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PHD-DESIGN  2005

PHD-DESIGN 2005

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Subject:

Re: Design & Theory

From:

"Francois-Xavier Nsenga (fme)" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Francois-Xavier Nsenga (fme)

Date:

Tue, 8 Feb 2005 09:38:18 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (103 lines)

To Susan, Klaus, Terry and Colleagues,

In only the last two weeks, three youths have died on snowy mountains 
here in Quebec, while skiing, tobogganing, etc. In all three 
incidents, death occurred in descending down the slopes. Children 
slammed their unprotected skulls against the trees bordering the 
commercially run facilities.

The question now on everybody's lips and mind here, and in all local 
media is, in lay persons' terms:  WHAT to do to prevent such kind of 
accidents, or so many unreported less drastic events, to occur again? 

One of the layperson's immediate solution is to protect children's 
skulls with helmets, and make the equipment compulsory on all ski 
slopes, as already done in hockey.

In the present state of the profession here in quebec, I doubt the 
above QUESTION will ever be formally submitted to professional or 
aspiring to be designers, in any of the respectively competent design 
sub-fields. Only practicing engineers, technicians in industrial 
design or even just shop craftspersons, may eventually be called upon 
to make proposals on the partial and only thought-to-be solutions of 
the laypersons. 

However none among us, experts in design, would doubt that more 
suitable solutions would better come from several other design sub-
fields than those suggested above. If this were the case, each of the 
consulted design professionals would then first come up, not simply 
with some vague "ideas". Rather, ANSWERS would first be contrived in 
the designers' mind and then crafted in profesional manner of the 
current state of each "art" domain, in order to be "presented" as 
optimal SOLUTIONS to "clients", to all closer and distant 
stakeholders that I rather call "users".

Those potentially innumerable solutions proposed under various 
formats by different designers would range from a short verbal 
opinion to a set of technical specifications; from a user's warning 
to national standards, laws and regulations; from a computerized 
manufacturing program to a finished protective item; from a selling 
strategy of prevention equipment to a general awareness program and 
pedagogical prevention school curriculum; from a formative and 
rhetorical "metaphor" to a scientifically crafted prevention media 
campaign. Even research engineers may eventually be called upon as 
well, to research principles and theories related to both failure and 
improvements in various faulty mechanisms and badly designed 
equipments causing accidents on ski slopes. 

Another group of professional engineers may as well be called in to 
conduct research, this time in different ways to "ENVISION" (i.e. 
REPRESENT) better, for whatever purpose (investment, manufacturing, 
justice, etc.), new mechanisms and protective equipments on ski 
slopes. 

Other eventual "solutions" to the above same "problem" may even come 
from Southern hemisphere individuals, if called upon. These latter 
may in their lifetime have never had any lived experience on ski 
slopes, but they may nonetheless, eventually come up with 
unconventional and never heard of solutions, yet probably the most 
protective ....! Not forgetting to mention the Northern indigenous 
people, the world  experts in gliding techniques and artifacts on 
snowy and icy surfaces who may contribute a lot, if approached. 

In default to directly work on such fleeting real events like in the 
above case of deadly events on ski slopes, the only "something" we 
all concretely have hold on, and then can reflect and really work 
upon, is the representations made of such events. It is such portions 
of no longer existing "reality", that are "MADE PRESENT AGAIN", first 
in the minds of the question bearers as in the illustrative case 
above. And second, commissioned professionals called designers would 
each thus translate, as a way to "solutions", the "question" posed 
into actual and more malleable formats 
like  "metaphors", "paradigms", sketches, drawings, written reports, 
mockup models, body gestures, prototypes, and all other kinds 
of "plans", or "representations" that, ultimately may be realized and 
concretely implemented as physical or immaterial artifacts.

As I tried to extensively illustrate above, the only limit to 
possible "intelligent" solutions is our human capacity to reason. Not 
implying here a simple and gratuous generation of vague "ideas" of 
the already passed reality, or of its whatever kinds of 
dreamed "representations". I rather advocate, in a socially 
responsible manner and in our capacity as a professional group, 
a "theorizing" process on "things" practical, that can be easily 
manufactured and used (referring to one of Klaus,s recent post). All 
the teleological or potential artifacts that we may come up with, 
first mentally and then, eventually, practically applied in the long 
run in places like snowy mountain slopes, they all are what I mean 
by "RE-PRESENTATIONS". They ought to be practically and 
profesionaly "MADE PRESENT".

Quite obviously then, my use of the term of "representation" as what 
designers do or ought to be doing, and as a proposed agenda for the 
profession in years ahead, is thus far from being so "narrow", again 
in Klaus's words! In my mind, designers do not "draw" only! Nor do 
they simply engage in "routines, styles, repetitive ways to solve 
problems", as said in onother of Klaus's last posts.

Sorry for the long and probably linguistically clumsy post!

Greetings from snowy (but not so called!) Montréal.

François-X.

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