Hi Terence,

I'm researching about *perceived causality* (or* phenomenological causality*)
and which are the main variables that stimulate the perception of causal
relations in visual situations, even though there is no physical event of
cause and effect.

Just to give you an example of visual situation where perceived causality
occurs, you can have a look at this pinboard of mine

http://pinterest.com/trapparchi/perceived-causality/

The psychology of perception has studied this subject in depth, especially
Manfredo Massironi, but unfortunately it seems to me that these studies
have remained unknown to designers.


Best regards
Paola Trapani

Paola Trapani
Adjunct Professor of Visual and Multimodal Communication
Università Statale di Milano



2012/6/8 Terence Love <[log in to unmask]>

> Dear Ken,
>
>
>
> Pax domine
>
>
>
> In my previous email I was pointing to the possibility of a new area of
> theory advance in design research that offers benefits over the existing
> approaches.
>
>
>
> I suggest there is a path to creating causal theories about designers and
> users response to new and unknown designed outcomes based on humans'
> typical
> reactive responses in this situation.
>
>
>
> This approach has the benefit of deriving testable causally-based theories
> in their explanatory power go beyond the associatively-derived theories
> about human responses to designs that currently dominate this area of
> design
> theory. This latter follows from the general rule that tested
> causally-based
> explanations are more useful than associatively-derived information. This
> is
> because causally-derived theories can predict outcomes for novel
> situations,
> whereas associatively-derived information can only guide the design of
> things that are similar or with incremental changes.
>
>
>
> The underlying reasoning for the idea of creating causal explanations about
> designers and users response to new and unknown designed outcomes is
> straightforward:
>
>
>
> 1.       It is widely agreed that humans act on the basis of their previous
> experience and learning combined with in-born responses.
>
> 2.       This using of previous experience, learning and in-born responses
> is evident in how humans respond to something new.
>
> 3.       Designers create new and novel things
>
> 4.       Users have to respond to the new and novel things designers create
>
> 5.       Design researchers improve design processes and outcomes by
> understanding how and why designers respond to the 'new' that emerges in
> their minds and from their other design practices.
>
> 6.       Design researchers and designers improve design processes and
> outcomes by understanding the basis of how and why users respond to the new
> and novel things designers create.
>
> 7.       Causal explanations of the how and why designers respond to the
> new
> provide the understanding of why these responses happen and thus offer
> predictive power that can be used in other design situations.
>
> 8.       Associative data about designers and users response to the new is
> limited to providing information about how things have happened in
> particular past situations.
>
> 9.       Design theory development comprises formalising the above
> knowledge.
>
> 10.   Design theory development benefits more from causal explanations than
> associative data.
>
> 11.   Currently, the literature on these issues is dominated by associative
> data (e.g. the excellent work by Vesna et al in QUT on intuitive
> interfaces,
> Nielsen's work on usability, the work on Design and Emotion, the CSCW
> literature, the HCI literature...)
>
> 12.   Individual human responses to the unknown are typified by fixed,
> 'chunks of response triggered by their observation of aspects of the new
> situation.
>
> 13.   Evidence of the above is from multiple sources including research
> findings relating to 'knowledge chunking', 'fixed action patterns',
> 'archetype use', 'value judgement', 'paradigms', 'disciplines and
> professional knowledge' along with everyday empirical experience.
>
> 14.   The most obvious way, to me, to start to develop such a
> causally-based
> subfield of design theories is to first map examples of where users exhibit
> archetypical responses and then catalogue these archetypes and responses in
> terms of set and mereological taxonomies.
>
> 15.   These provide a conceptual basis for analysing how and why designers
> and users respond using these archetypical responses, i.e. the
> identification of a taxonomy of typical trigger factors.
>
> 16.   The relationships between elements in taxonomies are the basis of
> mid-level causal theories of how designers and users respond to the new.
>
> 17.   Analysis of the underlying foundations of the responses, archetypes
> in
> these taxonomies provides an epistemological and ontological foundation for
> such mid-level causal theories, and themselves offer low-level causal
> theories of how designers and users respond to the new. Almost certainly,
> these latter will be ta the level of biological basis of aspects of
> cognition, perception and emotion (biological basis of embodied behaviour).
>
> 18.   The development of effective design guidelines is restricted by the
> types of theories about how designers and users respond to the new. The use
> of theories based on associative data is limited to identifying design
> guidelines of things that are similar, i.e. are limited in their validity
> to
> incremental design (by definition).
>
> 19.   The outcome is a new causally-based body of theory about how
> designers
> and users respond to the new that offers a foundation for better design
> guidelines that can address truly novel design rather than incremental
> design.
>
> My apologies, I was trusting you would infer all the above (and more) from
> my previous post on the help desk employees rant about user's
> 'superstitious' thinking.
>
>
>
> At this moment, I have no institution funding me for writing for journals
> and attending conferences.  This means I'm now publishing my research and
> analyses direct to the public domain. I claim moral ownership of this
> material and ask that people reference and credit  it appropriately if they
> use it in their own research and publications.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Terry
>
> ==
>
> Dr Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
>
> PhD, B.A. (Hons) Eng, P.G.C.E
>
> School of Design and Art, Curtin University, Western Australia
>
> Psychology and Social Science, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia
>
> Honorary Fellow, IEED, Management School, Lancaster University, UK
>
>
>
> PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks, Western Australia 6030
>
>  <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]   +61 (0)4 3497 5848
>
> ==
>
>
>
>
>
>
>