Thanks, Terry
I didn't know about Michael French (or MJ French as he is listed in Google
scholar).
Your description of his use of an appropriate level of abstraction with
"sparse mathematics" suggest a powerful tool, one that many of us aspire to.
On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:28 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> One of the pioneer design researchers, Emeritus Professor Michael Joseph
> French, died a couple of weeks ago.
>
...
>
In design theory terms, perhaps his most significant contribution was his
> use of modelling of the behaviour of abstractions at higher and higher
> levels to identify design solutions. At the intermediate levels of analysis
> he identified design principles based on practical considerations to guide
> design choices.
>
>
>
...
>
>
Characteristically, he did this with sparse mathematics that
>
> provided the maximum of accuracy of useful representation with the minimum
>
> of complexity.
>
My problem is that although I aspire to that process, I do not know how to
do so when we add human beings and social concerns to the problem, and
almost all design issues faced by non-engineering designers have that
characteristic.
The strictly engineering components can be handled well, in the manner
French and others have done. But once you add people to the mix, these
methods are not only insufficient, they can be harmful. (Not harmful in
principle, I hasten to add, but harmful in practice, because the
mathematics of today to model human behavior are very limited in scope and
highly oversimplified -- and sometimes just plain wrong.)
So, French is someone I would love to emulate, but I lack the talent to do
so once we factor in people.
===
But while I am at it, i can't help but wonder what you might have meant by:
A particular benefit of this approach of addressing design in
>
> terms of higher level of abstractions rather than at the level of the
>
> concrete is avoidance of mental lock-in onto poor design paths that have
>
> become accepted traditions (clam shell phone?)
Gee. First of all, in my humble, amateurish opinion, the clamshell phone
was a brilliant concept, quite appropriate for its time. But i certainly
see no evidence of lock-in to that design today.
Second, I just attended a talk by Marty Cooper, the guy whose team of
engineers (at Motorola) built the first cellphone. He commissioned an
industrial design firm to study possible phone configurations and they came
up with about 5 different suggestions, all of which eventually were
constructed and widely used (one was the clamshell), but the first phone
was not a clamshell but rather a long, heavy rectangular device.
So:
What's the matter with the clamshell?
I see no evidence that anyone ever got locked-in to that design paradigm.
Did others copy it when it became popular? Of course, that's how the world
of copycat business works. French would have been powerless to affect that
component of modern industry (marketing folks dominate, remember?).
But thanks for telling us about MJ French. Very nice work indeed -- in
engineering design.
Don
Don Norman
Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
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