I would like to add to the debate on the value of direct participation in the
phenomenon under study. An example:
Today, over a cup of coffee, I tried to explain the dependence between problem
and solution to a non-designer collegue. He looked at me with a totally blank
face, so I constructed a short design assignment for him:
I asked him to give me one or more design concepts that would meet the need for
knowing where your late friends are when you've been waiting for them at a cafe
(just like we were at that moment). I gave him five minutes.
He started sketching and I took some notes while he was doing that. Like most
people that aren't trained designers he rapidly fell for the first solution he
came to think of. It was a SMS-application (short message service) for next
generation of mobile phones. As soon as he had done that he started working on
the interaction structure in the lists of people on the screen of the phone.
When he was done and had presented the concept to me. I then showed him how the
solution of an SMS-application had framed his problem so that he started working
on the design of the lists, rather than going back to the original problem and
figuring out alternatives (GPS, group phone calls, or whatever).
So for my dear collegue to grasp the meaning of the theoretical concept of the
"dependence between problem and solution" he had to directly experience the
activity of designing.
Regards,
// Mattias
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| Mattias Arvola, Doctoral student
| Linköpings universitet, Human-Centered Systems
| Dept. of Computer and Information Science
| SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
| http://www.ida.liu.se/~matar tel: +46 13 285626
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