After six years in Indiana, I just got all my books shipped to me from Sweden. Among the books, I found a few copies of my PhD dissertation from 1991. The title is in Swedish "Designarbetets dolda rationalitet" [in English "The Hidden Rationality of Design Work "]. It was written in Swedish. Only one chapter is translated to English. Anyway, today I read parts of it and realized two things. First, I think the text is still quite good, which is kind of a surprise. I have not read or looked at it in more than ten years, maybe more. Secondly, I realized that almost all my scholarly work I do today can be traced back to my dissertation. This is not so much of a surprise, since I know other who have the same experience. You only do research on a very small set of ideas during your lifetime.
Anyway, even though the text was published in 1991, I am thinking about translating parts of it, or maybe more correct, translate and re-write parts of the text. It might finally become a book in English :-)
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Book note: "In Praise of Reason" by Michael P. Lynch
One of the most mundane activities that humans engage in is reasoning. We do it all the time. We try to find reasons for our own actions and for others (strange) behavior. At the same time, reasoning can be seen as the most advanced activity that humans engage in.
Reasons are the intellectual tools we use to convince others about our own perspective or solution. According the Michael P. Lynch, our society is facing a serious problem related to this daily human activity of reasoning. He argues that we have entered an era when many individuals and large groups do not accept the reasons of others as valid. There is a decrease in the trust of what he sees as the "common currency of reason", that is, there is less acceptance of the idea that we all, despite opinions and beliefs, are using the same fundamental set of rules and principles upon which we can constructively reason around a particular topic in a productive way. Instead, he argues that we see more people and groups expressing the idea that reasons are just a matter of belief. This leads to a situation where people do not have to listen to each others reason, not have to reflects upon the strength of their arguments, etc. Instead people take the position that they are just wrong or even stupid. Lynch shows how this have become common even in parts of our society that are supposed to rest on reasoning and the exchange of ideas, such as in politics.
Lynch book gives a thorough and detailed account for the existence of objective reasoning that we all have to relate to and "obey". Even though Lynch is a professional philosopher and the topic is advanced, he manages to make his case understandable and exciting. To me, his argumentation seems both solid and convincing. His evidence for the existence of reason as something that is possible to see as common to all of us is both elaborate and elegant, but at the same time accessible. His description of the problems that will arise if we do not accept a common understanding of reason is straightforward and should give us all reason to fear the future.
Lynch also writes about something that I find extra interesting and that is a clear definition of science. He makes the case that a common understanding of reason can and should be based on an abstracted version of what constitutes the scientific approach. He writes "part of what makes scientific practice distinctive is that it is comparatively intersubjective, transparent, repeatable, natural, and adaptable." (p 93). These features gives science the core quality that Lynch argues for which is an "open character". His detailed discussion about these qualities of science is highly interesting and is also relevant in a discussion about the difference between science and design.
At the end of the book, Lynch discusses the notion of truth especially in relation to Richard Rorty's idea of truth. Very interesting for those who are familiar with Rorty. He ends with a plea. He asks our society to seriously consider reason as a precondition for an open and democratic society. He argues that it is not just possible to develop a common ground and understanding about reason--it is necessary. Otherwise our society will slide further down into a state when reason is not respected and other forms of convincing becomes tools, such as, money, power, violence.
I highly recommend this book. The points I mentioned above are just some from Lynch rich text. Read and think.
Reasons are the intellectual tools we use to convince others about our own perspective or solution. According the Michael P. Lynch, our society is facing a serious problem related to this daily human activity of reasoning. He argues that we have entered an era when many individuals and large groups do not accept the reasons of others as valid. There is a decrease in the trust of what he sees as the "common currency of reason", that is, there is less acceptance of the idea that we all, despite opinions and beliefs, are using the same fundamental set of rules and principles upon which we can constructively reason around a particular topic in a productive way. Instead, he argues that we see more people and groups expressing the idea that reasons are just a matter of belief. This leads to a situation where people do not have to listen to each others reason, not have to reflects upon the strength of their arguments, etc. Instead people take the position that they are just wrong or even stupid. Lynch shows how this have become common even in parts of our society that are supposed to rest on reasoning and the exchange of ideas, such as in politics.
Lynch book gives a thorough and detailed account for the existence of objective reasoning that we all have to relate to and "obey". Even though Lynch is a professional philosopher and the topic is advanced, he manages to make his case understandable and exciting. To me, his argumentation seems both solid and convincing. His evidence for the existence of reason as something that is possible to see as common to all of us is both elaborate and elegant, but at the same time accessible. His description of the problems that will arise if we do not accept a common understanding of reason is straightforward and should give us all reason to fear the future.
Lynch also writes about something that I find extra interesting and that is a clear definition of science. He makes the case that a common understanding of reason can and should be based on an abstracted version of what constitutes the scientific approach. He writes "part of what makes scientific practice distinctive is that it is comparatively intersubjective, transparent, repeatable, natural, and adaptable." (p 93). These features gives science the core quality that Lynch argues for which is an "open character". His detailed discussion about these qualities of science is highly interesting and is also relevant in a discussion about the difference between science and design.
At the end of the book, Lynch discusses the notion of truth especially in relation to Richard Rorty's idea of truth. Very interesting for those who are familiar with Rorty. He ends with a plea. He asks our society to seriously consider reason as a precondition for an open and democratic society. He argues that it is not just possible to develop a common ground and understanding about reason--it is necessary. Otherwise our society will slide further down into a state when reason is not respected and other forms of convincing becomes tools, such as, money, power, violence.
I highly recommend this book. The points I mentioned above are just some from Lynch rich text. Read and think.
CHI 2012
I am home after having spent almost a week at CHI 2012 in Austin, Texas. First two days I was chairing the doctoral consortium. The consortium is a way of looking into the future! The students are some of the best in the field and their work is what will be seen in CHI in a few years. I can not really say that there was a clear trend except that the diversity within HCI will grow even more.
The CHI conference itself was great. The last few years we have seen serious changes in the content of CHI. It is more diverse, more including of perspectives and approaches to HCI research. There were many papers that would never have been presented at CHI just a few years ago. Personally I am of course happy to see some more theoretically oriented papers and more design oriented papers. It was also exciting to see the interactivity exhibition, that is, all the new designs, artifacts and systems that manifest research in a more concrete way.
And then finally, all the people. Since I basically only go to one conference per year nowadays, CHI works greats. Almost everyone is there and your get a chance to reconnect and connect to colleagues during a few intense days. Discussions lead to new ideas and new collaborations. Thanks to everyone who organized the conference.
The CHI conference itself was great. The last few years we have seen serious changes in the content of CHI. It is more diverse, more including of perspectives and approaches to HCI research. There were many papers that would never have been presented at CHI just a few years ago. Personally I am of course happy to see some more theoretically oriented papers and more design oriented papers. It was also exciting to see the interactivity exhibition, that is, all the new designs, artifacts and systems that manifest research in a more concrete way.
And then finally, all the people. Since I basically only go to one conference per year nowadays, CHI works greats. Almost everyone is there and your get a chance to reconnect and connect to colleagues during a few intense days. Discussions lead to new ideas and new collaborations. Thanks to everyone who organized the conference.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
Book series on Design
The MIT Press book series labeled "Design thinking, design theory"with me and Ken Friedman as Series Editors has now published three books! We are delighted about this and we of course expect to be able to publish more in the years to come. The three already published are:
"Design Things" by A. Telier (aka, Thomas Binder, Pelle Ehn, Giorgio de Mechelis, Guilio Jacucci, Per Linde, and Ina Wagner), 2011.
"Design Things" by A. Telier (aka, Thomas Binder, Pelle Ehn, Giorgio de Mechelis, Guilio Jacucci, Per Linde, and Ina Wagner), 2011.
"Adversarial Design" by Carld DiSalvo, 2012
"China's Design Revolution" by Lorraine Justice, 2012.
I hope you will enjoy these books and coming ones too. And maybe you also will be inspired to write your own book. If so, get in touch with me.
I hope you will enjoy these books and coming ones too. And maybe you also will be inspired to write your own book. If so, get in touch with me.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Can designers train their intuition?
We are entering a time of complexity that is recognized everywhere, especially in design circles. Don Norman's latest book "Living with complexity" is a sign of this. But the fact that the world is getting more complex is not a new insight. Christopher Alexander wrote in 1964 in his book "Notes on the synthesis of form" that "more and more design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity" (p 3). He argues in his book that due to the increasing complexity, design can no longer be an activity that is done by people who has an innate ability to make good judgments. He argues that good intuition is not enough. Design is in need of more systematic approaches. Out of this idea grew his proposal for the use of pattern language in design.
Even though Alexander argued that intuition is not enough, the notion of intuition has always and will probably continue to be a core concept when it comes to describing what is needed from a designer. Intuition is often understood as the ability to sub-consciously make considerations, decisions and judgments based on non-complete and overwhelming information. There is a fairly common conception of intuition that it is an ability that can not be trained or developed, actually in many cases it is even seen ask dangerous to examine or inspect intuition. The idea is that if you interfere with intuition you will destroy it.
Alexander also comments, however slightly differently, on this aspect of intuition. He writes "Enormous resistance to the idea of systematic processes of design is coming from people who recognize correctly the importance of intuition, but then make a fetish of it which excludes the possibility of asking reasonable questions." (p 9). To Alexander there is a respect for intuition that sometimes hinders the possibility to developing more structured and intentional approaches to design. He argues that there are so many designers who have an established position due to their ability to apply their intuition to complex problems and if other approaches are developed that is based on externalized knowledge, and therefore also possible to teach and practice, then their competence and status will be challenged.
Donald Schön makes two arguments in relation to the question of intuition. First of all, he acknowledges that every designer are engaged in deep internal processes of reflection and decision making that can be seen as intuitive since they are not fully possible to externalize. He also constantly advocates reflection as a tool to engage critically in what constitutes the elements and processes of design thinking. Building your expertise is a matter of training your intuition. "Training" your intuition can be done by expanding your design repertoire through constant critical examination of your own thinking and acting as a designer.
So, it is possible to both respect the position of Alexander and Schön. Intuition should be challenged by rational approaches to design but without requiring all aspects of the process to become externalized. Intuition can be respected as a core part of design thinking without making it a black box that is not possible to develop and is only a matter of talent. Any designer can develop their competence by doing both, that is, engaging in constant effort to develop their design intuition a la Schön and to engage in efforts to find more developed and systematic ways to improve the design process a la Alexander.
Even though Alexander argued that intuition is not enough, the notion of intuition has always and will probably continue to be a core concept when it comes to describing what is needed from a designer. Intuition is often understood as the ability to sub-consciously make considerations, decisions and judgments based on non-complete and overwhelming information. There is a fairly common conception of intuition that it is an ability that can not be trained or developed, actually in many cases it is even seen ask dangerous to examine or inspect intuition. The idea is that if you interfere with intuition you will destroy it.
Alexander also comments, however slightly differently, on this aspect of intuition. He writes "Enormous resistance to the idea of systematic processes of design is coming from people who recognize correctly the importance of intuition, but then make a fetish of it which excludes the possibility of asking reasonable questions." (p 9). To Alexander there is a respect for intuition that sometimes hinders the possibility to developing more structured and intentional approaches to design. He argues that there are so many designers who have an established position due to their ability to apply their intuition to complex problems and if other approaches are developed that is based on externalized knowledge, and therefore also possible to teach and practice, then their competence and status will be challenged.
Donald Schön makes two arguments in relation to the question of intuition. First of all, he acknowledges that every designer are engaged in deep internal processes of reflection and decision making that can be seen as intuitive since they are not fully possible to externalize. He also constantly advocates reflection as a tool to engage critically in what constitutes the elements and processes of design thinking. Building your expertise is a matter of training your intuition. "Training" your intuition can be done by expanding your design repertoire through constant critical examination of your own thinking and acting as a designer.
So, it is possible to both respect the position of Alexander and Schön. Intuition should be challenged by rational approaches to design but without requiring all aspects of the process to become externalized. Intuition can be respected as a core part of design thinking without making it a black box that is not possible to develop and is only a matter of talent. Any designer can develop their competence by doing both, that is, engaging in constant effort to develop their design intuition a la Schön and to engage in efforts to find more developed and systematic ways to improve the design process a la Alexander.
Friday, April 06, 2012
Some ongoing readings
On my desk at the moment I have some book that I slowly are trying to get through. The problem is as usual that they are good which makes the reading slower at the same time as rewarding.
These are the books I am reading right now:
Christoffer Alexander "Notes on the Synthesis of Form", (1964).
This is a re-read. I read this book in 1983 and I was really inspired and excited. Now, after only have read a few pages, I am equally excited and realize that many of the ideas I think are my own are probably from this book.
Bruno Latour, "Reassembling the Social", (2005)
Together with some PhD students and some colleagues we are reading one chapter every other week. Then we meet for an hour to discuss that chapter. It takes time but it is really worth it. This is a challenging book in which Latour redefines sociology in a way that is consistent with his earlier work while highly critical of traditional sociology. Is is fascinating to read someone who takes on such a huge task and does it extremely well.
Peter-Paul Verbeek "Moralizing technology" (2011)
I am halfway through this interesting account of the relationship between technology and morality. Verbeek does a wonderful job in laying out the problem and also in providing some great insights. The book is surprisingly easy to read for such a complicated topic. I will hopefully write a review when I am done.
Ludwik Fleck "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact" (1935).
I realized a while back that I had never read this influential book. It comes with an interesting Foreword by Thomas S. Kuhn who was inspired by Fleck when he wrote his seminal "The structure of scientific revolutions". Fleck develops the notions of "thought style" and "thought collective" in a way that is still more than relevant. I am reading this book in a less structured way, jumping back and forth, not good.
Andrew Feenberg & Norm Friesen (Eds) "(Re)Inventing the Internet" (2012)
I just got this book sent to me from Feenberg and have only started to read it. It is of course based on some of his earlier philosophical writings. The book presents a "critical theory of the internet". Of what I have read so far, it is a welcome analysis of internet which is more analytical than most writings on the topic.
OK, that is enough for now. I guess I have to finish these readings so I can move on to other books.
These are the books I am reading right now:
Christoffer Alexander "Notes on the Synthesis of Form", (1964).
This is a re-read. I read this book in 1983 and I was really inspired and excited. Now, after only have read a few pages, I am equally excited and realize that many of the ideas I think are my own are probably from this book.
Bruno Latour, "Reassembling the Social", (2005)
Together with some PhD students and some colleagues we are reading one chapter every other week. Then we meet for an hour to discuss that chapter. It takes time but it is really worth it. This is a challenging book in which Latour redefines sociology in a way that is consistent with his earlier work while highly critical of traditional sociology. Is is fascinating to read someone who takes on such a huge task and does it extremely well.
Peter-Paul Verbeek "Moralizing technology" (2011)
I am halfway through this interesting account of the relationship between technology and morality. Verbeek does a wonderful job in laying out the problem and also in providing some great insights. The book is surprisingly easy to read for such a complicated topic. I will hopefully write a review when I am done.
Ludwik Fleck "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact" (1935).
I realized a while back that I had never read this influential book. It comes with an interesting Foreword by Thomas S. Kuhn who was inspired by Fleck when he wrote his seminal "The structure of scientific revolutions". Fleck develops the notions of "thought style" and "thought collective" in a way that is still more than relevant. I am reading this book in a less structured way, jumping back and forth, not good.
Andrew Feenberg & Norm Friesen (Eds) "(Re)Inventing the Internet" (2012)
I just got this book sent to me from Feenberg and have only started to read it. It is of course based on some of his earlier philosophical writings. The book presents a "critical theory of the internet". Of what I have read so far, it is a welcome analysis of internet which is more analytical than most writings on the topic.
OK, that is enough for now. I guess I have to finish these readings so I can move on to other books.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Book cover "The Design Way" Second Edition
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Understanding Interaction Design Practice
The research project on design methods that we started in September (funded by NSF) is coming along. We are now in the middle of a first interview study where we focus on a range of aspects related to design practice and particularly the use of design methods ("methods" in its broadest possible meaning).
As always when you interview professionals they impress you with the competence they express and their understanding of design and the design process. These practitioners stress aspects of the design process that in many ways are opposite to what non-designers or students believe, for instance that process is more important than outcome, and that judgment is more important than method. They are constantly unwilling to make clear statements about "what works best", "what method is best", "what are crucial skills", etc. Instead they always bring the discussion back to the particular, the particular situation, particular user, particular client, particular technology, and particular design challenge.
It is also fascinating to find that, even though they are highly skilled and competent in what they do, they are also somewhat worried that other professionals in the field are doing things differently and maybe in a better way. This is the case even though they are engaged in professional communities, workshops, conferences, and reads a lot.
It is also clear that the level of knowledge when it comes to design methods, their names, their history, their usefulness, etc. differ drastically.
Anyway, every interview leads to new insights about the everyday conditions of professional practice for interaction design. I am now more than ever looking forward to this research and can see many exciting results in the coming years.
As always when you interview professionals they impress you with the competence they express and their understanding of design and the design process. These practitioners stress aspects of the design process that in many ways are opposite to what non-designers or students believe, for instance that process is more important than outcome, and that judgment is more important than method. They are constantly unwilling to make clear statements about "what works best", "what method is best", "what are crucial skills", etc. Instead they always bring the discussion back to the particular, the particular situation, particular user, particular client, particular technology, and particular design challenge.
It is also fascinating to find that, even though they are highly skilled and competent in what they do, they are also somewhat worried that other professionals in the field are doing things differently and maybe in a better way. This is the case even though they are engaged in professional communities, workshops, conferences, and reads a lot.
It is also clear that the level of knowledge when it comes to design methods, their names, their history, their usefulness, etc. differ drastically.
Anyway, every interview leads to new insights about the everyday conditions of professional practice for interaction design. I am now more than ever looking forward to this research and can see many exciting results in the coming years.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
An excellent design "Out of the box"
I do not often write about particular designs on my blog but when I saw this video today I felt the urge to do so. The design is to me a wonderful example of a design composition that manifests many different aspects of interaction design. The design is all about the confluence of the physical and the digital, about embodied and tangible design. It is an excellent example of how a design creates a space of possible actions (a concept I have developed elsewhere). And also what inscription might look like in the meaning of Bruno Latour. The design shows that when design is cared for and the user is considered -- a great design can follow. Take a look!
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Almost new journal: Philosophy & Technology
"Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology is indeed still publishing and remains the official journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT). It has been moved from the publisher Ejournals to the Philosophy Documentation Center.
A link to the PDC Techne page is here: http://secure.pdcnet.org/
So, now there are two journal in the field that publishes high quality papers on philosophy in technology. Looking forward to many exiting readings in this new journal. I have already found some exciting articles by for instance Borgmann and another by Vaccari.
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