Nice post Bruce, I was just thinking -there are things that are useful for marketing ixd and things that are useful to people within the field which further praxis and allow ideation. Selling methodologies is great. Creating an organizing umbrella which houses a set of methods and practices which are easily explained to people outside the field may gain traction and aid in getting organizations to adopt us - defining UCD, and ACD or GCD or Agile makes a great blog post, perhaps becomes a book and certainly a methodology you can map out and sell to clients while boosting your rates - and I am all for that.
Back to the danger - that those acronyms acting as signifyers to a set of assumptions and methods become codified as the cognitive framing through which we see, organize, interpret a given problem space. And, this cognitive framing can become some calcified as to define our very outlook, and then we are stuck with a hammer and everything looks like a nail, no? Those acronyms are no panacea, they don't guarantee success (even if clients think they do), and at the bottom of the bottle of jim beam, they aren't innovation. Sure - define, refine, defend, make pretty 2x2 matrices and graphics to sell it cause we all need to eat - but we'll just all wink wink and nudge because if we want to be innovators and not imitators, we realize that only through a practice of constant cognitive re-framing, challenging perceptions and assumptions of our context when addressing a problem space that we are going to create new experiences. Not by following some bisquick set of mix and match methods pulled together a la carte, given a catchy acronym (Agile is a great name - I'll give them that), illustrated in visio and presented in powerpoint and sold to eager clients just looking for some guarantee when none is possible and really - none can honestly be given cause if your any good - you admit that this is a messy, nasty, risky business - "design." There is no formula, and there are no guarantees and no marketing name or acronym or formula will change that. On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 5:00 AM, Bruce Esrig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > I think this is the essence of the contribution that designers make. > > There is a pre-verbal moment in cognition when an intention > has been formed but has not yet been expressed. > Conceptual design elaborates that intention > into explicit concepts that can be communicated. > > The dance that we engage in is one of perceiving models, > formulating their content, and attempting to validate the > pre-verbal portion of the model without attracting distracting > verbal feedback. > > Once words are applied to a subject, people use them in > various incompatible idiosyncratic senses because of the > associations the words have in their minds. But the productive > portion of the debate lies in constructing an environment that > is comfortable at a pre-verbal level: it enables people to meet > their needs for many, most, or all of the situations that they > turn to it for. > > The environment, once constructed, redefines concepts for > those who use it, and builds a consensus though > shared experience on what those concepts mean and > how users must invoke them to achieve their goals. > The expressed concepts become verbal, visual, and behavioral > levers through which the desired result can be attained. > > As cognitive tool users, we use the environment denoted by > the concepts, but if asked to talk about it, we resort to naming > the concepts in words. This is why some of the most welcome > words you can hear from a guide to a new environment are > "Here, let me show you." The words only take on their intended > meaning once you have experience with the environment. > > Best wishes, > > Bruce > > > On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 6:03 AM, Will Evans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > >> To further my position: I was thinking that, based on Deleuze (and >> reacting to Kant), that a philosophical concept "posits itself and >> its object at the same time as it is created." Which is exactly the >> point I think Vander Wal et al were stating in discussions about >> identity/object. What can Deleuze tell us about identity and object >> within the ecosystem of social mediated networking sites - and >> specifically - the IxDA list which is just such a consensual >> hallucination (Gibson) of 'being' in space over time? The >> philosophy of IxD is best understood as the manufacture of concepts >> and more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it >> does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a >> pre-existing methodology (as in the tradition of Locke or Quine). >> This has interesting implications for the IxD list in general and >> DTDT discussions in particular. This explains, in part, the amount of >> effort spent on meta-topics such as UCD/ACD. >> >> I mean after reviewing the multifarious discussion here, I can't >> help but wonder why it so reminded me of Kant's transcendental >> idealism - experience (design) only makes sense when organized by >> intellectual categories (such as method, tactics, and prototypes). By >> the nature of what we do, we immediately fall into this trap, and >> perhaps that is limiting. Taking such intellectual concepts out of >> the context of experience, according to Kant, spawns seductive but >> senseless metaphysical beliefs like ACD might somehow make us better >> designers than some other method. Do we think this is really so? >> >> Following Deleuze, I think we should consider inverting Kant's >> arrangement: experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, >> and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered >> by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new activities, new >> ways of considering how we do things like sketch, brainstorm, >> prototype as a fulcrum to force an entirely new gestalt on the >> interface itself, and perhaps this is where innovation comes from. Or >> perhaps not. >> >> Just my thoughts. >> >> >> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . >> Posted from the new ixda.org >> http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33980 >> >> >> ________________________________________________________________ >> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! >> To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe >> List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines >> List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help >> >> > -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4 twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
