Hi David,
First a big thanks for the pointer to Bob Horn's work.
The fundamental issue to be addressed in any kind of design (and often not
addressed by graphic designers) is accurately predicting the behaviour of
the outcome. For example, how does one know if a poster and a public health
promotion program will achieve its aim of reducing smoking by 50%? Why did
or didn't the design produce the right outcome? To ask these questions about
behaviour is central to design as a profession and to development of
suitable design methods, design processes and design education. Many early
engineering design methods to predict behaviour were visual. With increased
complexity, they ran out of steam which is why engineering designers now use
different methods that primarily use visual for input and final
presentation.
Bob Horn's work is tremendously useful and interesting. Thank you for
reminding me about it. I remember his hypertext book in the late 80s.Bob
Horn's visuals and visual language approach however are not about
predicting behaviour of designs in the manner of a design method, nor
primarily about predicting the outcomes of complexity (many feedback loops).
Their main role is knowledge mapping to make complicated information (more
bits) easier to access and think about. They do this in part by acting as
an external memory store in the manner similar to that proposed by Tony
Buzan some years ago with mind maps. They are primarily visual
representations of knowledge content rather than design methods that predict
behaviour. Similar, though less attractive approaches were developed in the
60-s and 70s in the 'for beginners' comic books (e.g. Foucault for Beginners
and Marx for Beginners etc), soft systems CATWOE maps, criteria maps(which
echo critical path maps), logic maps, decision tree maps, group decision
making support diagrams and flow diagrams.
Horn's description of the Cognome visual language project and problems it
faces, identifies the same limitations and problems as above
http://stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/VUscnrioVisualLanguage.pdf except he
hasn't yet added the behaviour prediction problem as his aims as a design
method don't reach that far... yet. It is, however, implicit in his top
long range goal.
For improving the quality of design activity, the paper on his site that
really made me sit up was the one of images that identify what we don't know
http://stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/artclUnknowns.pdf
A paper that might be useful for design research PhD students is on how to
conduct research to get little or no effect
http://stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/artclHowtoGetLttleorNoEffc.pdf
Amazing. Horn's recent papers and diagrams are at
http://stanford.edu/~rhorn/a/recent/
Best wishes and thanks again,
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 David
Sless
Sent: Thursday, 8 April 2010 3:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Are visual approaches to design outdated?
Terry et al,
A provocative question. I would suggest a resounding NO. I think we are just
beginning to scratch the surface of possibilities in visual approaches. The
work of Bob Horn just mentioned is an example of this. I think we are at a
very early but highly productive stage in this kind of work. Look at
argumentation mapping as another example. Or the growing uses of MRI.
BTW, in talking about complex systems, stakeholders, relationships, feedback
loops and multidimensional problems you are using some of the prime
metaphors of our time.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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