Brynjulf Tellefsen asked on 10 Oct 2000
>Just out of curiosity, David: Did your team have a lawyer on board?
Sorry it has taken me a while to reply to this. I can only join in
discussions intermitently because of other duties.
The answer is yes, sort of. We didn't have an actual lawyer on this project
but we have in the past, and we tend to share expertise in any project team.
Bruce Archer came up with a nice way of explaining collaborative design
teams at the recent CoDesigning 2000 conference in Coventry when he said
that as a member of a design team one is 'jack of all trades and master of
one' The legal aspects in the case of labelling design in oz are
labyrinthian. In the case of some products there are up to 14 areas of
regulation that a label designer has to comply with. Needless to say, the
labels designed to comply with the regulations are not exactly user
friendly.
One of our long term crusades has been to persuade regulators that one of
the greatest impediments to good label design is the regulations themselves.
Part of this has involved us in some detailed consideration of the legal
frameworks and principles governing regulation. Interesting stuff.
>Regulators are experts at looking at other nation's solutions and the
>anectotal and political support giving rationale for whatever the
>interested parties want as a solution. Strangely, occationally some
>governments even make some efforts of evaluating their laws and regulations
>afterwards, but most often the losing parties at the time of law-making
>make rather goal-oriented investigations to reverse earlier decisions.
Yes. Your comment reminds me of Walter Benjamin's aphorism:
'Every document of civilization is also a document of Barbarism'
Perhaps Benjamin should be a candidate for the canon?
> Not
>much objectivity I am afraid, but you surely get the contrasting views and
>arguments! That's one of the reasons I prefer to look for spread and
>contrasts rather than cannons - it's more fun and you learn more - but you
>don't endear yourself to the establishment......
Indeed, though this has never been one of our priorities to be loved by the
establishment. I think if we were, I would be very worried. It would be a
clear symptom of our failure. I Like Manzini's idea of design as a form of
social critique.
David
--
Professor David Sless
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
** helping people communicate with people **
PO Box 398 Hawker
ACT 2614 Australia
Mobile: 0412 356 795
phone: +61 (0)262 598 671
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web: http://www.communication.org.au
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