Hi Keith,
And how would you see it for researchers building foundational theories
about how design activity is undertaken at the level of internal processes
of creativity and judgments about partial design possibilities?
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith
Russell
Sent: 13 March 2013 03:10
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: Illusion of Self? How is This Relevant to Design Research?
Dear Johann,
I agree with much of what you say about dynamic selves and experiential
design (or design for experience etc.).
While design researchers might take benefit from considering the kinds of
self that typify their designing process ( I am the god like narrator says
Steve Jobs - you will use my mouse the ways that I tell you to), I think
there is potentially much more benefit from considering the varieties of
selves that users and consumers and experiencers of design might find
themselves constructed as when they engage with a design object or any
object that becomes designed by the user in their appropriation of the
object or event in the objective (other than subjective) world.
As I have mentioned several times on this list, my own PhD explores three
kinds of identity affects that can be observed in the reception of the three
literary genres (Dramatic, Epic, Lyric). (See
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/28951 for my thesis). These identities, of
relation, can be observed in the worlds of design (self-object relations).
These identity affects offer structured understandings as to why people
might want to engage with a dress, a car, a washing machine etc.
I don't see much general benefit from sending all designers to post-modern
philosophers for instruction about their leaking identities. Those who might
benefit have probably already undertaken this kind of self-hygenic - these
rest would mostly get angry as they are asked to think of themselves as NOT
being something or other (what do you mean I'm not god?).
I do, however, see much benefit from designers including structured
understanding of identity possibilities in their design considerations. This
is not therapeutic, more like a PR professional having the rhetorical skills
to convince people about a particular argument or proposition (why universal
health care is no good in a democracy). So, with this identity knowledge, a
designer can potentially get people to be more attracted to a worse car, or
he/she can even get people to fall in love with particular rectangles with
particular rounded corners. Knowledge is there to use; it does not come with
ethics attached.
cheers
keith
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|