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To Susan, Klaus, Terry and Colleagues, In only the last two weeks, three youths have died on snowy mountains here in Quebec, while skiing, tobogganing, etc. In all three incidents, death occurred in descending down the slopes. Children slammed their unprotected skulls against the trees bordering the commercially run facilities. The question now on everybody's lips and mind here, and in all local media is, in lay persons' terms: WHAT to do to prevent such kind of accidents, or so many unreported less drastic events, to occur again? One of the layperson's immediate solution is to protect children's skulls with helmets, and make the equipment compulsory on all ski slopes, as already done in hockey. In the present state of the profession here in quebec, I doubt the above QUESTION will ever be formally submitted to professional or aspiring to be designers, in any of the respectively competent design sub-fields. Only practicing engineers, technicians in industrial design or even just shop craftspersons, may eventually be called upon to make proposals on the partial and only thought-to-be solutions of the laypersons. However none among us, experts in design, would doubt that more suitable solutions would better come from several other design sub- fields than those suggested above. If this were the case, each of the consulted design professionals would then first come up, not simply with some vague "ideas". Rather, ANSWERS would first be contrived in the designers' mind and then crafted in profesional manner of the current state of each "art" domain, in order to be "presented" as optimal SOLUTIONS to "clients", to all closer and distant stakeholders that I rather call "users". Those potentially innumerable solutions proposed under various formats by different designers would range from a short verbal opinion to a set of technical specifications; from a user's warning to national standards, laws and regulations; from a computerized manufacturing program to a finished protective item; from a selling strategy of prevention equipment to a general awareness program and pedagogical prevention school curriculum; from a formative and rhetorical "metaphor" to a scientifically crafted prevention media campaign. Even research engineers may eventually be called upon as well, to research principles and theories related to both failure and improvements in various faulty mechanisms and badly designed equipments causing accidents on ski slopes. Another group of professional engineers may as well be called in to conduct research, this time in different ways to "ENVISION" (i.e. REPRESENT) better, for whatever purpose (investment, manufacturing, justice, etc.), new mechanisms and protective equipments on ski slopes. Other eventual "solutions" to the above same "problem" may even come from Southern hemisphere individuals, if called upon. These latter may in their lifetime have never had any lived experience on ski slopes, but they may nonetheless, eventually come up with unconventional and never heard of solutions, yet probably the most protective ....! Not forgetting to mention the Northern indigenous people, the world experts in gliding techniques and artifacts on snowy and icy surfaces who may contribute a lot, if approached. In default to directly work on such fleeting real events like in the above case of deadly events on ski slopes, the only "something" we all concretely have hold on, and then can reflect and really work upon, is the representations made of such events. It is such portions of no longer existing "reality", that are "MADE PRESENT AGAIN", first in the minds of the question bearers as in the illustrative case above. And second, commissioned professionals called designers would each thus translate, as a way to "solutions", the "question" posed into actual and more malleable formats like "metaphors", "paradigms", sketches, drawings, written reports, mockup models, body gestures, prototypes, and all other kinds of "plans", or "representations" that, ultimately may be realized and concretely implemented as physical or immaterial artifacts. As I tried to extensively illustrate above, the only limit to possible "intelligent" solutions is our human capacity to reason. Not implying here a simple and gratuous generation of vague "ideas" of the already passed reality, or of its whatever kinds of dreamed "representations". I rather advocate, in a socially responsible manner and in our capacity as a professional group, a "theorizing" process on "things" practical, that can be easily manufactured and used (referring to one of Klaus,s recent post). All the teleological or potential artifacts that we may come up with, first mentally and then, eventually, practically applied in the long run in places like snowy mountain slopes, they all are what I mean by "RE-PRESENTATIONS". They ought to be practically and profesionaly "MADE PRESENT". Quite obviously then, my use of the term of "representation" as what designers do or ought to be doing, and as a proposed agenda for the profession in years ahead, is thus far from being so "narrow", again in Klaus's words! In my mind, designers do not "draw" only! Nor do they simply engage in "routines, styles, repetitive ways to solve problems", as said in onother of Klaus's last posts. Sorry for the long and probably linguistically clumsy post! Greetings from snowy (but not so called!) Montréal. François-X.