> Shouldn't all designed products, material or immaterial, be aimed at
> improved functioning, which must encompass [design] theories which
> considers as well body as mind?
Kristina,
Is there anything that has to do with functioning that is not design?
Is there related functioning that should not be improved?
Terry seemed to be making a connection between "emotional design" and
"engineering design" but wasn't clear what the connection was. I
inferred that the connection was the "design" part and that he meant
to imply that all "design" is one thing. For that to have any meaning,
we would have to assume that there is a lot of "not design" that is
not that one thing.
And he did not merely imply that there were connections between
various sorts of design. He called for an overarching theory. Terry
has also recently dismissed various sorts of design that don't fit his
notion of what is interesting or important about design. This seems to
add up to
1) Design is all one.
2) The all one is defined by one specific cluster of design fields or
specific set of interests.
Unless we make this into a strict definition and then try to enforce
court orders enjoining those that fall outside our tautology from use
of the word "design," I think it's incumbent on those who insist that
only overarching theories of design are worthy of our attention to at
least be clear about what we're theorizing.
It would be great if theories of emotional design and engineering
design were connected but, as you indicate, they might also connect
with theories of sociology, cognitive psych, etc. If someone reacted
to a statement about politics by asking how it connected Newtonian
physics and theater criticism, wouldn't we tend to reply with
something akin to "Huh?"? So let me rephrase my earlier post:
Huh?
Unless we're hoping for the Unified Theory of Everything, what's up
with all of this insistence on design hypermetatheorizing? I can't
understand why we should dismiss, say, a useful statement about the
dark by saying that it doesn't unify nightclubs, night soil, the
conduct of basketball coaches, chess pieces that can move in a L
shape, early Ingmar Bergman films, David Hasselhoff television shows
about talking cars, the investment strategies of the Knight Capital
Group, and the manufacturing of night vision goggles.
Gunnar
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On Apr 30, 2010, at 7:16 AM, Kristina Börjesson wrote:
> Dear Gunnar.
> Shouldn't all designed products, material or immaterial, be aimed at
> improved functioning, which must encompass [design] theories which
> considers as well body as mind?
> Isn't this exactly the problem we are often facing, not least what
> concerns design for sustainability, that theories within i.e.
> environmental engineering are not configured/does not connect to
> theories within sociology, cognitive psychology etc.
> Best wishes
> Kristina
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gunnar Swanson" <[log in to unmask]
> >
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 2:40 AM
> Subject: Re: A new field of design research
>
>
>> On Apr 29, 2010, at 8:22 PM, Terence Love wrote:
>>> I wonder how you would see it as connecting theories of say
>>> emotional design
>>> and engineering design?
>>
>> Is there a reason to assume that theories of emotional design and
>> engineering design should be connected (beyond any assumptions that
>> everything is connected)?
>>
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