Dear Terry and Victor,
I'm very surprised by Terry's answer to Victor's question:
Terry answered that:
"All software used by all fields of design."
when Victor asked:
"Would you be able to provide the list with some specifics to support
your claim."
The claim was: 'there is a substantial amount of design research
encoded into design software.'
In my experience, this claim is incorrect. Most of the software I'm
using is not based on much 'user involvement' or 'best practice'. Let
me give four examples:
1 - The listsoftware that we use for this discussion is text-based.
Illustrations, sketches, diagrams - 'napkins and beermats' - cannot
be included easily. In most discussions between designers, there is
either a bit of paper or a screen involved in the debate. List
software, and most e-mail software does not allow to draw and sketch.
This hampers my discussion and practice. Any design researcher would
have pointed this out to the software developers.
2 - I think that specifying typesizes is still a fairly fundamental
issue for graphic designers. Software does not make it possible to do
this with any accuracy, apart from 'trial and error'. It's known for
centuries that the different point-sizes (Didot, Fournier,
Anglo-American, Adobe/Apple) do not have much relation with the
dimensions of characters as they appear on paper. I have not found
any graphic design software that has an option to specify typesizes
in millimeters x-height. This whole discussion in design research
(Andrew Boag's chronology shows centuries of this debate) is clearly
not incorporated in any graphic design software. [Other 'default
values' such as linespace are not based on any research either. The
software does not ask me what kind of document - is it a poster or a
newspaper? - I try to make: it still starts from the same default
values.] I know that there are many very competent designers and
typographers involved in the development of graphic design software,
but they were - by and large - not researchers. The software does not
start from 'observations of best practice' or 'experimental
findings': it mainly uses 'untested practical rules' as a basis. Some
of this is helpfull, some of it isn't.
3. Presentation software. The software seems to imply that any
presentation consists of 'a sequence of slides' (Edward Tufte's
debate). I'm fairly sure that this software is not based on a study
of 'best practice'. It does not seem to be based on research on how
'excellent speakers' prepare and deliver their presentations, and
there are no published experiments if the software really supports
less experienced speakers. This software does not help me very much
to structure my arguments in a convincing way.
4. None of the graphic design software is based on 'team work'. It's
close to impossible to work with two or more designers on the same
document. I thought that design research had shown that designers
usually work in teams? How does the software accommodate for this?
Apart from the current shortcomings of software (no pictures in
discussions, use of untested typographical rules, no structural
support for presentations, no teamwork), it would not be really
helpful for professional practice to base software on design research
only. The software needs to allow for experiments: ('I wonder if you
could do this too?'), it needs to allow for adaptation for individual
situations (Software should ask: 'There seems to be a pattern in your
activities: shall I automate this?').
So, sorry Terry, I don't take your argument that 'All software used
by all fields of design' has encoded design research. There might be
some very minor traces of design research in software-codes, but the
large majority of software is not based on much decent design
research: most software simply fails to deliver.
Kind regards,
Karel.
[log in to unmask]
>>>>>
Hi Victor,
All software used by all fields of design.
Best wishes,
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 Victor
Margolin
Sent: Friday, 21 August 2009 2:01 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: terry love post
Dear Terry;
You make some large and provocative statements in your last post
about the amount of research that has been encoded into design
software, thus increasing the efficiency and output of design
practice. Would you be able to provide the list with some specifics
to support your claim. It would be helpful to know exactly which
areas, which software, and which kinds of work you are referring to.
Thanks,
Victor
--
Victor Margolin
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