Dear Don,
Essentially, I agree. Given your earlier note, I thought you had some reason to call it OMT ¡ª but changed it to TOM to make it pronounce as a single word. If there is no reason for OMT, then TOM is OK.
Why OMT? I like models to have acronyms where you pronounce the letter (Oh-Em-Tee). TOM is just as good (Tee-Oh-Em). My thought is that pronouncing the letters adds mnemonic value. For brand names and organisation names, where the shortest and most pronounceable single-word acronym works best. But this is not a hard-line principle, and I can think of many successful counterexamples for both.
Your description of the iterative and start-where-you-begin is a good description of much successful design process:
[Don Norman wrote:] ¡°the iterative experimentation of observations, sketching building, thinking, (ideation), reflection, refinement, etc., is common to many fields and has most likely been practised by designers even before there was a profession called design. You could argue it is what folk designers or craftspeople have always done: observe their own needs, make a tool to satisfy their need, refine it continuously over successive generations -- generations of both the tools and people. That is why many of the best designs derive from these folk craftspeople, whether it is tools for gardening, woodworking, or today, the tools of skilled athletics, hiking, camping, and climbing, etc.: tools designed for and used by the same people who design them.¡±
This is a useful description, whether or not we call a process design, and whether or not people called designers do it.
Those who design start at some given point. They begin with the intention of ending somewhere else, hopefully in a preferred state. The iterative nature of the process often means learning new things along the way that change the preferred goal. And much design activity involves redesign, invention, discovery, or other starting points or ending points that are not fully planned.
Several intriguing books address how some of these issues have instantiated through history as people who were not called designers designed the world we now inhabit.
Henry Petroski¡¯s (1994) Evolution of Useful Things reviews a range of specific artifacts from forks and paper clips to different kinds of tools. Richard Bulliett¡¯s (1990) The Camel and the Wheel examines the specific consequences of two modes of transport.
Two classics place this kind of activity in a broader view of design and technology at a time before the design profession got its name. These are Jean Gimpel¡¯s (1976) Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages and Arnold Pacey¡¯s (1974) The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology.
While history, evolution, and consequences are interesting, you¡¯ve captured the essence of these four books in a single paragraph.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | Éè¼Æ She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015
University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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References
Bulliett, Richard W. 1990. The Camel and the Wheel. (Morningside Books.) New York: Columbia University Press.
Gimpel, Jean. 1976. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Pacey, Arnold. 1974. The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Petroski, Henry. 1994. The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers Came to be as They Are. New York: Vintage Books.
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