Dear all,
One pragmatist idea about design is to have an idea about possible and
wanted interactions, before designing an object that can inspire and support
named interactions. Desired interactions are then prior to object
properties.
Perhaps Jones suggestion of artifact hierarchy may be useful in this
discussion? He separates the levels of function, product, system and
community. (Jones, J. C. (1992). Design methods (2nd ed.). New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold.)
Pragmatism in general will recognize that it is always possible to also view
the systems and community levels in design. For instance the purpose of the
design of the online banks was also to rearrange the relationship between
the banks and the clients, to solve a fundamental problem of service access
and cost. The interaction design was a key part in this rearrangement, for
instance in creating the trust and security needed for customer to adopt the
new behavior, therefore not only directed towards function and product.
The current financial turmoil is likely to have altered many people's
overall conception of banks. This should relevant to the design of bank
communication and services. But how? To find out you have to engage with the
customers of a particular bank. Of course you can get ideas from earlier
similar situations; the great depression, the wild west banks etc. But you
can't get a sure fire answer. And it is not unlikely that the new design
will need to affect more than just words and pictures; it perhaps needs to
affect the bank's business organization, internal rules etc, to restore
trust; that is the system and community levels. Any communication from a
bank that fails take into account the system and community views on the
finance industry is risky.
Churchman he writes that his pragmatism "begins when first you see the world
through the eyes of another" and that "every world view is terribly
restricted". ("The Systems Approach", Churchman, 1968 p 231). Churchman’s
point is that all models (and rules), also the meta-models are restricted
and biased. He presents his interpretations of Kant’s antinomies. The second
antinomy (Kant, 1787 p 462) he puts like this:
Thesis
All (social) systems (at given moments in time) have real boundaries; it is
not necessary to investigate beyond these boundaries in designing the
system.
Antithesis
There are no real boundaries of social systems; those that are temporarily
assumed must be broadened endlessly. (Churchman, 1979 p 109)
The (temporary) rules of pragmatist design is oriented towards the
interaction with stakeholders to discover which "object properties" which
are useful.
My own dissertation is an attempt at establishing Terry's four aspects, with
given a pragmatist worldview.
(And I embarrassingly aware of that many stakeholders probably find me both
lazy and after quick and dirty approaches...)
Best Regards,
Lars
-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] För Terence Love
Skickat: den 27 januari 2009 01:52
Till: [log in to unmask]
Ämne: Re: Pragmatist aesthetics in communication design
Dear Michael and Lars,
The fundamental question that underpins all of the research effort in
developing theoretical perspectives and approaches across all design fields
is simple:
'How does 'X' help provide rules to improve how we design?'
Typically, 'X' is the information, theories, outcomes of analyses,
speculations, design approaches, ways of looking.
There are four aspects to this:
1. What is the best information/data to gather? (in this case perhaps
whether to focus the information gathering on aesthetics per se, experience,
or object properties)
2. What is the best way to analyse that information in ways that will be
most useful to 3.
3. What are the most useful ways of developing which 'rules' that can guide
designers
4. What are the most useful rules that can be devised to guide designers
(e.g. make line length between 60 and 75 characters for readability)
The difficult bit is to convert any information from research into rules
that help guide design activity. This is also the bit that theoretically and
philosophically you can usually drive a bus through.
Regardless, developing the 'rules' for design is the primary focus and at
the end of the day its focus is object properties (because object
properties are prior to experiences)
So... If one is lazy and after a quick and dirty approach, the shortcut is
to focus on object properties from the beginning. Hence, the focus of
aesthetics on object properties.
That doesn't mean it is right... Or useful...
Best wishes,
Terry
======================
Hi Lars (and all),
Thank you Lars, I'll have a read over your paper.
It's not so clear in HCI and interaction design literature how complicated
this relationship between pragmatism and aesthetics might be. I am not
experienced enough with pragmatist philosophy to understand such
intricacies, but from what I can sense, it is still very early days for
pragmatist philosophy in HCI and Interaction design. The notions of
aesthetic experience, brought forward by Graves Petersen and McCarthy and
Wright from Dewey and Bakhtin, offer ways of embracing the aesthetics of
interactive systems as more than just the sum of identifiable, classifiable
qualities possessed by artifacts. That it is as much about what people bring
to experiences as what the designer leaves there (McCarthy and Wright, 2008
and 2005).
For me, a communication designer, it's a breath of fresh air to see a shift
in emphasis from aesthetics in appearance to experience, because it allows
for much deeper involvement. This is pretty much the main proposition of my
exegesis.
I believe that attempts to identify or classify aesthetic qualities, such as
Löwgren and Stolterman's 'experiential use qualities' (Thoughtful
interaction design, 2004) do less to define and pin down aesthetics, but
more to open up possibilities of understanding design with regards to
experience and interactive systems/digital artifacts.
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