Dear Don and Colleagues
If I may, after reading the article and commentaries, I find three
observations missing in the article and in the current on-going discussion:
1. artifacts, no matter the nature, the size and the extend, are all
socio-technical
2. all artifacts are therefore complex, depending on the level of
complexity, reduced or expanded, that one considers; a safety pin and a
nuclear plant are both parts of respective complex socio-techincal systems;
the difference being the comparative number of components making up each
system, the level of dangerousness/harmfulness to human life, and the ratio
of considered advantages over disadvantages
3. thus far, under the industrialists' ethos, timid attempts in advanced
learning - as opposed to preliminary technical - design curricula have
remained focused on partial, relatively reduced considerations of the
aesthetics and functionalities of the only tangible/countable. Thus letting
aside - as too expensive financially - all the other features and larger
dimensions of the complexity of artifacts, i.e. the full dynamics between
the tangible/perceptible, the multiple and probable direct and indirect
users, the innumerable contexts of use, and the effect of time or the
complete 11 steps of all artifacts lifecycle.
I have repeatedly mentioned all these in my interventions on this list, no
need to elaborate further again.
Only a fourth observation I would make here, that strikes me vividly since
I am relocated back here in Africa after over 40 years exile in Canada: the
complexity of human life, partially enabled through the complexity of
artifacts, and that is what we are talking about here, is dealt with
differently in respective cultures.
Perhaps it is about time that we designers ought to consider also and learn
from these other different ways to tackle human daily life complexity, with
artifacts. The 18th -19th century West-European systematized way to life
and artifacts is not the only way to render all of us happier! There are so
many other ways that cases such as the emergency/oncology complementarity,
or the ambulance function in big city, would be dealt with, depending first
on the location of each case but also and much so depending on who is
voicing out her/his solution. I am sure in both these latter cases
Africans, Arabs, Chinese, Saamis, or Amerindians would each come up with
different solutions, that would work for them and not for the the others!
Solutions that however would also, eventually, - who knows! - work for
Euro-Americans and for Londonians respectively, if these latter would dare
consider and accept to apply those alien solutions...
Or so I believe, as Chuck so righty says!
Francois
Kigali, Rwanda
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