Hi, Eduardo,
When I reviewed hundreds of definitions of design and design process in the 1990s, one thing that struck me was the parochiality of the definitions. That is, how the definitions were almost always in terms of the ways of thinking and practice of the discipline in which they were defined:
* Chemical engineering designers create definitions of design and design process that are like chemical process models, and emphasise process in a simpler manner to chemical processes.
* Organisational designers define design and design process as organisational processes.
* Communication-focused designers define design and design process in terms of language and communication.
* Information systems designers define design and design process as information flows.
* Architects define design in terms of a combination of architectural planning processes, building structures and art.
* Graphic designers define design and design process in terms of graphics and publishing process.
* Urban planners defined design and design process in planning terms
* Art-based designers define design and design processes in terms of beauty and art.
From memory, those individuals whose design work included both art and technology tended towards the definition of design as the document itself as a specification or the definition of design as an activity of humans describing how to make or do something.
So, is the problem of beauty and art simply that of parochiality... that designers from a background of art in which beauty is a focus tend to define design in terms of beauty and art out of professional habits of thought?
Same of course for engineering definitions.
Best wishes,
Terence
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
[log in to unmask]
www.loveservices.com.au
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo corte-real
Sent: Friday, 8 January 2016 1:04 AM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SPAM] Re: Evidence & Beauty - Was: Bass evidence
Dear Ken, David, Fil, Dear All,
Well, that’s nice to have this recurrent discussion.
First, I must apologize for being wrong. Of course that philosophy is not the only way to intellectually tackle beauty. There is another way: make beautiful things (intellectually).
This is different from Fil’s breathtaking beautiful woman. Fil’s breathtaking woman is Nature in action. We can use Fil’s breathtaking woman for comparison but we should concentrate on artificial objects. So, before artificial objects, sometimes perception of beauty requires a suspension of normal existencial time: “I’m in the presence of Art, so I must be prepared for beauty (or other aesthetic emotions)”. We should also set this situation apart and keep it only for comparison. So what interest us is that sometimes we are dealing with beautiful artificial things that we don’t call Art. We (in this List) call it Design in most of the times.
The normal existence of your normal live may place us before different objects that perform exactly the same function in the same fit way for our normal existential live but… one is aesthetically better than another, (and yes, we may choose whatever we like). At a certain moment in history some human societies decided to designate a professional and a profession (at the same time as may other professions were being defined) devoted to combine beauty with manufactured objects. By obscure reasons, this happened in some regions where the English language was dominant, and the word Design was handy.
What I’m trying to say (based on Bass’s exhortation) is that society gave a social mandate to Designers so they could produce beautiful normal existential things. I’m not saying that this is an all around philosophies soundly based idea of beauty. I’m just saying that the idea behind the first Design schools and literally expressed in Bass’s interview was this one: Make beautiful things. (I’m not saying even that I agree with Bass)
David, when your are claiming the functional aspect of information design, I have to agree with you in two grounds: Information should be organized in the best possible way. If organized in the best possible way, information is more beautiful than information organized in worse possible way informationwise. In conclusion, when related to information, there is a similarity in measurable “informatic” features comparable with presumptive measures of beauty. It does not means that beauty can be measured.
Ken, for you it seems that many philosophical arguments for beauty result in bad design. That’s because a philosopher can be as bad designer as an engineer can. So imagine an engineer with no other resource than philosophy… Yes, I know, there is even worse: engineers with no other resources that psychology. And I agree with you that the use of “beautiful” design artifacts may be bad design. But I must assure you that simply beautiful artifacts are never bad design (because they are PURELY human) So Beauty, conflictual and hardly measurable, was something inherent to the social mandate of designers and, in consequence, resilient to evidence, if taken seriously.
At some historical moments, to my view, engineering (in several levels, from informatics to organizations) and marketing an management (from services to “thinking”) changed this mandate. Why? When? Or did they not?
Best,
Eduardo
> No dia 07/01/2016, às 10:55, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>
> Friends,
>
> While I understand how Eduardo’s comments resonate, there are many schools of philosophy, and I wonder whether any of these offers the *only* way to intellectually tackle beauty. Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy addresses a progress from the aesthetic to the ethical to the religious — taken in existential terms rather than Kierkegaard’s existential religious terms, the importance of understanding what we are doing by some recourse to evidence is what David speaks of when he speaks of the fact that many people *have* to use what we design.
>
> Artists can do what they wish to do. Each artist has an audience of one. Every artist hopes to expand that audience to include many. But for most artists, only one stakeholder really counts: the artist who decides what is beautiful. That’s not really true, of course. As Duchamp notes, the viewer completes the work of art. But once the work is in the world, it’s an open debate. Do you really care whether Duchamps’ bicycle wheel works? The proper height of the R. Mutt urinal is irrelevant to most of us.
>
> In contrast, the legibility of a medical label or use instructions are always a matter of health, and sometimes a matter of life and death. It is possible to measure these in many ways, not just one way. Whenever we speak of an “only way”, we risk some form of Taylorism in which “one best way” becomes a crushing and inappropriate orthodoxy. The problem of Taylor’s orthodox efficiency measures was that Taylor’s system was both good and bad — the problem was that the Taylorite priesthood served the captains of industry without respect to the live of those workers condemned to labor under a Taylorist regime.
>
> It seems to me that a great many philosophical arguments for beauty result in bad design, at least as far as those who use the “beautiful” designed artefacts. Some years ago, I recall a designer from an award-winning design firm criticise the work of a particularly skilled designer, asking me whether I really “liked” all of his work or thought it as beautiful and appealing as it could be.
>
> My answer was that I did not. While I loved many of his projects, I did not “like” others at all. The reason I respected him above most other designers was that every project did what it should have done for the client, for the client’s customers, and for the end users. Whether I “liked” it or found it beautiful was far less relevant than the quality of the work for those who *had to use it*.
>
> As some of you know, I have been an artist in another life — and sometimes I still am. I can tell you as an artist that I value philosophical inquiry into beauty.
>
> I am also a human being who is — like so many of us — required to use products and services in daily life that others design. I can tell you as someone who *has to use* those products and services that I prefer David Sless’s approach to the approach that most philosophers take. David designs things for human beings. This is not the case for most philosophers.
>
> One of the reasons that Kierkegaard, Buber, and Rawls are more useful to design than Hegel or Berkeley is that human beings come first, as it should be in design. All the arguments of philosophy are interesting when we are thinking about philosophy, at least historically. When we are thinking about design, we ought first to consider whom we serve, and why.
>
> In this respect, beauty has many meanings, and there are several ways to get at them.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji
> University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economic
> s-and-innovation/
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University
> Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne
> University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
>
> --
>
> David Sless wrote in response to Eduardo Corte-Real
>
> —snip—
>
>> On 6 Jan 2016, at 9:32 PM, Eduardo corte-real <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> The only way you can intellectually tackle beauty is philosophically.
>
> Eduardo and all,
>
> Of necessity, in my field of information design, I take a different intellectual position. Beauty’s importance is always contextualised and dealt with in relation to the people who end up having to use our designs.
>
> I say *having to use our designs* because in many of the projects we have undertaken—medicine information, forms, bills, notices, letters, web sites—people do not have a choice. They have to use these designs to achieve certain outcomes.
>
> Having said that, we do apply a set of criteria that collectively contribute to some notions of beauty, and are to a greater or lesser degree ‘measurable’. We first published these for the benefit of our Members back in the 1990s.
>
> —snip—
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|