sure,
jason,
hardly anyone works by him or herself, nowadays.  this is what stakeholder
theory articulates and clarifies.  you give a good list of the stakeholders
of chip designers.  

however, there is a difference between a consensus in the use of a
rational-technical language within which engineering problems are stated and
considered solved, and more or less public and ordinary discourse in which
people talk, see, and interact with each other and their artifacts. for
human-centered designers the latter is the prime decider on how a design is
to proceed.

in other words, technology-centered engineers can demonstrate to each other
and to their stakeholders how something physically functions and satisfied
given, often measurable specifications.  human-centered designers, by
contrast, do not have quite these luxuries as they have to listen to how
others see what they are proposing and speculate where these considerations
might be going..

there is a difference between first-order understanding -- the understanding
of how something works -- and second-order understanding -- the
understanding of others understanding of what something means to them, how
one interacted with it accordingly, and how third-person others
conceptualize, judge, and interact one's own use.

i doubt that second-order understanding is evident in the discourse of
engineering.  it even escaped herbert simon's "sciences of the artificial,"
although he once did write a paper on the self-verifying process of public
opinion predictions, which touched on the understanding of understanding.
yet second-order understanding or knowing is foundational to human-centered
design.

so, don't just stay on the surface of this distinction

klaus. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Foster [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 9:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: Klaus Krippendorff
Subject: Re: current Trends in Design Research, where are we going ?

Jumping in a little late in order to avoid working on my syllabus for
tomorrow morning...

<snip/>

> why would a chip designer work on trying to increase the speed of 
> computation were it not for the knowledge that it would be appreciated 
> by someone,

<snip/>

> part of knowledge of value to human-centered designers is how the 
> stakeholders and users of their design see, conceptualize, and use 
> their artifacts. human-centered designers are primarily interested in 
> making sure that artifacts work psychologically, sociologically, and 
> culturally.

<snip/>

> for example, one concept of central importance for human-centered 
> designers is the concept of affordance, the extent to which the 
> conceptions of a user are supported by what the perceived artifact 
> does.

<snip/>

Allow me to step in and channel an Intel chip designer (I'm not one, but I
read Jon Stokes' work on Ars Technica a lot) for a moment.

The people I have to consider as I'm developing the next iteration of the
CPU include:

- the compiler developers, who need to understand it's workings to complete
their work and for who it has to make sense (e.g. if it's an
X86 then it will act in a certain way under certain conditions) and who will
expect it to embody certain assumptions and characteristics
- the process engineers, who need to implement it physically
- the marketing people, who need to explain to the public why it's desirable
- my direct colleagues, who need to work with my proposed ideas
- my future self, who will be limited by the design decisions I've made and
will have to debug my work
- myself, who has to be able to understand the nature of the design
sufficient to carry it to completion
- past chip designers, who have made decisions that have locked me into a
path _unless_ I break compatibility
- the graphics chip designers, who I'm competing against now that rendering
is moving back onto the CPU
- the technical sales people who will try and convince Nintendo to use the
chip in their next console
- researchers, who will try to improve on my design and from whom I am
borrowing ideas

I'm certain that there are more, but this is what jumps to mind.  In every
case the chip designer has to consider the impact of their technical
decisions on the ability of others to comprehend, utilize, explain, and
otherwise interact with their design.  By virtue of being from Intel, this
individual would have to make decisions that are recognizably "Intel" and
not solve things as an engineer from Motorola or IBM would.

I would draw particular attention to the compiler writers who in particular
would have "conceptions that potential users may bring to their design".

> ask some engineers whether their design process is driven by the 
> conceptions that potential users may bring to their design or from the 
> conceptions of the logic of the mechanism they envision.  i think 
> engineers would prefer the latter.

That may be their preference, just as some industrial designs might really
prefer to tell users what they'll like (as caricatured by representations of
Steve Jobs) as opposed to asking them or even considering them.  Individual
preferences are not a disciplinary belief system.

Jason