Dear Chris (and others),
What do you say if I suggest "other people's perception of your intention" -
if I percieve this object as intended to be a chair I get irritated if I
cannot sit upon it, but if I classify it as intended to be a piece of art I
may appreciate its aesthetic values without being bothered by the
impossibility to sit on it....but then again, this is so vague it goes for
almost anything ;-).

This is actually beginning to remind me of a definition of practical
knowledge I have had reason to come back to (it is based on Polanyi among
others, but I take it from a book which to my knowledge unfortunately only
exists in Swedish - the translated title would be something like
"professionalism, tradition and tacit knowledge" by Bertil Rolf):

Practical knowledge includes three conditions:
- ability to do actions
- the existence of quality-criteria
- these criteria are exercised in the actions

This way practical knowledge is not when you by accident "hit the target". A
beginner may by pure luck succed, but this is not due to skill/practical
knowledge.

There are furthermore different levels of practical knowledge:

skill - where the individual himself/herself can judge if the rules are
followed (no need for social feed-back from others)

know-how - it ultimately takes other people to judge if the rules are
followed (the quality criteria refer to other individuals, groups of people,
organisations etc)

competence - a kind of know-how where the idividual (through reflection) may
change/influence the rules.

So I would argue that design is at least a form of know-how - i.e it takes
reference to others to decide what is good/bad. But it is interesting to
note that who these others are seem to differ - in my area which is focused
on usability the others should be the users...

Best wishes!
/Charlotte

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris RUST(SCS) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 4:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Art, design, craft, engineering: definitions and
distinctions


[log in to unmask] writes:
>An engineer may be said to design a cirquit, or a piece of
>program-code, a craftsman may be said to design a beautiful wooden chair
>etc.

There is serious craftsmanship in the design of an electronic circuit,
almost
everything that is thought of as designing involves a fair amount of
craftsmanship - a well considered drawing carries more information and takes
the work further than a hurried sketch.

Aesthetics is also present in the whole spectrum, of course it is not a
uniform
kind of aesthetics and not everybody deals with it consciously. And I have
met
artists whose work consists largely of code, and who are increasingly
converging with people working in computing and robotics. Which is the
designer? I am not sure that they would see a distinction.

What makes designing is, perhaps, intention.

best wishes from Sheffield
Chris Rust
Sheffield Hallam University