Hi Don,
Thanks for your response.
I suggest French's approach is more useful in terms of humans and social design than it might appear at first glance. I find I use it in many social design situations, and even graphic design situations. An example is the sort of work is happening is in your own business (Nielsen Norman Group). The AlertBox publication contains many examples of design principles using sparse mathematics in the realm of graphic design and communications. Much of what I have read of NNG's work follows French's advice to 'Quantify whenever possible, even if very roughly '.
The second part of French's work, using abstractions, is stunningly powerful, yet it hasn't been well adopted. I part I suspect this is because it requires a very different way of design thinking. Again it has been my own experience that French's abstraction method applies to designs involving humans and subjective design issues as much as it does to more physical engineering design. Explaining this is probably easier with a real practical example. If you suggest a practical example of the kind of design problem you consider it would be useful, I'll try to outline a French-like abstraction design approach to it.
On the clamshell, phone, I suggest the clamshell paradigm kept going longer than it perhaps should have because their wasn't an easy algorithm for use by phone designers that showed the benefits and limitations of different configurations in human terms. French's approach to using abstractions could have provided that kind of information
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Norman
Sent: Sunday, 29 March 2015 12:07 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subject: Re: Michael French is gone
Thanks, Terry
I didn't know about Michael French (or MJ French as he is listed in Google scholar).
Your description of his use of an appropriate level of abstraction with "sparse mathematics" suggest a powerful tool, one that many of us aspire to.
On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:28 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> One of the pioneer design researchers, Emeritus Professor Michael
> Joseph French, died a couple of weeks ago.
>
...
>
In design theory terms, perhaps his most significant contribution was his
> use of modelling of the behaviour of abstractions at higher and higher
> levels to identify design solutions. At the intermediate levels of
> analysis he identified design principles based on practical
> considerations to guide design choices.
>
>
>
...
>
>
Characteristically, he did this with sparse mathematics that
>
> provided the maximum of accuracy of useful representation with the
> minimum of complexity.
>
My problem is that although I aspire to that process, I do not know how to
do so when we add human beings and social concerns to the problem, and
almost all design issues faced by non-engineering designers have that
characteristic.
The strictly engineering components can be handled well, in the manner
French and others have done. But once you add people to the mix, these
methods are not only insufficient, they can be harmful. (Not harmful in
principle, I hasten to add, but harmful in practice, because the
mathematics of today to model human behavior are very limited in scope and
highly oversimplified -- and sometimes just plain wrong.)
So, French is someone I would love to emulate, but I lack the talent to do
so once we factor in people.
===
But while I am at it, i can't help but wonder what you might have meant by:
A particular benefit of this approach of addressing design in
>
> terms of higher level of abstractions rather than at the level of the
>
> concrete is avoidance of mental lock-in onto poor design paths that have
>
> become accepted traditions (clam shell phone?)
Gee. First of all, in my humble, amateurish opinion, the clamshell phone
was a brilliant concept, quite appropriate for its time. But i certainly
see no evidence of lock-in to that design today.
Second, I just attended a talk by Marty Cooper, the guy whose team of
engineers (at Motorola) built the first cellphone. He commissioned an
industrial design firm to study possible phone configurations and they came
up with about 5 different suggestions, all of which eventually were
constructed and widely used (one was the clamshell), but the first phone
was not a clamshell but rather a long, heavy rectangular device.
So:
What's the matter with the clamshell?
I see no evidence that anyone ever got locked-in to that design paradigm.
Did others copy it when it became popular? Of course, that's how the world
of copycat business works. French would have been powerless to affect that
component of modern industry (marketing folks dominate, remember?).
But thanks for telling us about MJ French. Very nice work indeed -- in
engineering design.
Don
Don Norman
Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego
[log in to unmask] designlab.ucsd.edu/ www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org/>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
