Hello Norm and List,
There in fact are four places, along their respective lifecycle, where
artifacts are found (i.e. made, "designed", or eventually
"re-designed"): the expert designer's mind and work place, the
manufacturer's "floor", the distributor's market, and all various users
living places. At any of these moments of encounter between the
artifact, the user and the factual situation, there happens an
appropriation and adaptation (i.e. "re-design", or "instigated design")
of the artifact and its use in a way or ways not necessarily intended by
the expert designer.
So, besides the case of those women sharing information through baskets
weave patterns, there indeed are many, many other cases of "instigated
design" of any artifact. Among thousands of other examples, think also
of the coca cola bottle in the hands of the Bushmen in the Kalahari
desert...
This is a very interesting and wide open topic, also still waiting to be
explored by researchers in design, as reminded to us in Victor's post a
few days ago!
Francois
Montreal
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Hi Ken and all
I found the patterns of responses to Ken's challenge interesting - it
was an instigation that revealed many things about our various
approaches to design understanding.
Many years ago I was part of a project where the sharing of cultural
information between two groups of Indigenous women who lived thousands
of kilometres apart was made possible because the knot-language they
used in their basket and net making was similar.
Much of my current work involves the ways that some aspects of design
flow on to instigate user design ... examples being the development of
text language by mobile phone users - a design that arises from usage
that is not part of the design intent. You might also see this aspect of
design in mistakes such as the use of CFC gasses in refrigeration and
the subsequent development of 'green' technologies for manufacturing ...
not to mention the climatic redesign outcomes.
I remember a speaker at the Sydney Design Symposium a few years ago
speaking to this aspect of design and I was wondering if any list
members had interest in this area?
Norm
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