Dear Chuck and Keith,

Thank you for your comments. 

I feel we sometimes get mixed up between being researchers and designers.

Wearing my abstract design researcher/theorist hats, I agree with you. It is
true. How people perceive objects depends on their experience

Wearing a designer hat, however, the situation feels very different. As a
designer, my focus is primarily on specifying what can practically be made
and done. The situation is Now. People already have their prior experiences
that will influence their perception. That is an earlier game. In this new
moment, I  can intend and  hope that the user of a new designed outcome will
have specific feelings and new experiences might result. While I design, I
can use lots of information and personal judgment and creativity to feel my
way into solutions that hopefully will be perceive in ways that will have a
particular effect. However, at the end of the day, the design I create
specifies real world objects, systems, processes and users are  human and
perceive and interpret things as we will. 

The design brief may include 'create a particular experience for the user'.
That is a brief, not the design. The proposed experience is in a user's
internal subjective world. As a  designer, I can only create designs for
things in the objective external world. I  make a design for a product,
interface, system, organisation, process or whatever - always in the
external world.

I agree the internal experience and the 'designed object' are related, and
the relationship depends on perception. That  relationship, however,  is
always indirect and the designer is only responsible for specifying the part
of it in the external objective world. The alternative, which would be that
designers could exactly specify people's internal experiences, would require
that we be robots.

Chuck, yes, I agree, design guidance is only weakly developed at present. I
agree it is possible to create designs that users interpret differently from
what is expected. I come across many examples:  poor interface designs in
which the designers positive intentions are adversely transmuted by my
interpretation of the object's features (e.g. doors that push and have pull
handles). As you imply, this can work both ways. It suggests, however, more
that  the development of design guidelines and rules is in its early stages.
Its easily possible to 'creatively' generate designs without yet being aware
of the structures within which those designs lie. Is this a benefit of
'magic' creativity, or a lack of understanding and awareness by the designer
of the structure of the solution space?

Thoughts?

Terry

-----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 Charles
Burnette
Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2009 10:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pragmatist aesthetics in communication design

On Jan 26, 2009, at 7:51 PM, Terence Love wrote:

> Regardless, developing the 'rules' for design is the primary focus and 
> at the end of the day its focus is object properties  (because object 
> properties are prior to experiences

Terry,
You must, on reflection, admit that the perception of object properties
actually depends on experience! They exist in the mind of an individual
through their experience prior to and with the properties of an object of
attention.  Rule making is tough in the world of design because "rules of
design" must deal with the situated interaction of individual experience
with the properties of objects. A "rule" can be transmuted by a design that
causes a new interpretation of object properties. Or so I believe.
Chuck