John,
My reply to Rosan was not meant to be personal. It was meant to be a
particular (since many of the abstractions on this list frustrate me)
but broad (since some degree of abstraction is needed for real utility)
question about the relationships of design researchers and designers.
I was not meaning to scold Rosan for her reading habits. I'm not an
avid reader of either of the publications mentioned and don't consider
them vital. It is the disconnect between the the various worlds of
design researchers and the various worlds of designers that I meant to
emphasize. People on this list express amazement and/or disgust at
designers' lack of interest in "their" publications and interests. I
think it's worth pointing out that not only would designers have the
converse reaction but I believe disinterested "civilians" would share
designers' point of view on that.
(BTW, I may have exaggerated my ignorance of Rosan's work. I do know
something of what she does but not enough to understand its/her
relationship with various design worlds.)
Gunnar
On Oct 7, 2004, at 9:45 AM, John Feland wrote:
> My goodness, things get so personal so fast around here.
[snip]
> On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Gunnar Swanson wrote:
>> On Oct 7, 2004, at 12:15 AM, Rosan Chow wrote:
>>> when i read your previous post, i doubted if the design researchers
>>> you know
>>> and criticize are the same as the ones i know. for one thing, i
>>> ignorantly have
>>> not heard of 'wallpaper' and 'metroplis'. and the design researchers
>>> whom i am
>>
>> Rosan,
>>
>> I have no idea what sort of research you do and what it has to do with
>> what sort of design. Maybe there's no professional reason you would
>> have heard Wallpaper or Metropolis (or Eye or Emigre or. . .) but
>> there's a fair amount of consternation expressed on this list that
>> working designers don't go way out of their way to sort through a
>> large
>> amount of uninteresting and widely-dispersed material to find the
>> small
>> percentage of useful-to-them research. I wonder how many design
>> researchers have no connection with designers, the design fields, or
>> the culture(s) of design.
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