Hi Eduardo,
Thanks for asking. You wrote ' Which side are you in?' One can have a position on this that is not one side or another.
Personally, my interest is in creating a better world with better equality and more equal access to resources, justice, grace and the good times, and at the same time better protection of the world's resources for our children and their children and beyond.
Designers play a big role in this. It’s a role that is often bigger than individuals or design teams. It’s a role that has many contradictions. For example, designers who make things really attractive to the point that they define one's identity and value make it very difficult for poor people who will often have to become criminals to satisfy the desires inculcated in them by emotionally attractive design and powerful advertising.
The role of designers is often such that designers are buried in routine detail design decision making and tasks. Design schools spend a large proportion of time teaching students to use software. This indicates there is opportunity to automate much of the detail of that design decision making through a design software interface at a higher level of abstraction. Gunnar indicated this higher level of interaction when he commented the information he wanted was in the realm of increase the 'cool' by a third and double the informality (or something similar!).
The big practical issue for creating a better more egalitarian and sustainable world is that designs have many effects in the world (good and bad and changing over time).
It would be wonderful if designers could know in advance for each design they thought up whether it would make the world a better or worse place, now and for our children.
In practical terms, that is too much to ask any individual designer. It's also much more than can be asked of a design team or stakeholder group. The number of possible effects and their relationships is too complicated and complex
It is however something that even now can be included in design software. For nearly two decades we have had environmental information in product design software that can tell the designer whether particular product ideas are better or worse environmentally. Similar architectural design software is available.
A benefit is reductions in design team size with attendant increase in flexibility, improvement in quality and a better entrepreneurial milieu.
In most cases, better design software with increased levels of design automation reduces transaction costs (in a Coasian sense) for smaller design businesses whilst the diseconomies of scale hamper larger design businesses. In addition, the use of computer systems also reduces to some extent the economic bias of location. Together these offer the possibility for increased egalitarianism, e.g. through less privileged designers and design businesses to play an a slightly more level playing field.
I could go on but I'll stop there
Best wishes,
Terry
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Dr Terence Love
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
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www.loveservices.com.au
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo corte-real
Sent: Friday, 5 February 2016 9:31 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Simon's glory
Terry,
You wrote: "the consequences are visible by the reductions in numbers of designers needed by companies (remember the shift from 200 person design teams to 20 persons to 5?)”
Is this a good thing?
Which side are you in?
Best,
Eduardo
> No dia 05/02/2016, às 12:39, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>
> the consequences are visible by the reductions in numbers of
> designers needed by companies (remember the shift from 200 person
> design teams to 20 persons to 5?)
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