I've not much time before the first day of a Toronto conference (IDEA),
allow me a couple of additions here. I've enjoyed the discourse that has
emerged among the 4 or so participants here. I'm an old reader but a new
contributor. For those of you on the Transforming Transformation list as I
am, this is a somewhat deeper dive into a particular thread than we would
usually produce there. Terry's most recent response to Klaus will take a
little more time for me to process - let me say I truly appreciate the
inquiry.
Fil raises an interesting question about design professionals skilled in
forms of design discourse, but much less so craft skill. I've observed the
trend among consulting, creative agencies, and web design/strategy firms
that many consultants in design capacities, especially "experience design"
have little or no design education or even prior work experience in
designing products and services. They have the ability to articulate a given
set of methods and the organizational capacity to mediate different
contributing activities in a team. After a year or two, an English degree
and the ability to communicate has evolved a designer.
Do they think like designers? Perhaps. They are self-consciously integrating
design proposals for clients and teams. Do they contribute to the
progression of design disciplines? Probably not.
Take the practice of user experience, which has become less driven by field
and human research and more driven by methodology. If a compelling narrative
about users can replace interviews with actual people, we start to lose the
basis of evidence for designing decisions.
This is another valid way to consider the practices of lay designers, as lay
discoursers whose discourse merely articulates methodology. This is similar
to what JR Saul in Voltaire's Bastards describes as the MBA mentality,
schooled in the rhetoric and practices of technique but not the values or
understanding of the domain toward which one's design contributions are
ultimately intended.
Peter
>
So, lay-designers aren't designers. I'm looking at the term "lay designer"
as a specialization of the term "designer," which is a pretty natural way to
consider the 2 terms. I /think/ Klaus thinks of the two groups - "lay
designers" and "designers" - as being disjoint (or nearly so). Whereas I
consider "lay designers" to denote a subset of "designers."
And what about people who have a natural talent in discourse? Of course
they are in a relative minority, but mightn't some of them make good "lay
designers" with reasonable design discourse skills?
Cheers.
Fil.
> klaus
>
[...]
--
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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