Dear Cheryl,

Enjoyed reading your post. Wondering how you see your proposals fit to the other domains of design, particularly the engineering domains?

Best regards,

Terry
____________________

Curtin Research Fellow
Dept of Design
Curtin University
Perth, Western Australia
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Visiting Research Fellow
Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
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-----Original Message-----
From: cheryl akner-koler
Sent: 31/05/2004 12:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sorry, all over again - second call for rescue Re: generic design cognition Re: some questions on design cognition


Dear Rosan, Eduardo, Norman, Ken

I have added a few comments early to this list concerning form and semiotics
and would like to give a few of the threads I am pulling together about
design cognition that I am in the middle of spinning.

First I believe Normans focus on emotions in  relationship to cognition
supports an embodied approach and I feel the possible area in which we can
build a design domain.

Mark Johnssons and George Lakoffs  work in  embodiment bring up  ³basic ­
level concepts² that are non metaphorical and give the stuff in which
metaphors, semiotics and products etc are made of. Included in this rather
broad concept is emotions.

 I would like to suggest an art and design domain concepts such as
"basic-level aesthetics" which is a term that could cover the emotions that
arise from sensorimotoric operations and spatial relationships that are used
to aesthetically navigate under the design process.   I find this word is
very helpful in discussions concerning different levels of aesthetics,
gestalt, formgiving and form theory.

 
Basic level aesthetics also brings up parallel concept that Susanne Langers
work in 1950s on  Form and Feelings. Langer, who seems to be the mother of
embodiment, gives her explanations of  how aesthetical elements ³import²
expressions through form that are directly perceived with no prior activity
of interpreting them.

Langer clearly states the difference between language and art by the fact
that the elements of language (word) refer to set definitions limited
through convention, while the elements of art  (form) use sensuous
qualities that allow the character to become the content of our on going
experience  at this moment.

This skill and method of importing form expressions through  " basic level
aesthetics" is what the development of a product gestalt relies on I
believe. Without a perception and cognition of this deep level before
semiotics and semantics then a clear "transparent"(Langer) gestalt will not
occur.  We will just be able to re-design on a superficial level, relying on
the holistic image on some prior product sign to carry added demands of the
product.  

To summarize I believe that  -sensorimortoric operations, and spatial
understanding are two areas that designers are very competent in. This
experience and understanding can then be applied to build a very fundamental
embodied experience which can be the fulcrum  in which one can dance
(thanks Rosan) around the very rational methods of the design process. And
it is probably this dance that causes methods to be rerouted and thrown out
in order to keep the coherence of the gestalt going.  My experience of
twenty years of teaching industrial designers in Sweden tells me this has
some truth to it. 
 

I hope to get some feed back on this.

Cheryl 
 __________________
Professor Cheryl Akner-Koler
Konstfack 
University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
Department of Industrial Design
Box 3601
126 27 Stockholm 
Sweden 

work  08 450 4172 
mobil 070 279 83 76
 

1) Langer, Susanne. Feeling and form. Charles Scribner´s sons New York 1953
2) Lakoff George and Johnson Mark. Philosophy in the flesh. The embodied
mind and its challenge to western thought.  Basic Books New York 1999
 
 


 
Rosan you  from what could be called a process-based rather then view-based.
Den 04-05-31 01.42, skrev "Eduardo Corte-Real" <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Rosan:
> Think of us as the Mob.This "us" means design researchers and academics.
> Our problem, after years of perpetrating objects and systems of objects
> and ideas about objects,using mob technics, is to get "legit". Mob
> technics is what I called methodoxies. We just have a goal and use
> whatever process to achieve that goal.
> But we started to think that producing objects to be in the world requires
> legitimacy. You can't force ideas and forms into the world without some
> kind of legitimation.
> Cognition Sciences, like any "legit" science, just give us the power to
> make sense. Sciences, and most of all, sciences that deal with human
> understanding, human emotions, human reasoning and human foresighting, are
> the stock where our legit eager driving will prey. But this is leading us
> back to a general theory of human thinking. Demonstrating that design is
> inside human thinking is so obvious that demonstrating how it occurs is
> idle. Escaping this idleness of thinking demands that we must have the
> courage to say: not any artifact is design! Not any process of producing
> new things is design! Not any self designated design activity is design!
> (I'm thinking of that sort of movie's credits: Pet Food Designer - Ted
> Kourtreally)
> Please, guys, designing is something in which cognition is central. OK
> but... Knowing more about cognition will enhance cognition as a part of
> design processess? Will designers cognate better? Will users cognate even
> better? (The same way dentists will cognate better). We are dealing with
> genaral rules of thinking (of ideaing).
> Whenification of Design is a proposision for, (regardless of the obvious
> cognition powers involved on designing to be spoted on any design
> process), determine what is being instituted, timely, as Design.
> Design cognition, to be useful, is the ability to identify in objects,
> systems of objects, or systematic processes of producing objects, their
> legitimacy to be inside the timely instituted Design realm. In other
> words: Design cognition is the ability to identify a design realm. (Design
> regoniton)
> Well... and identify that realm as a part of a cultural universe.
> This cultural part is something that is related to legitimacy but I will
> address to it later.
> 
> Thanks for your words, the parish will survive (this was not confession),
> 
> Eduardo