Andrei points to the key paragraph from Dan's book, and I concur wholeheartedly with it. I've stated in forums before, including dialogs with Dan, that he's pinned the dynamic. My problem was with the label, not some of the underlying activities it was used for.
Also, I believe that there are designers and consulting teams whose approach lies largely in that approach, and have developed, over a long period of time, many processes, identified phenomenon and solution patterns, and insights that allow them to work to great and repeatable success. There's a continuum in the field of successful designers and design efforts (let's set aside what we might all agree would be unsuccessful designers/designs) that switch between the methodologies (as Dan described). And that continuum has to do with the ratio of time spent in each of the methodologies, tools, or tactics. One point I've been raising is that there are some practices that "specialize" in rapid and generalized design/problem solving/revolution/large-scale-architecture-with-small-scale-embodiment-template type efforts. And because of the constraints that are often associated with efforts and needs of those types (budget, time, scale of necessary or optimized change, etc.), the approach and type of practice I've characterized as R.E.D. better fits what's occurring, than other labels. Labels matter in that they need to work both for describing and, when used, advocating. They need to be at least neutral and somewhat descriptive. In the end of course, the labels really don't matter at all. But just as they can help to contextualize what's going on, they are also capable of problematically leading valuable and deeper understanding astray. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37589 ________________________________________________________________ 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
