As with the famous duck-rabbit illusion it strikes me that those who wish to see ducks (see terry below) will always see ducks--no matter if it is in fact a rabbit.
In this argument Klaus is undoubtedly correct.
What is un-scientific in reducing everything entailed in the phrase "human-centered design" to "styling" is that it refuses to see the real complexity of "interaction" which was always entailed--though never satisfactorily articulated--even in "styling." In other words, "styling" was always more intelligent (and engineering design largely less intelligent) than adherents of both believed.
The tragedy of engineering design since 1840 has been that it is has sacrificed understanding of things-made for performative advance. This has given us technologies that perform, within their task boundaries, exceptionally well. It has also given us technologies that are profoundly destructive in their larger consequences and costs.
On the other side, those who played with styling intuited but did not articulate the nuance of that with which they were involved, i.e., things as mediation.
The result is that in 2009 we find ourselves then with two legacies of ignorance, which those dealing with interaction design--which means of course the entirety of design since NO design is NOT interaction design--struggle to cope with. What we lack is adequate understanding both of that on which we operate (the artificial) and that through which we operate (the capacities that design deploys). The splitting of 'styling' and 'engineering' or of 'language' versus 'operational praxis' is simply not helpful to advancing understanding; it repeats a set of conceptual patterns that one would have hoped that we would have grown out of by now. Evidently not.
regards
clive
Clive Dilnot
Professor of Design Studies
Dept. Art and Design Studies, Rm 609
Parsons School of Design,
New School University,
2w 13th St.
New York NY 10011
T.1-212-229-8916 x1481
>>> Klaus Krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> 10/13/2009 11:43 AM >>>
terry,
i read your suggestion and understood it just as you repeated it, but i don't see the analogies you are making. this is mainly because the design of compelling interfaces is as knowledge driven as that in engineering only the knowledges are different. the design of interfaces requiring a far more complex frameworks and empirical tests than the design of causal mechanisms
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: Terence Love [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2009 10:45 AM
To: Klaus Krippendorff; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: current Trends in Design Research, where are we going ?
Hi Klaus,
I suggested the discussions about 'human-centred design' vs 'engineering
design' seemed like the old 'styling' vs 'engineering' arguments and
indicate a tacit yearning to revert to 'Art and Design' as styling simply
on the grounds that 'if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it
probably is a duck'. The current human-centred design discussions and the
styling discussions of 30 years ago seem to have a similar 'duckiness'.
Cheers,
Terry
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