I will simply remind Glenn Johnson that his remark posted on Wed. 30 Oct.
2002 is confused and therefore confusing also. Even worse, it is (surely
unwillingly but unfortunately) distracting from the real concern, which is to
devise a common understanding of those "Design" issues that we should be
working on: to set realistic and efficient professional ground and
objectives, to elaborate sound research methods and to exchange views on
results obtained.
Glen, I'll remind you that all the activities you are involved in your daily
life, including your expert position as an Industrial Designer and that of an
Industrial Design Studio Manager, have at one time been "designed" (I hope
none of us is still confusing "designing" with "drawing" !) by some other
"experts"; and why not calling them also "designers" ? They are those who
proposed that in your particular socio-cultural and physical environment, the
towel, the pyjamas, the butter layout, an Industrial Designer and Manager
position, etc. should be as they presently are, and that they should be
placed at that particular location and used the particular way you use them.
In all those cases, up to the posture on your executive office chair, YOU are
not the "designer", YOU are simply one among the "users" of those
enumerated artifacts.
In our human community, there are "designers", i.e. those who decide on and
propose the course and means that ensure life. There are also those who
effectively make and institutionalize those various means or artifacts; and
finally, there are those who simply use functionally those means, but also
those who enjoy the outcomes and, alas unavoidably, those who somehow suffer
of those outcomes. In some occasions one individual may be, however not at
the same time, a "designer", a maker, or one of the kinds of users of one
same artifact. In other instances, when life is believed to be somehow at
stake, individuals and communities would prefer to rely on some level of
expertise in designing, in making or in ensuring some phases of using
artifacts. We are constantly either designing, or making, or using artifacts.
That is the essence of human action, always situated and packed with a
considerable amount of expertise knowledge not always institutionalized as
such (="savoirs insus"*)
In the cases you brought up, you might for instance have been, at different
times, the "expert" designer of the umbrella that you personally use, of the
umbrella holder in your office and of the modalities of "good" use of the
designed umbrella. But all other users of "your" umbrella may also be
"designers" in a way that, given their particular location and circumstances,
they may have to adapt your above different "expert designs" to their
particular situations. It is in that sense that they also are "designers",
and eventually "expert designers"; not of your own "designs" but of their
particular "uses" of your artifactual proposals then taken as new designs
elements in their particular contexts. For some of them, YOUR umbrella might
no longer be the same "umbrella" YOU designed, but something else totally
different: a weapon, a status symbol, a parasol, etc., totally new designs
situated in different times, different places and other circumstances.
So, in short, I am another of those who consider that each human being is a
"designer" in the generic sense of the word. Only some of us, in certain
circumstances, develop expertise in given contexts, for our own survival
purposes or responding to community demand.
* Jean-Louis LE GRAND: Le savoir - insu des auteurs-acteurs, in Le Groupe
familial, no. 126, 1990, p. 80-87 (a note in Gaston PINEAU et Jean-Louis LE
GRAND: Les histoires de vie, PUF, Paris, 1993, 1996, p. 98)
François-X. N.I. NSENGA
Teacher and Researcher
in Sociology and Industrial Design
|