Hi Martin,
You wrote,
' we do not yet have machines that demonstrate imagination and intuition'
My aim is not to tell you otherwise but to suggest a different way of
viewing the roles of intuition and imagination in design activity.
Designs are selections of conceptually-defined elements. (I suggest this
is necessary and sufficient definition - but if you want to argue on that,
it's a discussion for elsewhere)
Human designers use many different tools to identify their choice of the
elements in these selections that make up a design.
Examples include fashion colour forecasts, user data, information from
designer's education and training and experience, examples from design
history, design heuristics and 'rules', color charts, technical information,
design methods, collaborative stakeholder participation, mathematical
models, and their intuition and imagination, along with many other tools.
I'd like to suggest and emphasise that it is useful to see that human
intuition and imagination are only two of the many tools that contribute to
a designer's selection of elements in any one design, and that in many
situations they are not even the most significant tools that designers use
An advantage, in operational terms, that human designers have over
machine-based designers is that human designers are human and as such are
more or less representatives of humanity more generally. This means human
designers can access a lot of personal information about human perceptions
towards a design without having to collect a lot of data.
There are disadvantages, however, of this process of human designers: one
being that the personal information they hold may be incomplete, biased or
false - for example due to media conditioning. Another disadvantage is that
human designers who frequently use their bodies as the basis of their
selection of elements of a design, may then start to assume that it is the
only way to design. That's a bit like Sydney Swans supporters believing that
the only important football games are the ones in which the Sydney Swans are
playing and that the Sydney Swans are the best football club in the world.
Best wishes,
Terry
--
Dr Terence Love
PhD (UWA), B.A. (Hons) Engin, PGCE. FDRS, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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