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Terry, Karel, Keith and Gunner, This is an area of research in which I have always taken a keen interest and would like to add a few comments. I will try to be brief. Terry, Many thanks for bringing to our attention the Adobe publications. I have been broadly familiar with their work going back to the early days of postscript. Indeed I ran a workshop for some research colleagues on the Adobe work when we started what I called our Advanced Graphic Logic research program around 1990. I think I have commented on this work before on this list, so I won’t repeat myself here. What is particularly fascinating about the Adobe publications is what it tells us about the research trajectory of a major corporation working in our field. My preliminary look at it suggests that Adobe have pursued a highly traditional approach to research in this area, which, if I’m correct, will not lead them to the philosopher’s stone in graphic automation that you anticipate. Nonetheless, Terry, this is an extraordinary set of publications. Many thanks for brining it to our attention. I will devote some serious time to reviewing it in the coming weeks. Karel, implicit in your list of requests, with which I heartily agree, is an underlying absence in the Adobe contribution to design research and design methods. Like most traditional researchers in this area, and coming from a computer background, they focus on semantic and syntactic issues of graphic logic and language, whereas you and I, Karel, focus on pragmatics. For those of you unfamiliar with these esoteric terms which derive from semiotics and mainstream linguistics, I suggest you look at Charles W. Morris. Foundations of the Theory of Signs." International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, ed. Otto Neurath, vol. 1 no. 2. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938. It’s been reprinted many times. (BTW Morris was closely associated with many of the developments in design thinking in the USA in the pre and post WW2 years. Following this important early work, his development of these ideas took a decidedly behaviourist turn with the unfortunate consequences that the seminal ideas it contained were largely ignored by the post war design intellectuals. I often wondered what Postscript, as a computer language may have turned out to be if that had not been the case.) But back to semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics. This triumvirate has endured over a number of generations as the unquestioned underlying categories of research in linguistics, rhetoric, computer science, and semiotics. I will not draw out the consequences here. But I have written a detailed critique of these categories i a number of works. Most recently in Visible Language: http://visiblelanguagejournal.com/articles/article/537/ Karel’s desires will always remain ungratified by Adobe, if my reading so far is correct, because the focus of their research is to try and answer questions about pragmatics by conducting research on syntactics and semantics. In the interests of brevity, I will resist joining all the dots on this one. Keith, your distopic vision is indeed the sad consequence of trying to derive pragmatics from syntactics and semantics. An absurd and frighting project. But one that is firmly believed in AI circles. Gunner, that is correct. And Terry, as you will know, a couple of generations ago, if you had walked into an engineering design office, you would have seen row upon row of draftsmen (usually men) and copyists (usually women) turning out drawings for engineers and toolmakers to follow (BTW, it always struck me that this represented a neat workplace affirmation of gender differences, where men produced things and women were concerned with their reproduction) Where have they all gone? And today we probably educate far more engineering designers than we ever did. But I want to end with an example of what I consider to be some of the most productive pragmatic research that will lead to significant improvements in design, at least I’m my own field, and which is designed to satisfy some of Karel’s requests This is work which is being done by a colleague and friend working on a project for the UK government. Caroline Jarrett has been working for a long time in the field of forms design. Roughly the point I stopped much of my own research in that area, at the end of the dtp revolution, Caroline took up the work as the internet started. She has taken the field much further than I ever did and is a highly respected expert in the field. Have a look at her recent work with the UK government: http://www.slideshare.net/cjforms/design-patterns-for-government-services-a-community-not-a-library I will not join the dots here, except to say that I don’t think Adobe’s research can offer automation in this area, not only because they are looking in the wrong places, but they don’t work in the contexts in which this work is needed. BTW, last month Adobe abandoned it’s ‘Forms Central’ initiative. I wonder why? It’s a sunny day and a warm weekend beckons. I’m off to work on my 1978 Ford Escort Panel Van. Have a good week end, David -- blog: http://communication.org.au/blo <http://communication.org.au/blo>g/ web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/> Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA CEO • Communication Research Institute • • helping people communicate with people • Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795 Phone: +61 (03) 9005 5903 Skype: davidsless 60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068 ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------