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Philippa, >One interesting evidence of the fact that everyone designs is the way >that people have to, or want to, modify already 'designed' products >after purchase. I hope you'll excuse a brief look at the rhetoric here (not just in your post but throughout this thread. Yours just happened to come across my screen at a time when I could reply.) The moves back and forth between various senses of the word "design," the conflation of various stakeholders having a voice in the design process and notion that design can/should/would/would happily be done by all. . . . It's dizzying. The jump from some people having to modify designed objects and some other people wanting to modify designed objects to everyone designing seems to fall under the categories "Duh" or "Huh?" If we are defining design in its broadest sense we don't need this evidence. If we are using some higher threshold then choosing lapel pins hardly constitutes a level of design that undermines professionalism. I'm frankly confused as to what various parties' real points are in this conversation. That consideration of users of (and others affected by) design will improve the state of things? Duh. That this means that most people could be, should be, or would want to be designers (in any strong sense of the word) of most of the designed objects and structures they encounter? Huh? That the notion that some people may be better at certain sorts of design than others are is somehow an attack on the personal integrity of those "left out of" designing? That all designers should all go home and leave all future projects to committees of those legions of stakeholders with no other jobs to do? The flip side of this "everyone is a designer" thing is the "nobody else is qualified" song. A big complaint among graphic designers is that everyone is encroaching on "our" territory. I always try to imagine writers having similar conversations: "How can they claim that he's a writer. He does TV scripts, not books." "How dare she write that letter? Did she study writing in school?" (I suppose writers can be that silly. There's Truman Capote's famous description of -On the Road-: "That's not writing. It's typing.") I'm not sure how the bad usability of most music equipment (which is designed and sold in strong light and used in dim light or darkness) affects a discussion of the similarities and differences of different sorts of adaption: How are putting a piece of tape marking a position on a dial and deciding on the original configuration of the dial (and the rest of the product) similar and how are they different? Is highlighting passages of a book comparable to designing a book? (And is designing a book similar to writing one?) I guess what confuses me most about this whole discussion is what often confuses me most about this list--the generalizing about "design" based on broad uses of the term and the implication that the generalization must apply to activities or artifacts to which the word is also applied. I'm sorry that part of your post were what got me whining about this because you started to do something that is useful. You applied the general notions that have been put forth to a more specific realm. Some interesting questions can come out of your radio story: Are the impulses to modify products that fail individuals on a functional level similar to the impulses that cause others to make aesthetic modifications? Do personally-initiated modifications differ in impulse and/or result from designer-supplied choices? In what ways and in what situations should designers encourage modifications of products and when should they discourage it? Are there any principles that apply across wide ranges of designing or do the important distinctions tend to be specific? Gunnar -- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 536 South Catalina Street Ventura CA 93001-3625 USA +1 805 667 2200 [log in to unmask] http://www.gunnarswanson.com