Dear Rosan

I have been reading this thread with interest but with little time to
add my comments. Your take on specifications limits the results of
design to the confines of a product or the boundary of the system that
was taken up for designing in the first place. However design does much
more since it places a lot more that what was intended in the first
place since it could add pollution and a number of unintend residue and
further it can and always does leave much room for interpretation bt the
user and any observer who could draw their inferences from their own
perceptions and these could be unanticipated in the specifications of
the origional design. The word "specification" therefore fails to
adequately describe the outcome of a design task and we need to look for
another term that can be used in conjunction with or in addition to the
term specification. "Affordances" is one such term, there may be others
since design outcomes tend to be open ended like the ripples that move
back and forth when a pebble strikes a pond. This term says more about
the design with not just "what it is" but as to "what you can do with
it", which is usually what matters to most users of the design. If I
cannot use it, it is not of much use anyway.

Five years ago when I was setting up our Web Usabiliy & Research Lab
(W-URL^(TM)) (pun intended) at NID I wrote a series of papers to help
our students understand design in the context of the emerging
opportunities on the web for new structures and services. These papers
can be accessed from my web archive from a folder titled "MPR Papers on
InfoTech". The papers pertaining to the above arguement are
"Affordances&Design_WURL02.doc" and "What is Usability_WURL01.doc". My
web archive is at <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>

With warm regards and wishing all on PhD-Design a very happy new year.

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
11 January 2004 at 9.50 am IST

___________________________________________________________________

Prof M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives
Faculty Member on NID Governing Council (2003 -2004) (continuing till date)
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380 007 INDIA

Tel: 91+79+26610054 (Res)
Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 1090 (Off)
Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 4095 (Off)
Fax: 91+79+26605242

email: <[log in to unmask]
web archive: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>
___________________________________________________________________

Rosan Chow wrote:

> Dear Klaus and Terry and those who are still reading
>
> i would like to say a few words about my take on 'specification' as a
> main/defining criterion and term for 'design'.
>
> we all know 'design' is a profession. and we all know 'design' has
> been proposed to be seen as 'a way of thinking-acting'. as a
> professional practice, the definition of 'design' will change as the
> world changes. as a way of thinking-acting, the definition of 'design'
> will also change as the world changes. however, the difference between
> the two definitions, i believe, is that the former seeks to establish
> a description that is timely, and the latter timeless.
>
> in the former case, i have no problem if a distinction is made between
> what industrial designers and engineering designers produce to get
> paid. a 'proposal' and a 'specification' respectively or whatever.
> however
>
> in the latter case, i prefer 'specification' as it seems to me this
> term signifies the outcome of design generally and accurately. i like
> terry's definition of design (noun). he suggests/insists that a design
> is a specification, and not a product or an artefact. i think he is
> right.
>
> however, i don't agree with his definition of designing (verb). and i
> will think more about Klaus' ideas that specification/proposals are in
> the domain of communication.
>
> thanks. this discussion is beneficial to my research.
>
> rosan
>
> Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
>
>> dear terry, i see no fundamental difference between the use of
>> specifications vs. proposals. in my experiences though, the
>> specifications produced by designers need not be (and i would add
>> cannot be) so specific, merely detailed enough for financiers to
>> invest in the proposal, for engineers to make production drawings,
>> and for advertisers to develop a marketing strategy. again in my
>> experiences, in the course of realizing a design, many people
>> introduce modifications not under the control of the designer. where
>> i once worked, our assignment was to organize workshops with clients
>> out of which commitments to realize an idea were to emerge. you can
>> call this participatory design, which i happen to like for its
>> inherently ethical process. sure, most designers work under contract
>> and sometimes contracts spell out specific deliverables. but such
>> contracts can also include hiring designers to generate ideas just
>> for the client to be sure that he or she has covered the whole field.
>> or to prevent good ideas not to fall into the hands of the
>> completion. proposal, specifications, sketches, plans, instructions,
>> program s, are all words that denote communications that can be acted
>> upon by others who may or may not see some benefit in doing so. i
>> think the value of shift ing the discussion from intentions to actual
>> communications is that we can examine the latter for what others can
>> do with them -- and this is surely not causally determinable . i am
>> glad that michael introduced the intentional fallacy into the
>> discussion and ken provided a relevant article to elucidate it.
>> thanks also for your cogent distinction between causes and blame,
>> which for me is a distinction between physical explanations and
>> explanations concerning socially situated interactions. as i
>> suggested earlier, intentions are asserted in accounts and depend on
>> whether actors can be proud or embarrassed of the consequences of
>> their actions. best wishes klaus
>>
>>     -----Original Message-----
>>     From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
>>     related research in Design [ mailto:[log in to unmask] ]On
>>     Behalf Of Terence Love
>>     Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2005 10:00 PM
>>     To: [log in to unmask]
>>     Subject: Re: Design and intention
>>
>>     Dear Klaus,You say you prefer 'proposal' to 'specification'
>>     because a design does not need as specific as a computer program
>>     or an
>>     engineering drawing. As far as I can see, most non-trivial
>>     'designs' consist of the contractual communications that are
>>     'specifications' such as engineering drawings, computer code etc
>>     (specifcations for producing products, creating and managing
>>     systems, structuring organisations, defining how influences can
>>     be actualised (policy and advertising designs)etc) - that are
>>     deliberately written in formal languages/ and tightly defined
>>     symbolic structures so as to be as unambigous to the reader as
>>     possible.Seems to me that a core aspect of producing a 'design'
>>     is this use of formal singular unambigous 'langauges' for which
>>     the aim is to minimise the reinterpretation by the user of the
>>     design (as distinct formt he user of the outcome when the design
>>     is actualised as a product systems etc).Best regards,Terry
>>