Religions, tribes or mindsets -- either way, I think this discussion
is digging its way towards one of the deepest issues in interaction
design: Personal vs impersonal.
Traditional design disciplines have had some 100 years (or much
longer, if we consider architecture) to grow systems of practice and
education from the root assumption of design ability as something
personal. Hence portfolios, master/apprentice learning, criticism,
and so on.
Human-computer interaction, which forms the other main intellectual
tradition of interaction design, started out in the late 70s as a
scientific endeavor based in experimental psychology and engineering
science. Here, design is necessarily impersonal. The focus is on
acquiring general knowledge and communicating it in methods,
guidelines, etc.
Interaction design practitioners, scholars and teachers are feeling
the effects of this mongrel heritage every day. Yet it is not always
articulated as clearly as in the recent discussion on RED.
--------
Quite a bit of the discussion on RED seems to consist of HCI-type
questions being asked to a traditional-design-based approach. I am
not sure we can expect a lot of progress from that kind of
discussion. Indeed, some participants now seem to dismiss the thread
as a religious war.
However, there is at least one question I would like to ask Jim from
within a traditional-design perspective.
A general problem in developing design ability is the relative
inefficiency of the learning process. Apprenticing and peripheral
participation is the most common strategy and it generally takes a
long time to reach expert levels of experience and performance.
Does the RED approach contain any provisions for increasing the pace
of learning? Do you work systematically with product reviews and
criticism in your teams? Do you have procedures for debriefing and
knowledge sharing after project milestones and completions? How are
you working with conceptual tools for articulation of practical
knowing, such as patterns or experiential qualities?
I can't seem to find any references to learning and scaffolding of
expertise development in your posts so far.
Jonas Löwgren
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