To Susan, Klaus, Terry and Colleagues,
In only the last two weeks, three youths have died on snowy mountains
here in Quebec, while skiing, tobogganing, etc. In all three
incidents, death occurred in descending down the slopes. Children
slammed their unprotected skulls against the trees bordering the
commercially run facilities.
The question now on everybody's lips and mind here, and in all local
media is, in lay persons' terms: WHAT to do to prevent such kind of
accidents, or so many unreported less drastic events, to occur again?
One of the layperson's immediate solution is to protect children's
skulls with helmets, and make the equipment compulsory on all ski
slopes, as already done in hockey.
In the present state of the profession here in quebec, I doubt the
above QUESTION will ever be formally submitted to professional or
aspiring to be designers, in any of the respectively competent design
sub-fields. Only practicing engineers, technicians in industrial
design or even just shop craftspersons, may eventually be called upon
to make proposals on the partial and only thought-to-be solutions of
the laypersons.
However none among us, experts in design, would doubt that more
suitable solutions would better come from several other design sub-
fields than those suggested above. If this were the case, each of the
consulted design professionals would then first come up, not simply
with some vague "ideas". Rather, ANSWERS would first be contrived in
the designers' mind and then crafted in profesional manner of the
current state of each "art" domain, in order to be "presented" as
optimal SOLUTIONS to "clients", to all closer and distant
stakeholders that I rather call "users".
Those potentially innumerable solutions proposed under various
formats by different designers would range from a short verbal
opinion to a set of technical specifications; from a user's warning
to national standards, laws and regulations; from a computerized
manufacturing program to a finished protective item; from a selling
strategy of prevention equipment to a general awareness program and
pedagogical prevention school curriculum; from a formative and
rhetorical "metaphor" to a scientifically crafted prevention media
campaign. Even research engineers may eventually be called upon as
well, to research principles and theories related to both failure and
improvements in various faulty mechanisms and badly designed
equipments causing accidents on ski slopes.
Another group of professional engineers may as well be called in to
conduct research, this time in different ways to "ENVISION" (i.e.
REPRESENT) better, for whatever purpose (investment, manufacturing,
justice, etc.), new mechanisms and protective equipments on ski
slopes.
Other eventual "solutions" to the above same "problem" may even come
from Southern hemisphere individuals, if called upon. These latter
may in their lifetime have never had any lived experience on ski
slopes, but they may nonetheless, eventually come up with
unconventional and never heard of solutions, yet probably the most
protective ....! Not forgetting to mention the Northern indigenous
people, the world experts in gliding techniques and artifacts on
snowy and icy surfaces who may contribute a lot, if approached.
In default to directly work on such fleeting real events like in the
above case of deadly events on ski slopes, the only "something" we
all concretely have hold on, and then can reflect and really work
upon, is the representations made of such events. It is such portions
of no longer existing "reality", that are "MADE PRESENT AGAIN", first
in the minds of the question bearers as in the illustrative case
above. And second, commissioned professionals called designers would
each thus translate, as a way to "solutions", the "question" posed
into actual and more malleable formats
like "metaphors", "paradigms", sketches, drawings, written reports,
mockup models, body gestures, prototypes, and all other kinds
of "plans", or "representations" that, ultimately may be realized and
concretely implemented as physical or immaterial artifacts.
As I tried to extensively illustrate above, the only limit to
possible "intelligent" solutions is our human capacity to reason. Not
implying here a simple and gratuous generation of vague "ideas" of
the already passed reality, or of its whatever kinds of
dreamed "representations". I rather advocate, in a socially
responsible manner and in our capacity as a professional group,
a "theorizing" process on "things" practical, that can be easily
manufactured and used (referring to one of Klaus,s recent post). All
the teleological or potential artifacts that we may come up with,
first mentally and then, eventually, practically applied in the long
run in places like snowy mountain slopes, they all are what I mean
by "RE-PRESENTATIONS". They ought to be practically and
profesionaly "MADE PRESENT".
Quite obviously then, my use of the term of "representation" as what
designers do or ought to be doing, and as a proposed agenda for the
profession in years ahead, is thus far from being so "narrow", again
in Klaus's words! In my mind, designers do not "draw" only! Nor do
they simply engage in "routines, styles, repetitive ways to solve
problems", as said in onother of Klaus's last posts.
Sorry for the long and probably linguistically clumsy post!
Greetings from snowy (but not so called!) Montréal.
François-X.
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