Klaus et al,
First of all, I don't mean to say that I problem-solve visually - although I
do that some/most of the time. I mean I literally think in pictures.
Granted that most design information that I share with others is strongly
though not entirely textual, the text is only the means to get - well, I
call it information - to someone else, just because text is the most likely
commonly shared representation to get the job done.
What I'm saying is that my internal processes (I'm not sure I'd call them
intrapsychic - I don't know that much about psychology) are fundamentally
visual. That's how things come to me when they come "naturally." Even if
I'm listening to someone speak to me, or reading an email, I "get it" when I
see a picture in my mind. When I conceptualize them for the purpose of
sharing them, I do it in pictures, or in words, or as equations, or a CAD
drawing or a prototype, or whatever else gets the job done. Here, in this
forum, I'm stuck with text. C'est la vie.
And when I design, I'm doing something internal. I might then externalize
it with language or something else, but I see that act as separate from the
design act that preceded it. When I get some kind of response to my
externalization (a reply from a colleague or whatever), a new internal
activity gets triggered and I design some more. Even when I'm doodling on a
sheet of paper or working with some equations, I see it as sort of a closed
loop. I internally think something, doodle/write it out, then receive it
back again as an input that triggers some other internal activity.
"We" might choose to use text as the primary mode of communication, but I
believe it's just that - a choice (of course grounded in a very weighty
history and cultural precedents).
The other thing that concerns me is when you say that how individuals do
things has little to do with how we do them collectively (or am I misreading
you?). I believe our individual actions have an awful lot to do with our
collective actions. Take a design team and replace one member with
another. My experience is that the team's collective activity and its modes
of communications will always change - sometimes negligibly, sometimes
substantially - but they always change. Ditto with research teams. Or
groups listening to a presenter at a conference. That tells me that the
individual's internal processes are having a definite effect on the
collective activities of the group.
Cheers.
Fil
2009/9/29 Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]>
> fil,
>
> i too can say that i solve many of the abstract problems i am dealing with
> visually, sometimes conceptualizing them by drawing on paper, sometimes by
> observing analogies in my environment that others don't.
>
> how YOU and I do things has little to do with what WE call design, discuss,
> theorize, and email about. terry confuses, and you seem to chime into the
> confusion between your intraspychic activity and how you conceptualize it
> in
> accounts of it to others and negotiate with others the meaning of such
> words
> as design.
>
> klaus
> [...]
>
--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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