleanly distinguish between the
technical and aesthetic/ethical, as if these were inherently immanent
features of things or processes, rather than ways of apprehending those
things or processes. I share Charlotte Magnusson's scepticism on this point.

Second, I'm not applying the notion of 'PROVEN' outside of
> one particular "school" or "movement"
but rather from within. I don't view design as in some sense transcendent of
time and place. Indeed, I assume that I can only do my work from within a
particular 'school', dealing with designs in my own time and place. I have
no ambitions, intellectual or practical, beyond the milieu within which I
work. However, I do believe that for designers working in the same 'school'
as myself, I have an obligation to do research that they will find useful
and productive. Some of my colleagues, working in the same 'school', share
this view, replicating some of our research and vice versa. On that basis,
we would make the claim that our findings are PROVEN. But, of course, the
world changes and inevitably all of us will be wrong about most of what we
have claimed to be PROVEN today.

Language may go on holiday--if I let it, when I have finished putting it to
work--but the imperative and the embarrassment would remain.

David

--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
** helping people communicate with people **

PO Box 398 Hawker
ACT 2614 Australia

Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795

phone:  +61 (0)2 6259 8671
fax:    +61 (0)2 6259 8672
web:    http://www.communication.org.au

> From: Michael A R Biggs <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Michael A R Biggs <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 11:10:05 +0100
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Building the Field? Useable Information
>
> I would like to save David from some of his self-professed liability to
> embarrassment about the presence or absence of PROVEN methods.
>
> There seem to me to be [at least] two aspects to design (and art etc): the
> technical and the aesthetic (and you can add the ethical to the aesthetic
> side if you want, etc).
> We should be able to identify PROVEN methods in the technical area.
> But why should we feel obliged to have PROVEN methods in aesthetics, the
> ethical, etc.? What would that mean? It assumes a criterion of performance
> that we simply do not apply, or at least we do not apply one over long
> periods of time as opposed to within one particular "school" or "movement".
> This was the theme of my Common Ground paper: it is easy to feel we OUGHT
> to have PROVEN methods, but if we make this distinction technical and
> aesthetic) I believe the imperative dissolves. A case of "language goes on
> holiday" (from Wittgenstein)?
>
> Michael
>
> At 09:37 18/09/2002 +0100, davidsless wrote:
>> Glen, Rosan and all
>>
>> First, my usual caveat. I'm able to contribute on an intermittent basis
>> only. I'm currently on a train heading from London to Reading and I don't
>> know when I will be able to hook into the internet next, send this, or have
>> time to respond.
>>
>> To begin with Glen's question.
>>> We are asking - are there any PROVEN ways in which we can improve our
>>> ability to design?
>> Glen, I think this question is spot on. The litmus test for any research
>> conference is whether someone reports new findings or new ways of thinking
>> that I did not know about before. In particular, in the design field, I look
>> for new or improved ways of doing design that have been validated in some
>> way. Or new ways of thinking about design and design problem solving.
>>
>> I cannot answer your specific question about industrial design, because I am
>> not an industrial designer. My own field is information design--these days
>> going under much fancier titles such as information architecture,
>> interaction design, or even experience design. (We live in desperate times!)
>>
>> As a researcher in information design, I would be deeply embarrassed if I
>> could not answers such a question, if it was asked of me by a practicing
>> information designer. Yes, in our field of information design there are
>> PROVEN ways in which we can improve our ability to design, and we have,
>> along with others, done research which provides that proof. And we continue
>> to do such research. Sadly though, I can report that in the sessions I
>> attended, I did not learn anything that struck me as new, either by way of
>> findings, ideas or methods.
>>
>> Obviously, in a conference of this size, with so many parallel sessions,
>> it's impossible for anyone to attend every session. And I have not yet read
>> the full proceedings. Some people did tell me that they learnt some new
>> things in other sessions. Others reported a similar experience to my own. I
>> hope we hear from them all on this list.
>>
>> Rosan, asked:
>>> What is our common ground? Was a common ground laid or refabricated at the
>>> conference? And how was the idea of 'common' being outlined at the
>> conference?
>>
>> I notice since you asked this question, we all got diverted by the claim
>> that 'Common Ground' was not really the theme, and further diverted into a
>> side issue about 'blind refereeing' (I think, as an aside, that we would be
>> better calling it 'invisible refereeing', but then it depends on who is
>> looking at what, and who knows who is looking at what. It always fascinates
>> me the lengths we go to to hide who is doing what to whom. But then, what is
>> done, is done, and we know not by whom.)
>>
>> Moving to your question. It's worth pointing out that there are at least two
>> major meanings to the word common: something shared, and something ordinary.
>> In reflections on the conference I hover between the two.
>>
>> In the sense of something shared--a zeitgeist--I think Trond Are Oritsland
>> captured part of that when he referred to:
>>> - A philosophical interest in phenomenology and "the embodied mind" .
>>> - Shared interest in design teaching in terms of understanding the
>> process of
>> design.
>>> - A movement from the object, to interaction as the basis of designs
>> "artifact"
>>
>>> From my limited exposure to the papers presented, this was the impression I
>> derived.
>>
>> I would perhaps add to this, as others have already:
>> - A preoccupation with the social value of design
>> - An interest in the design of social systems, such as services.
>>
>> But I hasten to repeat that this was my impression of the zeitgeist of the
>> conference, and none of these ideas are new in design practice or research.
>>
>> I often feel that conferences are a special side channel in the river of
>> life. We enter the channel, and for a few precious days we move at a slower
>> pace in deeper waters, mingle in a slow dance with others, and at the end we
>> are dumped back into the main channel, cascading over the wear, tumbling
>> back into life and the main stream.
>>
>> I think the conference organisers provided us with an excellent opportunity
>> to partake in that slow dance. Many thanks to them for that opportunity. I'm
>> sure that many of us, myself included, look forward to the next side channel
>> along the river.
>>
>> Did we make any great advance? lay a common ground? or even prepare the
>> foundations for a common ground? Alas, I think not. But the fact that we
>> want to continue dancing together is sometimes enough.
>>
>> David
>>
>> --
>> Professor David Sless
>> BA MSc FRSA
>> Co-Chair Information Design Association
>> Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
>> Director
>> Communication Research Institute of Australia
>> ** helping people communicate with people **
>>
>> PO Box 398 Hawker
>> ACT 2614 Australia
>>
>> Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
>>
>> phone:  +61 (0)2 6259 8671
>> fax:    +61 (0)2 6259 8672
>> web:    http://www.communication.org.au
>
> *******************************************************
> Dr Michael A R Biggs
> Reader in Visual Communication
> Faculty of Art and Design
> University of Hertfordshire
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