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Ken, > Gunnar Swanson wrote: >> Are you implying that design is something done or described in words? [snip] > I am stating, however, that planning is a mental > process. While I don't deny the non-triviality of knot tying (the conceptual difficulty nor the importance), there seems to be the implication that mental processes and verbalization are the same (or at least hand in glove) and that imagery and spatiality are non-intellectual. I'm curious about it, not because I want to force you to give me a hundred pounds for drawing a diagram (that's actually far from a grand payment for such a service) but because I think it might get near some assumptions that recur on this list and help explain why so many designers (including those of us who embrace and respect design research) are so suspicious of design research and design researchers. Although "articulate" is generally assumed to have to do with words and verbal expression, why isn't a picture fluent, effective, persuasive, lucid, expressive, intelligible, comprehensible, understandable. . . whatever it is we think "articulate" is supposed to do and be? Does your choice of allowable tools represent a set of values? What does it say if consideration of design (or the person who considers design) devalues something that is at the heart of many design fields? Or is this some parlor trick where you prove something like the fact that changing a light bulb -is-, after all, quite difficult because we're only allowed to do it with our feet and we can't take our shoes off? (How many design researchers does it take to change a light bulb?) Gunnar ---------- Gunnar Swanson Design Office 1910 East 6th Street Greenville, North Carolina 27858 USA [log in to unmask] +1 252 258 7006 http://www.gunnarswanson.com at East Carolina University: [log in to unmask] +1 252 328 2839