Design Thoughts

Recently i came across a paper in the latest issue of "design issues". The paper was titled "Triangle of design practice, design studies and Design Exploration" by Daniel Fallman The author has very well explained the domain of interaction research, and particularly wats interesting is the classification into three main types of design practice, design studies and design exploration. What was insightful in reading the paper was the good balance given to design researchers in interaction design domain. The broad categories helps you put yourself in domains and helps you realize career directions when needed. Here are some excerpts Particularly when it comes to interaction design research, issues of aesthetics concern not only how something looks and feels, but also the aesthetics of the whole interaction including how something works, how elegantly something is done, how interaction flows, and how well the content fits in. Thus, design exploration is the activity are...

Put any set of strangers in an unknown environment the elements of game theory like factors become evident clearly. Just a thought in my head ….perhaps a story may make it evident…. “ Imagine a set of few individuals suddenly put in a strange environment. Each of these individuals has his/her own amalgamation of what they are their own formulas their own little ways of seeing the world. And trust me each of these combinations are distinct from every other combination in million other ways…. Imagine if these individuals were different plastic balls….each sundried in different parts of the world and colored by thousands of people with their own thoughts also generating their own level of beautiful meanings of the world…. In this sudden new world now each one is on their own….they are now individuals…but wait….we can see some activity going on…..as time passes by some of these individuals interact….yes they start exchanging their inert thoughts and worldly perceptions with the others …..s...

Each one of us gets married to a plethora of tasks in our short lived life. So many of them that we almost get aligned to thousand different things under the title “ To be Done” I wonder what about going reverse, how many tasks do we actually need to survive as a human. As an infant we are do not have many tasks. So when we are small little kiddies we have the liberty to do anything, because our mom takes care of the food, bath and even changing diapers. But as we grow up our tasks line up to be a human. We have to eat food, which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to go to toilet when our body gives us alarm. We have to take a bath everyday. We have to cut our nails every month. We have to cut our hair when they grow badly. We have to brush our teeth everyday. As we grow, we carry these tasks are added more and more we have to shave (for girls they have to wax their legs) we have to wear clothes….and so on. As cultures change these tasks vary as age changes many tasks get a...

Excerpts from Schons "Reflective Practioner" Reflective practitioners perform on-the-spot experiments to see if they have framed the problem in the correct way, meaning that the problem can be tackled in a manner that is agreeable to the practitioner and that keeps the "inquiry" moving ahead..... Unlike scientists, practitioners undertake these experiments not just to understand the situation, but to change it into something better. Experiments consist of "moves" like in chess. Any hypothesis has to "lend itself to embodiment in a move." A practitioner makes a move and sees how the situation "responds" to that move, each move acting as a sort of "exploratory probe" of the situation. Dan Daffer Reviews it on his blog

A small Exceprt from Erik Stolterman's paper The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research Design education can prepare for such situations, but it cannot prescribe how to act in them. If someone is not prepared to handle such complexity, methods and techniques cannot with any “guarantee” guide anyone through such situations. One example of an approach that manages to fulfill this requirement is manifested in the notions of reflection-in-action, reflectionon- action and design repertoire by Schön (1983). With these concepts Schön intended to give designers tools for reflection that they can use to continuously develop their design abilities . A little more about the reflective practioner by Schon here(Dan Saffers Blog)

As designers many of us start having a savvy attitude of criticism. I know this is a sensitive topic, and I do not wish to find where and how we get it. But somewhere down the mindset we do feel that everything that we ever see be it a product or a service we tend to want to criticize the existing. Of course it’s a part of our job to find mistakes or to find the problems to solve them. However I think that many of us incline ourselves to the first part (find problems) more and second part( solve them) less. Of whatever design knowledge and experience I have till now I think that what needs to be seen is the latter part of solving problems in environments. An intellectual brain will argue with me that to solve problem we need to identify them. This is also what I would agree that it is not an easy task to identify a problem too considering that problems that are seen may or may not be the real problems. Those who understand systems theory know that the core problems can be anywhere in t...

"It's very different if your goal had been to get patents and be the first," he says. "But the goal is how do we change the world so that we are collectively more capable of dealing with complex and urgent problems?" ... If we don't learn how to solve them, it's very likely that our society will crash," he warns. "As fast as we get better, we are going to get better at getting better." --Doug engelbart is the inventor of mouse that u are using right now.

Extending thoughts....Jo and Me Design is about the ....situation opportunity and how u deal with it.... Our parents and grandparents have been good designers but we hardly see them follow a design process. They innovate a new process to come up with things everyone likes and uses. Design is about life, its the decisions we make the understandings we have and the control we keep over our self and the world around us. Design is about adapting to find solutions in a way that suits the situation.