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Dear Chris (and others), What do you say if I suggest "other people's perception of your intention" - if I percieve this object as intended to be a chair I get irritated if I cannot sit upon it, but if I classify it as intended to be a piece of art I may appreciate its aesthetic values without being bothered by the impossibility to sit on it....but then again, this is so vague it goes for almost anything ;-). This is actually beginning to remind me of a definition of practical knowledge I have had reason to come back to (it is based on Polanyi among others, but I take it from a book which to my knowledge unfortunately only exists in Swedish - the translated title would be something like "professionalism, tradition and tacit knowledge" by Bertil Rolf): Practical knowledge includes three conditions: - ability to do actions - the existence of quality-criteria - these criteria are exercised in the actions This way practical knowledge is not when you by accident "hit the target". A beginner may by pure luck succed, but this is not due to skill/practical knowledge. There are furthermore different levels of practical knowledge: skill - where the individual himself/herself can judge if the rules are followed (no need for social feed-back from others) know-how - it ultimately takes other people to judge if the rules are followed (the quality criteria refer to other individuals, groups of people, organisations etc) competence - a kind of know-how where the idividual (through reflection) may change/influence the rules. So I would argue that design is at least a form of know-how - i.e it takes reference to others to decide what is good/bad. But it is interesting to note that who these others are seem to differ - in my area which is focused on usability the others should be the users... Best wishes! /Charlotte -----Original Message----- From: Chris RUST(SCS) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 4:26 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Art, design, craft, engineering: definitions and distinctions [log in to unmask] writes: >An engineer may be said to design a cirquit, or a piece of >program-code, a craftsman may be said to design a beautiful wooden chair >etc. There is serious craftsmanship in the design of an electronic circuit, almost everything that is thought of as designing involves a fair amount of craftsmanship - a well considered drawing carries more information and takes the work further than a hurried sketch. Aesthetics is also present in the whole spectrum, of course it is not a uniform kind of aesthetics and not everybody deals with it consciously. And I have met artists whose work consists largely of code, and who are increasingly converging with people working in computing and robotics. Which is the designer? I am not sure that they would see a distinction. What makes designing is, perhaps, intention. best wishes from Sheffield Chris Rust Sheffield Hallam University