My next book, Philosophy of Design of Philosophy, is still forming in my head. I know what I want to convey, but the conceptual ingredients are evolving. Some new ingredients I’m entertaining are liminality, conceptual integrity and multistability. These new concepts will help me simplify my system and link my thinking to other bodies of … Continue reading Useful usable desirable
My own distillation of Liz Sander‘s brilliant UX triad (pdf of 1992 paper): Useful: The design satisfies functional needs. Usable: The design minimizes functional obstacles. Desirable: The design is valuable beyond its function.
Two venn diagrams are often used by designers to explain what they do. Each triads presents design as pursuing an overlap of three primary values. The first, and most common, formulated by IDEO, is the view of a designed solution from an organization’s perspective. A successful design solution is viable, feasible and desirable: Viable: the … Continue reading Remembering the value of Desirability
I’ve said it before, but why not say it again? Take this as attention sustained for decades — as evidence of an enduring soul… A better distinction than technology (or artifice / artificiality) versus natural is what we experience as natural versus what we experience as unnatural. That turns it into a matter of design … Continue reading Returning to some enworldment design themes
I’ve been mulling over a project involving letterpress printed design wisdom. Today, I am fantasizing about letterpress printing a chapbook, in an aphorism-reflection format inspired by Jan Zwicky’s beautiful Lyric Philosophy and Wisdom & Metaphor. Here is my aphorism list so far: “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” (Winston Churchill) “Design is everything. … Continue reading “What is Design?” chapbook
I reject two very common, often unexamined, and highly consequential psychological assumptions. Vulgar assumption 1: Our unconscious mind consists largely of objective beliefs of which we are unaware, that exist beneath the surface of awareness, because unconscious psychic processes push them under. I think repressed objective beliefs do exist, but that most of “the unconscious” … Continue reading New and improved vulgarity!
I have a long habit of turning esoteric symbol systems into all-purpose concept models. Two of the most dramatic examples: the trigrams (and hexagrams) of the I Ching and the Sefirot of Kabbalah. When I interrogate myself on what I genuinely believe, I find that I I believe that this (mis)use of esoteric symbol systems … Continue reading Misusing esoteric symbols
It occurs to me this morning that Liz Sanders’s useful/usable/desirable framework is the heart of what could be thought of as a universal design brief. Useful: The design satisfies functional needs. Usable: The design minimizes functional obstacles. Desirable: The design is valuable beyond its function. The goal of design research is to particularize this brief. … Continue reading The universal design brief
I want to lay out a basic vocabulary for my project of approaching philosophy as a design discipline. * This is a very sketchy endeavor. I’m presenting even the philosophy that justifies and encourages approaching philosophy this way as itself something I designed. This philosophy makes no claims to truth, only to being one good … Continue reading Sketchy endeavor
Another way to think about enworldment within the larger context of philosophy would to be to draw another anomalous analogy between the domain of thought and the domain of engineering. Some philosophy explores lines of thoughts out of sheer interest in the thought itself. Something about the ideal material fascinates the thinker. What can be … Continue reading Enworldment design
[This is an older post that was saved as a draft, that I published for my index of Philosophy of Design of Philosophy posts. Unfortunately I lost the date when it was written. It was probably mid-2019.] The idea that philosophies are systems of conceptual tools used for making sense of the world is not … Continue reading Philosophy as design
DISCLAIMER: This post is a big mess (which is why it’s been hidden from November 2020 until today March 31, 2021), but it’s got a lot of good, useful stuff in it, so I’m making it public. ================= In the winter of 2002, I developed a new life-changing habit. I began waking up early in … Continue reading Design Pragmatism
I think my “Coalition of the Unique” post might be the core of a Liberal Manifesto chapbook. Susan’s and my strategy has shifted over the last several months. Rather than attacking illiberalism, we’ve chosen instead to find more beautiful reconceptions and redescriptions of Liberalism to help people understand and to feel why Liberalism is precious and worth … Continue reading Stuff I’m going to write
The best name for my approach to philosophy might be “design Instrumentalism”, a variant of John Dewey’s instrumentalism. According to Wikipedia, Instrumentalism is a pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey that thought is an instrument for solving practical problems, and that truth is not fixed but changes as problems change. Instrumentalism is the view that scientific … Continue reading Design Instrumentalism
My pet theory is that philosophies have been developed in an engineerly mode of making, with emphasis on the thought system, and to be evaluated primarily epistemically: “is it true?” The Pragmatists improved on this by asking, “does it work”? But I believe the pluralistic insight requires us to take a designerly approach to philosophy … Continue reading Let’s stop engineering philosophies