Dear Klaus,
Thank you for your message. I appreciate you taking the trouble to comment.
I understand your position and agree on the way culture and learning shape
the way our bodies shape what and how we self-reflectively perceive things
like colours.
As I see it, there is no obvious reason why predicting the outcomes of
innovative designs using new forms of design theories/models will
necessarily reinforce the existing, unless on makes the models so
restrictive.
I suggest that in fact such predictive design theories/models are more
likely to identify innovative possibilities that we cannot because of the
limitations of our innovative thinking that in us humans naturally tends to
be fixated and conservative.
I agree with you about Google.
By the way, it would be more accurate for yourself and David to suggest my
perspective is post-positivist/ post-empiricist (Popper, Giddens) rather
than positivist, with a perspective on emotion/intuition shaped by Damasio,
Darwin, Bastick and others, a view of mind and self-perception as a
secondary illusory construct of human animal behaviour.
In contrast, Ken's position is positivist, as seen by his view on evidence.
Oh, and it's not true that ' for a theory to be predictable requires the
pattern that the theory aims to describe to continues as observed in the
past.' At very least the introduction of a design will result in change and
predicting the consequences of that change is the central challenge such
design theory must address. A key decision will of course be the level of
abstraction at which it is addressed.
Best wishes,
Terence
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
[log in to unmask]
www.loveservices.com.au
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Klaus Krippendorff
Sent: Sunday, 21 February 2016 3:01 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Assume fixed number of colours in design?
Terry
I wanted to say something on color perception. I was taught by former
Bauhaus teachers but became exposed to experiments in social perception
which taught me the tremendous cultural differences in perception, including
of colors. I worked for a year in an institute for visual perception and
presented my views in writing, but recently discovered evidence that color
perception certainly is triggered by physical stimuli but the do not explain
our culturally coherent sense of colors.
However, now that you clarified your aim of developing a predictive design
theory I need to respond differently.
First I side with Davis sless who suggested that your aim is thoroughly (not
his word) positivist
Second, for a theory to be predictable requires the pattern that the theory
aims to describe to continues as observed in the past. To me design is by
definition innovative, ideally transformative (ranging from changing
everyday practices to transforming social structures). A design theory that
predicts the consequences of a design contradicts (my conception of) the
mission of design to introduce unexpected changes in the world. Such a
predictive theory can only encourage strengthening what is already know, not
to change it.
Third, I am of course cognizant if the need for designers to justify their
design to clients, all kinds of stakeholders, including users and advocates
for the environment. I my opinion, a predictive theory would not be
convincing. What could inspire the stakeholders of a design to become
enrolled In a project of realizing it are plausible arguments. In the
semantic turn I have explored several rhetorical strategies They include
experiments on sub-populations as well as self-fulfilling prophesies.
Science fiction, futuristic novels, as well as ethnographic accounts of how
people are struggling in life may well inspire designers. But Google
searches provide mostly data of what their authors want you to know exists.
They rarely predict the innovations introduced that designers introduce.
Klaus
Sent from my iPhone
> On Feb 21, 2016, at 12:25 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Don and all,
>
> For design research, one of the biggest and most important challenges, is
developing a body of theory for predicting the outcomes in the world of the
effects of individual designs.
>
> It's in this context I raised a relatively abstract meta-analytical
question about design theory making, relating to decisions about the
character of variety in how we represent factors that are elements of
design theories. This is an issue important to both predictive design
theories themselves and the representation of concpets and factors that we
use as professional designers
>
> There are advantages and disadvantages of 'fixed and known' variety
versus 'infinite variety in representing the factors used in creating
predictive theory about the consequences of designs in the world. I've
copied the original post below.
>
> I used colour as an example of such a factor. First, because it is well
understood phenomenon on this list (or so I thought), and hence wouldn't
need to be explained. Second, colour is clearly a phenomenon that, like any
phenomenon, we can represent as an approximation via either a continuous
function or discrete stepped function. Also, I thought that double aspect of
the representation of colour wouldn't need to be explained as we clearly use
both in design.
>
> None of the above, I suggest, is contentious. It is taken for granted and
straightforward in much of the discourse.
>
> The real challenge is to look at possible approaches to creating design
theories that predict design outcomes as the consequences of design in the
world.
>
> These kinds of design theories are difficult predictive models. The most
immediate ambition is to make useful projections into the future of the
consequences of individual designs. It is not expected that these theories
will provide definitive predictions, rather that they will be usefully
correct, at a level sufficient to aid with design decision making. Some
simplified predictive design theory models are already possible and in use,
for example in the realm of environmental and life cycle costs.
>
> It requires new sorts of design theories, however, to extend the ability
to predict the consequences of individual designs more fully into other
realms such as social analysis, lifestyle change, future innovation,
politics, planning, economics, security and geopolitics.
>
> The variety characteristics of factors used in constructing and describing
designs is obviously a key issue (e.g. in the manner Purma described about
colour).
>
> We have a choice to include any design-related factor in predictive
> design theories via either continuous or discrete representations or
> some combination. In the case of colour we have a choice of either
>
> In the post, I asked for comments about which people felt was going to
work better in the development of new predictive design theories that
identified the consequences of designs.
>
> If we choose to represent design factors and their variety as continuous
functions, then the predictive structures embodied in design theories will
need to accommodate this. It drives representation of the design theories
into, for example, the realms of non-linear n-order calculus, which on one
hand offers potential benefits in identifying optimal positions in
m-dimensional design space. On the other hand it presents significant
challenges to solve the functions in creating such theories in which n and m
are large.
>
> In contrast, if we choose to represent design factors and their variety as
discrete functions (identified via just noticeable difference or the
several other measures of limits of discrimination (which as far as I can
see combine vectorially)), then the predictive structures embodied in the
design theories can be chosen to accommodate this in a different manner to
addressing continuous functions. Rather differently to the above, it enables
the structure of design theories to move, for example, into vector space
with predictive projection based on matrix-based analyses, and time
projections based on finite difference or time step methods. The predictive
processing is easier to compute, but identifying optimal directions and
points in the design space is less easy. The challenges are in creating such
predictive design theories in which n and m are large are less.
>
> I'm aware many will regard these as relatively new areas of design
research. In fact, they originated in the earlier parts of the last century
and were the foundational issues on which design research was developed.
They can be seen as the central concerns of Rittel, Zwicky, Jones,
Bertalanffy, systems research, behavioural science, operational research
and many others. I would tentatively suggest that the underlying aim of most
research in areas such as the perception of colour is to contribute to this
larger and as yet not well addressed aim of developing theory to be better
able to predict the outcomes of designs in the world.
>
> Again, I hope that clarifies my original post... but I'm aware people
might be much more interested in colour theory!
>
> Warm regards,
> Terry
>
> ---
> Dr Terence Love
> PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, PMACM, MISI Love Services Pty
> Ltd PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030
> Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> [log in to unmask]
> www.loveservices.com.au
> --
>
> Original post
>
> 'Is it better to assume as an axiom in making design theory that colour
always comprises a set of fixed colours rather than assuming colour as
being a continuous spectrum? There seem to be strong reasons in theory and
practice to make this assumption, and that it is possible calculate exactly
how big the set is (i.e exactly how many different colours) for each design
scenario. The advantage in design theory and research is between fixed and
known variety and 'infinite' variety.
>
>
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