Hi Terry,
I thought David’s explanation that you were using the concept of agency metaphorically was especially helpful and clear.
Insisting otherwise leaves you out there standing with Humpty Dumpty who famously said: ”When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
And then, of course, there is the religious dimension: It requires a belief in the virgin birth of initial algorithms. I’ll take a pass.
Jerry
> On Jul 7, 2020, at 11:11 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi, João,
>
> What a great project. I know those tiles well!
>
> For several years, I considered to move to Portugal. It never quite happened, I moved to Australia but I did come home with lots of assorted Portuguese tiles. I remember a Portuguese joke of the 1980s that if anything or anyone stayed still for more than a few minutes, it would be tiled...
>
> So to simplify your beautiful story.
>
> The design challenge was to design a system to sell a large stock of tiles that would not sell by conventional means.
>
> In other words, to design a sale process.
>
> The main design decision was: to sell them on their individual artistic merits rather than as building products.
>
> In practical design terms this then required:
>
> 1. Developing images and text copy
>
> 2. Creating an online advertising and selling platform
>
> 3. Arranging a physical distribution process (this presumably is already mostly in place because the businesses role is selling and delivering tiles)
>
> Now, for the first stage this required acquiring and processing images and writing and processing text.
>
> For the images, if the photos were taken with a digital camera, then the camera algorithms make hundreds of design decisions to make your shot more beautiful.
>
> In the case of some cameras, this includes modifying the colours AND the shapes to accord with the algorithms of more attractive images.
>
> For example, if you take a photograph of a face or body, the camera's internal algorithms will make hundreds of design decisions to adjust the proportions to make them more attractive and a the same time make similar numbers of design decisions to make the surfaces less blemished and to remove photographic artefacts such as glare and red-eye.
>
> In other words, the photographer makes one design decision about the photograph they will take, and then the camera makes hundreds of design decisions to make it better.
>
> In fact, with many cameras, the design decision making is much more advanced than that.
>
> For many cameras, the picture you get isn't even the one you took with the camera when you pressed the shutter button.
>
> Instead, the picture is wholly artificially designed and manufactured by the software in the camera.
>
> Actually what happens is the camera completely independently from the photographer uses its artificial intelligence system to analyse what it thinks the photographer was intending to take a picture of when they pressed the shutter. It then takes many pictures and using artificial intelligence it identifies the objects in them, the relationships between them, time of day, weather etc.
>
> Then, using its own analyses, the software in the camera itself generates an image of what it thinks the photographer would have intended (suitably enhanced of course, to make the camera user feel like they are a great photographer!)
>
> There is a reasonable description of this process in the Atlantic. See for example, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/your-iphone-selfies-dont-look-like-your-face/578353/ <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/your-iphone-selfies-dont-look-like-your-face/578353/> ).
>
> Then, when you roll the images into Photoshop to edit them, Adobe takes over and itself silently starts making a large number design decisions for you.
>
> At the crudest, when you change the resolution of an image, Adobe makes many decisions about exactly which pixels are transformed and how - to provide the visibly most attractive image. This is not like the old days when changing the resolution simply triggered a mathematical proportional process (note - even that old method also involved a bunch of design decisions that the software made for the designer). Similarly, when you make adjustments to the image.
>
> When you transfer that image to print format, again the software makes hundreds of design decisions to make things more beautiful that previously the designer would have had to make by guesswork or by repeating processes until they worked.
>
> Moving to the text, when you write text, you become subject to what used to be the most powerful and ubiquitous artificial Intelligence software in the world: the spellchecker and grammar checker.
>
> Every letter you type is processed and design decisions are made about what the best way would be to write what you are writing. This knowledge is (politely) given to the writer as grammar and spelling advice. Reducing the creepiness of this automated software process was a major breakthrough of design intent by the programmers (remember the Clippie the paperclip adviser). As an aside, I remember using Dragon Dictate 20 years ago and it would very creepily go on continuing my writing if I stopped in mid-sentence. What was worse it often composed sentences better than I did!
>
> Second is creating the design of an online advertising and selling platform. In design terms, making such a platform is an extremely complex thing to design. Typically, an online advertising and selling platform will involve around 7000 files of computer code each of 100 to 5000 lines of code. To that is added the design of the thousands of files needed for the operating system and webserver, file manager and security system. Designing all these programs takes millions on millions of design decisions.
>
> In addition, after all the software is designed is in place, are the thousands of design and programming design decisions about how to use the software to create a selling process and advertising layout and menu structures.
>
> You used SquareSpace software which makes ALL of those decisions for you.
>
> All that is required by the website 'designer' in terms of design decisions when using SquareSpace is:
>
> Decision 1. Select the template
>
> Decision 2. Choose the menu structure
>
> Decision 3. Identify the layout of image and copy for each of around a dozen pages
>
> Decision 4. Choose the payment and selling pages
>
> As you can see, the camera, the image and text processing software and the website software are making almost all of the design decisions - many thousand times more design decisions than the human designers.
>
> This automation of thousands of design decisions for the designer is so hidden and so well achieved, that designers are lulled into the idea that 'it only helps by making things faster'
>
> The designer is currently making a few surface decisions, and it may be that soon these will also be better made by software....
>
> As an aside, when the move to creating automated design software started in the 1970s, one of the main concerns is that it would scare designers. In part, from memory this is why Adobe has made its products so clunky and so linked its appearance to old fashioned paste-up methods. Seriously, when did you last use paste-up?! For me it was the 1970s.
>
> Similarly, Apple's iPhone artificial intelligence was hidden by skeumorphism.
>
> If you take designer's design activity, you will find much the same (I'm happy to analyse any example of design that people raise). The only exceptions are those working purely in craft mode: and the proportion of design undertaken in craft mode is an infinitesimal part of the whole of design activity.
>
> For all designers and design researchers, it is best to get used to the idea that automatic design generation and automation is already here and widespread and is increasingly expanding in the design profession.
>
> In short, as I wrote earlier, design agency is nowadays mostly in the machines ...
>
> The BENEFIT, as you have identified, is that it saves time and gives designers more time to learn more sophisticated skills (perhaps mathematics?!) and time to think more deeply.
>
> Regards,
> Terence
>
> ==
> Dr Terence Love
> MICA, MORS, PMACM, MAISA, AMIMechE,
> NSW Safer By Design Cert. 51230252,
> Security Agent Lic 61252. Security Consultant Lic. 61238
> CEO
> Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
> Perth, Western Australia
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> www.designoutcrime.org <http://www.designoutcrime.org/>
> +61 (0)4 3497 5848
> ==
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of João Ferreira
> Sent: Tuesday, 7 July 2020 6:20 PM
> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: The uselessness of 'agency' in design theory
>
> Hi, Terry
>
> Thanks for engaging with the challenge.
>
> What do I design, good question. Professionally, I’ve done several projects that fall into the communication or graphic design category. But the scope of my work varies. I use the Adobe package stuff, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop mostly. My most used tool, by far, is the famous Pilot G-tec C4 (black ink); I'm not being facetious, I use at least one recharge every month, sometimes one and a half. I use it to draw and write.
>
> But let me give you a concrete example. I worked with a ceramics company for a few years (2014-16). They used to sell out-of-line industrially produced Portuguese tiles (i.e. tiles that are out of production, so you can’t find them anymore). The brand and store were well known within the construction market (it was, in fact, quite famous in Portugal,) so construction managers contacted them to buy tiles to solve small renovation works. This was their only type of client. I knew the company well because it used to be run by my grandfather.
>
> The company had a problem: they needed to diversify its client base to survive the fierce competition posed by companies that produced new tiles that were much, much cheaper (sometimes 10 times cheaper). The company was facing bankruptcy.
>
> For this project, I worked closely with a couple of product designers, a writer, a PR expert, and an illustrator. We spent hours in the company’s warehouses and archives analysing their products; we discovered countless tiles with many patterns you couldn’t find on the market anymore. These were mostly neglected, lost in the warehouse (it was a huge place), and mostly forgotten.
>
> To cut a long story short: we (the design team) realised the tiles were worth much more than the company realised; these were not old tiles, but pieces of Portuguese material culture history. Further, we realised there was an untapped potential in the tiles' aesthetic qualities: the tiles aesthetic could be enhanced if used differently as unique products, for
> instance: patchworks, contemporary artworks, coasters, tabletops, trays, framed as if they were paintings, and so on. We were also particularly proud of designing a process to recover tiles that were chipped or slightly damaged (by turning them into smaller tiles).
>
> The analysis led us to design a communication strategy (this included coherent narratives and storytelling), new products using the old tiles, a new graphic image (the logo, website, and so on, the Adobe package was quite useful here), and a completely new store. As a result, we attracted new clients from the architecture, contemporary art, and interior decoration market. We were also all over the national press (you can see the story here https://www.corticoenetos.com/english <https://www.corticoenetos.com/english> )
>
> It goes without saying that we used computers along the way, but I fail to see how these were relevant for designing other than speeding up the process. We could’ve done just the same using pencil and paper.
>
> Furthermore—and I think this is the crucial point—all the decision making was our own, it was born from countless meetings, lunches, and trips to the warehouse. The vision for the company’s future emerged from our analysis, conversations, a fair amount of doodling and sketching, some writing, and all that goes into creative problem-solving. It is possible that other solutions existed, in fact, I'm sure it is. The same exact data may elicit different points of view, this was not a chess problem, it was a tangled situation including financial issues, logistics, communication, social, cultural and historical aspects, entrepreneurship, fear and anxiety, and creativity.
>
> This is just a personal example, and like is often the case with design, I don’t think it’s repeatable. Many on this list may recognise a pattern in the way we went about solving the problem, but this was a unique company, with a unique product, and a unique design team. The uniqueness of design situations has often been described as a feature of designing, many professionals and academics seem to agree that it points to a significant aspect of what designing entails.
>
> Could we have entered all the data into a computer running a sophisticated algorithm that would’ve made the decisions for us? What the data was telling us was that the company was screwed. It was by looking at the data from a different perspective, by framing it differently, that a solution emerged.
>
> Cheers,
>
>
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