On Sep 30, 2009, at 11:30 AM, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
> since you ask: my operational definition of design is what a group of
> professed designers are satisfied with as accounting for their
> practices (in
> social networks). if their articulations are con-sensually practiced
> indeed, not coming from an outsider, disembodied, abstract, and
> supposedly
> general, then it is sufficient as a living theory of design --
> perhaps not
> yours but for those who use the word in con-sensual coordination of
> their
> practices.
Klaus: This really doesn't get us anywhere in terms of understanding
designing unless your designers are willing to explain and share what
they do both in and out of social networks. It doesn't seem to take
into account such things as conceptual or computational models,
heuristics, or constraining infrastructures (codes, circumstances,
etc) that are not consensual in operation. Are you saying that only
the products of such abstract entities become objects of consensual
language or is it their use that is sanctioned within the network?I
suspect that some of us have a hard time with the lack of specificity
of your "operational" definition. Although abstract and hopefully
generalized from experience a respectable theory at least provides a
detailed model through which both those inside and outside a social
network can explore, "account" and seek to understand what might be
going on. Chuck
|